Free education is a policy stance in politics that ensures education for its citizens up to a certain level.

Free education in Australia

In the 1970s the Australian Labor Party led by Prime Minister Gough Whitlam introduced reforms which ensured free tertiary education. These reforms were removed later in the 1980s by the Bob Hawke Labour government.

Students and radicals played an important part in forcing the Whitlam government to implement the free education system as well as opposing the introduction of tertiary fees in the 1980s.