The annual NUS Education Conference – held in Adelaide 10-12 July – will be a forum for left-wing students from across the country to discuss and debate the way forward for the student movement.

The campaign against the cuts to university funding has made some good headway. We have carried off the largest student demonstrations in years, and politicians are concerned about the backlash. In response to a recent Greens bill to reverse the cuts, 100 MPs left the chamber to avoid blackening their name in the lead-up to the election. But both major parties remain committed to the cuts: the campaign needs to regroup to continue the fight into semester two.

Education Conference will give activists a chance to organise the next national day of action and to discuss a nationally coordinated approach to fighting the cuts. Beyond these immediate tasks, Edcon is an opportunity to discuss rebuilding a fighting student movement. The anti-cuts campaign is a welcome departure from the recent orientation and activities of NUS, a departure that needs to be consolidated.

We can only assume that under an Abbott government students will be faced with even more severe attacks. NUS must abandon any attempts to politely lobby our politicians and instead orient to building protest-based campaigns and reshaping our student unions into independent, democratic activist organisations. This is what the left has been arguing for years, but this time the stakes are higher, and more people are listening.

Left wing students need to be at Edcon to seize the opportunity.