Australian Students Quieter

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31728, 11 July 1968, Page 17

Australian Students Quieter

(N.Z P.A. Staff Correspondent) SYDNEY, July 10.

The word has gone out on the campus from Perth to Brisbane, where young men and women have spent the last couple of weeks flexing their new-found muscles of “student power.”

And the Prime Minister (Mr Gorton) who last week-end was making dire threats to stop the “tyranny of the minorities, lawlessness, violence and destruction” has taken up the apt American phrase of the moment—“cool it”

In Sydney yesterday, about 1000 students from three universities marched in peaceful, orderly protest through the streets. In Canberra, Mr Gorton decided to make no immediate move to declare war on demonstrating students. The students’ march was a far cry from the violence and pitched battles with police that marked demonstrations in Sydney and Melbourne last Second Thoughts Mr Gorton’s decision to think again showed that he had abandoned plans to use a sledgehammer to crack the “nuts” —as he described them in Vietnam recently—who demonstrated. It is an uneasy truce. Mr Gorton is said to feel very strongly that some special action is needed to dissuade students from taking part in such vicious scenes as the

attack last week on the American consulate In Melbourne, but has struck difficulties with the complex legal questions involved. At the same time, the students have defended vigorously their right to dissent. They say that any move to introduce legislation taking a tough attitude towards studenl demonstrators could provoke more violence rather than curtail it Bursary Cuts Student groups have particularly attacked suggestions that the Government could cancel Federal scholarships and allowances held by youngsters convicted of offences arising from violent demonstrations. The Minister for Education

and Science (Mr J. Fraser) raised this suggestion in Hobart on Monday, and put it to the Prime Minister yesterday The Government, backed by returned servicemen’s organisations and other Rightwingers, is particularly angry at the thought that many young people taking part in demonstrations against Vietnam and conscription may be university students studying and living on Federal grants. There are immense complications in such a plan, not the least being the propriety of aiming legislation at one section of the community. Student leaders, university staff and some Labour politicians have argued that this would lead to students being punished doubly for an

offence—a situation alien to recognised principles of justice. Mr Gorton is reported to have deferred “for some considerable time” a statement he said he would make on the situation this week after conferring with Mr Fraser and the Attorney-General (Mr Bowen). Mr Gorton obviously does not want to aggravate the tense atmosphere between students and the authorities and is presumably hoping things will calm. Mr Bowen has urged his opposite numbers in the States to take a tougher line under existing legislation, and exemplary sentences are expected to be imposed by the courts on student offenders.