(Transcript from World News Radio)
Thousands of students have taken part in rallies across the country in what organisers called a Day of Action against the federal government's plans for education.
The rallies were called in particular to show anger over proposed funding cuts, and fee increases for tertiary courses.
Van Nguyen was at one of the biggest rallies, in Melbourne.
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At the end of the rally, there were some scuffles between student protesters and police.
But it was largely a peaceful, if noisy, protest against the proposed changes to education funding.
The rally began on the steps of Melbourne's State Library, where Greens MP Adam Bandt described the plans as unfair.
"Are we going to be a country where only the rich get to get the kind of education that everyone should have the right to take for granted? Because what we are seeing is Tony Abbott and his associates, who have had the benefit of a free education, now turning around like hypocrites and pulling out the ladder behind them and saying a big 'stuff you' to the rest of this country. Well, we won't have a part of it."
From the State Library, the protesters made their way through Melbourne's CBD, to the steps of the Victorian Parliament House, chanting slogans along the way.
Callan, from Monash University, rejects the Abbott government's argument that the education changes are needed.
"The government doesn't have a debt problem. It doesn't have a deficit problem. It has a revenue problem. It needs to tax the rich, that's what it needs to do. But instead, it's laying into the poor, it's laying into students, it's laying into people with disabilities. Pretty much anyone who isn't white and upper class and male is getting sledged by this government."
Swinburne University of Technology's, Anthony Osborne, was another protester.
"We're hoping that the government gets to realise that this isn't the way to deal with the budget emergency, end quote. And that they make sure that education remains as a human right for all, and that investing in education is our future."
At the end of the Melbourne rally, most of the protesters dispersed.
But about 20 staged a sit-in at the intersection of Bourke and Spring Streets - defying police orders to move.
The group, comprising high school and university students, sat in a circle formation, linking arms.
A policeman warned the protesters who were preventing the flow of traffic, that officers would eventually have to use force if they did not leave.
"We require you to move off the road immediately. Failure or refusal to move off the road may result in the use of reasonable force to remove you from the road. You may be prosecuted for any offences that are committed. I now give you a reasonable time to move off the road before we use what is reasonable force to remove from the road way. I will give you a further warning before the police take action."
A 15-year-old schoolgirl who was last to be carried off the intersection by police was hoping her protest had been heard.
"When I'm older, I want to go to university and I don't want to have to pay through the nose in order to get the education that I have every right to."
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