2024 Policy and Advocacy wrap-up
Thank you for a great 2024!
Thank you to everyone who engaged with us, answered surveys and shared your thoughts. It has been a huge year for the Policy and Advocacy team as we continue to advocate for all graduate students. We are looking forward to having another year of achieving wins to improve the experiences of graduate students in 2025!
Using evidence of your experiences, we sent submissions to the Government on key issues affecting you including cost of living, housing and homelessness and food insecurity. The P&A team presented at a public hearing for the Victorian inquiry into food insecurity to ensure that graduate students needs are addressed. Our input into Federal Government’s National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence and related Ombudsman will help to ensure that government initiatives meet graduate student needs. We continue to advocate for international students, including on changes to the 485 Visa and the proposed international student caps.
At the university we have worked closely with GSA’s elected representatives to advocate on issues including the need for supported placements, library accessibility, students’ right to peacefully protest and the need to review the University’s research ethics and integrity codes. We supported GSA’s elected representatives to run surveys to support advocacy and improve student experience including on graduate researcher workspaces, international student employment experiences, and LGBTIQA+ graduate student experiences.
In partnership with the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing we developed the GSA Rental Housing Toolkit to equip graduate students with practical information to help them find and secure a place to live. We also worked closely with MDHS to develop the first Graduate Researcher Peer Program to support community amongst graduate researchers and will be expanding this program to different faculties in 2025.
We are committed to continuing to advocate for graduate students with a focus on equity, empowerment and inclusion in 2025.
To find out more about our work you can visit our website or email us at policy_advocacy@gsa.unimelb.edu.au