Victor vividly remembers a Young Labor event where the Deputy Premier remarked that the young people in the room would one day become “MPs, Ministers, and even Prime Ministers”, to which his comrade turned and remarked, rather loudly, “that’s scary” — the silence to this remark was palpable.
The story of politicians cutting their teeth into student politics is not new, but it should make us reflect on the student politicians around us and the ones who have become parliamentarians.
Where better to start than at the very top?
Anthony Albanese began his political career early, joining the Australian Labor Party at 15. Before he began studying at USyd, he worked for the Commonwealth Bank for two years, and then enrolled in an economics degree.
Albanese had hardly set foot onto campus before he started getting involved in student politics. According to the 1984 Honi election edition, he had been elected as the Ethnic Affairs Officer from 1982-1984, and had been involved as an Education Collective Member from 1981-1984. His policy statement read, “As an ALP Club candidate, I consider that representing student interests and democratic socialism are synonymous… The inequalities in society are currently perpetuated and legitimised by an undemocratic education system.”
In 1984, Albanese involved himself in a campus conflict two decades in the brewing, labelled by academics Evan Jones and Frank Stilwell as “one of the most substantial and enduring academic conflicts within Australia”. The conflict had begun in the early ‘60s, when two new economics professors set about restructuring their course, leading to widespread dissatisfaction among students, who staged a “day of protest” in 1973 and a “day of outrage” in 1974. Dissent simmered for years, and came to a head in ‘84 when Albanese, alongside several other student politicians, scaled the Quadrangle Clock Tower in a dramatic act of protest. He and other students stayed put for three weeks until police moved in to forcefully evict them, as well as fine them $100 each.
After Albanese graduated, it took him no time at all to rise in the ALP ranks; he’d been a member of the party since 1979. He became a research officer for Tom Uren, who was the Minister for Local Government and Administrative Services, before gaining the coveted position of Assistant General Secretary for the ALP NSW branch in 1989. Not only is this a salaried office in the Party’s machine, but after their term in this office, Assistant General Secretaries can soon expect a spot for them in parliament — which eventuated in him winning the seat of Grayndler in 1996, one year after he retired from his position in the machinery. It was a slow and steady ascent to the top office, but photos of Albanese climbing the Clock Tower continue to remind us of the storied past of the Prime Minister. The rest is history — his abysmal record on Palestine, climate action, women’s safety, and First Nations justice is there for all to see.
Moving a few decades along, Jo Haylen became the USyd SRC President in 2003, during a time when the Liberal Government aimed to legislate voluntary student unionism (VSU) — a policy that would cut student union numbers down by approximately 95 per cent and weaken funding for student services and amenities. She organised protests against the sweeping changes to tertiary education, clashing with police in the process.
Haylen then worked as a staffer for Julia Gillard and Anthony Albanese before becoming the Mayor of Marrickville in 2013. In the 2015 NSW State election, she contested the seat of Summer Hill, which she won and has held to the present day.
While in opposition, Haylen made statements in solidarity with the Rail, Train, and Bus Union (RTBU) during their strikes when they were stonewalled by the Liberal Government. Closer to the university, she called for the provision of transport concession fares for international and part-time students.
In 2023, following Labor’s victory at the state election, Haylen was made Minister for Transport. Many had hoped that this change in government would herald progressive change in transport policy, given her statements in opposition.
After a NSW parliament petition reached 20,000 signatures calling for the provision of transport concessions to international and part-time students in 2024, Haylen’s response signalled no change from the status quo, despite widespread support for this policy.
During the Combined Rail Unions (CRU) dispute with the NSW Government, the government failed to negotiate in good faith with the CRU, instead resorting to barring industrial action and lockouts of go-slow actions.
Beyond the disappointments stated above, Haylen’s time as Transport Minister was also marred by controversial staffing arrangements. It ended in February 2025 with her resignation over the use of a taxpayer-funded ministerial car for a private trip.
Two years after Haylen’s stint in the SRC, Rose Jackson would pick up the mantle of SRC Presidency in 2005. By then, the Liberal Government had introduced a bill to enact VSU. Jackson, as an activist, orchestrated the student campaign against VSU, gaining mainstream media attention and establishing herself as an up-and-coming young voice in the Labor Party. In 2006, Jackson became President of the NUS before working as a Labor staffer the following year.
During her staffer days, as campaign manager for George Newhouse who was the candidate for Wentworth in the 2007 federal election, The Australian’s front page displayed a leaked email sent from Jackson as NUS President in 2006 — during the Lebanon War — in which she had written “I oppose Zionism because it calls for the creation of a Jewish state, and I think all governments should be secular”. Jackson backtracked immediately, declaring “I support Israel”, and claimed she had not understood the definition of Zionism previously.
Jackson became an MLC in NSW Parliament in 2019 after her stint as Assistant General Secretary of NSW Labor. In parliament, Jackson supported the Coalition’s Roads and Crimes Legislation Amendment Bill 2022, which criminalises protests on “major roads or major public facilities” with fines of up to $22,000, imprisonment for two years, or both. She cited the disruptive climate protests that sparked the introduction of this Bill as “why the left can’t have nice things”. In the parliamentary debate, she claims that climate protestors are “not helping” and that they should instead convince others of the virtues of electoralism. She also claimed that she did not think the Bill would in fact criminalise protest and that if the Bill was used to target non-violent protestors, “it is utterly unacceptable and these laws should be trashed.”
Within the same year of the Bill being passed, climate activist Violet Coco was arrested and charged under these laws. Despite the NSW Supreme Court finding parts of the Bill to be unconstitutional, the NSW government, now held by Labor, had only sought to expand it.
During a 2024 interview with the Daily Telegraph — a puff piece to rehabilitate her image after a radio disaster where she claimed rent in Sydney could be only “a few hundred dollars” — Jackson patronisingly denounced her young leftist days: “The Gaza stuff is really hot on campus and part of me is understanding… But part of me is like, the world in which you live is not the world… I hope they have a chance to get a bit of perspective.” She whitewashed the ongoing genocide in Gaza, one which she presumably would have protested against as a student activist.
Towards the end of the piece, the Telegraph wrote that “The activist and feisty feminist is not entirely gone”, given Jackson’s decision to bow rather than curtsy to King Charles. It’s unclear how this functions as either activism or feisty feminism. Jackson herself stated, “I’ve made peace with bowing to authority.” In turn, she has made peace with being spineless.
The aforementioned three Labor politicians, hailing from the ‘Hard Left’ faction, began their political journeys with student activism — where protest forms the core of said activism. Yet, quickly after graduating, they shed their left-leaning beliefs and, in the case of the NSW parliamentarians, ushered in legislation that criminalises protest.
It then begets the question, did the party machine rip out any progressive politics from these storied figures, or were they always this way? To only play the part of activists when it suited them.
We can only caution the eager student politician that might be reading this masthead: that a seat in parliament is not the end goal; that true power comes from down below, from the grassroots; and betrayal is not forgotten.
Editor’s note: Mehnaaz Hossain is a member of the Australian Greens, Victor Zhang is a member of the ALP, NSW Branch.
