Morrison government education minister Dan Tehan - who was tasked with abolishing income support to early education - is on ABC Sydney radio to sell his government’s hatred of low-income students accessing tertiary education and of social mobility.

he is calling this policy to lock struggling students out of post-secondary education as “do you want support”. No mention of any support being made available, and no mention of who will be doing this pastoral care work as thousands of university staff are sacked.

apparently demonising struggling students as “not having the right attitude” is “help and support”. I am not kidding.

of course there are “exemptions”. I wonder who will benefit most from the exemption process. Maybe those already struggling with the sprawling bureaucracy of universities, those who can’t ask family to help navigate it because they are the first in their family to attend uni?

oh here we go. Fantasy land projections about “when we can get the international student market back up and running again”. Ridiculous, unfounded, and speculative projections about the end of the pandemic are a primary variable in every Morrison government policy horror show.

my god. “We want to make sure that [universities] are telling students to pull their socks up” says the actual education minister. Gaslighting and paternalistic micro-management.

“this pandemic has literally thrown the kitchen sink at everyone including universities” - another verbatim quote from the actual federal education minister.

universities have been “cut off at the knees” as a result of “what has happened to the international student market” says Tehan. The government is telling Australian universities to prioritise fee paying - international plus rich family - students over academic attainment.

I have a folder of emails, mostly from young women of colour, local students whose parents or grandparents moved here from Africa, Asia and the Middle East, thanking me for making sense of the imperial and patriarchal whiteness that constitutes almost all of the LLB curriculum.

I mention these emails because they are evidence that the quality of teaching and institutional support is a primary determinant as to whether students who struggle early on can complete. “Academic suitability” is not a thing. It is just elitist code for generational privilege.