Over 130,000 students voted to strike, with more student associations to hold votes in the coming weeks. Organisers are hoping for the return of the famous 'Maple Spring' a student movement in Quebec in the summer of 2012. It successfully prevented 75 per cent tuition hikes, overturned an unpopular anti-protest law and brought down the provincial government.

One after another, democratic rights and entitlements appear to be slipping through our fingers. The contours of democratic regimes are gradually transforming, taking increasingly authoritarian shapes. New laws, institutions and ideologies replace old ones as we grope our way through the changes, naively using old concepts as if they still held their meaning. In truth, democratic talk is becoming an empty discourse, one devoid of substance. The liberal democratic regimes that were assembled during the twentieth century are being gradually dismantled.

There was a smorgasbord of issues represented at the protests, from refugee rights and environmental issues to health, welfare and education. The one sentiment that everyone seemed to share was an utter disgust with Abbott and the policies of the LNP. In one respect, the marches were extraordinary. They attracted numbers out on to the streets that we haven't seen since the protests against the Iraq war in 2004. The Melbourne march alone boasted somewhere between 20,000 and 30,000 people.