THE silliest thing said by anyone this week

Steve Fielding -- the Victorian Senator elected with a puny primary vote of 0.08% in 2004 -- has declared that he will block supply to a minority Labor government.  Whatever reasons there may be for opposing the formation of a continuing Labor government, this is surely the most myopic and intellectually lazy exercise to have been made public this week.  Mr Fielding represents a state which had a strong Labor vote in the electoral exercises of the last weekend.  He owes his seat to Labor preferences that were foolishly directed his way in the 2004 election.  He continues to bite the hand that feeds him.

If any single individual could justify Paul Keating's dismissal of the Senate as unrepresentative swill, Steve Fielding is that person.  His pronouncements have been a waste of reporting space in Hansard, with his perpetual hissy fits and cloth-eared dithering.  What's more, he voted in favor of so-called "voluntary student unionism" under the previous Coalition government.  This measure came into effect in my final year as an undergraduate, and I paid my services fee voluntarily and gladly.

This was a wicked law calculated directly to harm the interests of one of Australia's more marginalized constituencies: university students.  It was directed at student unions.  Billy Hughes John Howard had an irrational hatred of anything involving the word union, so in spite of the fact that campus student unions are not notable for calling strikes and causing unrest in the building industry, he decided to launch a pre-emptive swing instead.  Those well-heeled yahoos in the Young Liberals promoted this law with all the zeal of turkeys who had never heard of their fate in anticipation of Christmas lunch, while Brendan Nelson emoted about how he'd had to work as a bricky's laborer to get through medical school while being extorted to the tune of $150 a year for services he never had time to access.  Boo hoo indeed -- I laboured away as a freelance musician throughout my undergraduate years, and made only sporadic contact with student union services and clubs.  I have never needed childcare to allow me to attend lectures, didn't ever require the services of on-campus medical clinics or dentistry, but did once need the help of a lawyer to resolve a motor insurance argument.  I'm sure I could have found other purposes for the $300 or so per year of study I paid in services levies, but does that mean I should desire the destruction of these things for others?

It is well documented that many students now work multiple part time jobs to support their studies, often to the detriment of their long-term career goals.  Student clubs -- which form part of the facilities offered by student unions -- are often one of the ways people get to use their leisure time while meeting people from other courses.

As a result of this law which passed the Senate with Mr Fielding's enthusiastic support, universities have been forced to step into the breach to fund basic services such as childcare, sports facilities, legal aid, help for international students and so on: the list of services is very lengthy and university funds are very finite.  If students are forced to opt out of lectures and classes because the facilities to allow them to attend have been withdrawn, how does this reflect on the policies of an Australian government that emphasised the need to turn out higher graduate numbers in key professions such as medicine, accountancy, teaching and engineering?  How is workplace participation improved when access to education and training is hampered by lack of support services?  How is the notion of having choices in one's life improved when your capacity to choose is perpetually determined by your ability to pay?

The unnecessary callousness of the previous government was boundless, and addressing the iniquities of their policies on university funding in general is the work of a generation or two.  But speaking as a recent graduate (well, for the third time, but who's counting?), the financial wreckage bequeathed to student welfare in universities is disastrous.  And Steve Fielding was cheerfully complicit in this.

He has a hide which will be tolerated for the remaining ten months of his term in the Senate.  He will not be missed when he goes, a day which cannot dawn soon enough.