Sydney Uni Tent Babies Need Some Tough Tests

Sydney University supremo Mark Scott was previously managing director of the ABC, so he’s used to dealing with unruly children.

But he doesn’t seem to have many ideas about getting rid of pro-Palestinian protesters who are currently camping on his campus.

Chatting to 2GB’s Ben Fordham yesterday morning, Scott suggested that anybody seeking to avoid the university’s semi-permanent Hamas Hotel could simply walk around it.

Preferably not downwind.

Scott said that his nominal educational facility is a “big university” and that “it is possible to work your way around the university” and not encounter the camp.

By the same token, of course, Israel is an absolutely tiny part of the Middle East – yet working around it is evidently impossible for Hamas and, at various times, every Middle Eastern Islamic nation.

Israel’s success, strength and culture of accomplishment are hard to ignore, I guess. No wonder lesser communities are drawn to them.

Anyway, Scott and other university authorities are against the use of effective and direct means to remove their persistent protester infestation. This eliminates police, bulldozers and falconry.

In which case the university should consider several strategic alternatives, beginning with:

Entrance exams. All students love exams. Getting good results at their fancy schools got these kids into uni in the first place, so they should easily be able to ace some basic tests permitting daily encampment access.

Or possibly not. Ask the Anglo kids to find Gaza on a world map and most will flunk out straight away. Lure the rest into failure by simply turning the map upside down.

Craftier protesters who still have access to their $95 per hour HSC tutors will eventually sort out the geography, so mix up the questions a little. Keep them on-topic and achievable.

For example: Are there direct flights from Australia to Israel? What is the purpose of Israel’s great big wall? What would happen to someone in Gaza if they wore a gay pride keffiyeh? And can you please bill my parents for the $95?

No pass-outs. University boss Scott yesterday flagged one course of action against campus campers.

He announced that protesters would be penalised if they shared ID cards with outside agitators, thereby allowing them to use the venue’s toilets – while, amusingly enough, they’re turning the entire joint into an intellectual sewer.

“We have repeatedly directed protesters not to share their student or staff ID cards with visitors to campus,” Scott declared.

“Individuals who have been found to have shared their ID cards have had their cards confiscated and will be subject to misconduct proceedings.”

Not good enough. Scott and his team would be better off using the old “no pass-outs” nightclub rule.

Once you exit the encampment, you’re done. This would quickly account for the likes of Harrison Brennan, a camp organiser who like many members of the canopy confederacy basically skips in and out as he chooses.

“Brennan … has been sleeping in an eight-person tent on the university grounds,” the UTS’s Central News reported, “with daily trips home to shower before returning to the site.”

“I think I understand the need for a really militant left-wing student union,” Brennan told an interviewer during his successful 2023 bid to become student council president.

Save it for the outside, militant shower boy. Your next trip home ends your encampment experience.

Deployment of the Dark Arts. Sensitive readers are advised at this point to look away, because the following suggestion may technically be a war crime. Seeing as these Hamas huggy-bunnies are campers, Scott should send in battalions of grey nomads to share their folksy holiday and camping stories.

Weaker protesters will fall within minutes. Stronger participants – I’m thinking here of the showering militants in that eight-person pro-Pally polycule – may however hold out for hours.

That’s when we’ll need our most potent and devastating artillery. That’s when we use the modern equivalent of mustard gas. That’s when we send in … the bush poets.

I’m not saying they should immediately go full-on “yarn around the camp fire”. Maybe begin with a little light verse. Perhaps a damper recipe in rhyme, or a freestyle tale of outback caravanning.

Then, if any stragglers remain, whip out the acoustic guitar and the John Williamson songbook.

Sure, we’ll cop a few sentences at The Hague. But Sydney University and a surrounding area hundreds of kilometres across will forever be clear of commie campers.

Sadly, Scott says he won’t follow the US example, where clean-outs have “triggered terrible violence”.

But go on, mate. Just a chorus or two of True Blue. Crank it up.