In Allan’s Victoria, pouring concrete is more important than our kids

Platform No.2 at Sunshine station this week felt as disconnected from reality as Harry Potter’s platform 9¾.

Jacinta Allan was there before a phalanx of head-nodding cabinet ministers and MPs who in turn faced a horseshoe of TV cameras, radio microphones and journalists, with each group struggling to hear the other above the din of passing trains.

Premier Jacinta Allan on Wednesday.Credit: Joe Armao

Perhaps this was by clever design. It is difficult enough to prise a straight answer out of a politician without having to shout your questions over the 10.15am from Geelong. But the bits that could be made out were so disheartening, it is a mercy the rest was drowned out by locomotion.

The question I had for the premier was why, in the lead-up to last year’s state budget, her government delayed by three years its commitment to fund public schools at levels required to realise the Gonski reforms. It was a question we never got to, after Allan refused to acknowledge this is what her government had done.

Lest there be any confusion, we know what her government did because it is made clear in budget and finance committee minutes affirmed and signed by the premier.

For those familiar with the language of Gonski, the minutes state:

“The Budget and Finance Committee (BFC): Agreed to adjust Victoria’s government school SRS trajectory to a 0.1 per cent increase per year from 2024 to 2029, then a linear increase to reach 75 per cent by 2031.”

For those unfamiliar with the language of Gonski, it means Victoria welched on its previous commitment to fund by 2028 its full, 75 per cent share of the Schooling Resource Standard – a formula adopted by the states, territories and the Commonwealth to determine what any given school needs to educate their students.

Instead, the Allan government has kicked the can – and the needs of Victorian children – down the road until the end of this decade.

According to the state government’s own calculations, this decision strips from Victorian government schools $2.4 billion in state funding they would otherwise have received.

This leaves less money to pay teachers, less money to hire more teachers and less capacity to access the specialised skills and services that schools need to ensure disadvantaged kids don’t fall behind.

It means that if you are a parent of a kid with a learning difficulty or other disadvantage who started high school in Victoria this year, your child will get bugger all benefit from the grandly titled “Better and Fairer Schools Agreement” recently signed by the state and federal governments.

There is $2.5 billion in extra funding on offer from the Commonwealth but, due to Victoria’s delay in upholding its end of the bargain, $2.2 billion of this money won’t flow into schools until 2031. By this time, a kid who started high school this year will be finished year 12 – if they get that far.

The premier’s response from platform 9¾, a response she later repeated in parliament, was a mix of post-truth Trumpism and home-grown chutzpah. She denied her government had cut funding from state schools, arguing that every year, it has increased total funding. This is both correct and disingenuous.

What we didn’t hear – or perhaps couldn’t because of the passing trains – is any explanation for why the premier, treasurer and other senior ministers who sit on the government’s budget and finance committee thought it was reasonable to take the decision they did.

Is it because the self-titled Education State doesn’t believe in the Gonski reforms? Is it because the government does not believe the benefits to students from fully funding its share of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2028 instead of 2031 are worth $2.4 billion?

Or is it because this government doesn’t know what it believes any more?

After this masthead revealed the government’s decision to delay its Gonski commitment, a former Andrews government minister rang to talk about what was going on. They observed that Victoria is starting to experience the opportunity cost of its decade-long obsession with big, expensive transport projects.

They reflected: “What is a Labor government for if it is doing this?”

There is a real and pressing need to find savings in the state budget. Treasurer Jaclyn Symes will on Tuesday confirm Victoria’s first operating surplus since the pandemic but in real terms, Victoria’s finances remain deep in the red.

According to the last budget update, the government will spend nearly $40 billion more than the revenue it generates over the next four years. The interest Victoria must pay to service its growing debt is $6.5 billion this year and is tracking towards $10 billion. In Neville Bartos’ immortal words to Chopper Read, “There is no cash here. Here, there’s no cash.”

But there is always cash for the $35 billion Suburban Rail Loop. Or the $26 billion North East Link. Or the proposed, $4 billion upgrade of Sunshine station. In next week’s $100 billion budget, one out of every five dollars will go to capital works.

The Victorian government, having elevated transport infrastructure into an electoral art-form, has decided that what matters most, even more than public schools, is digging tunnels, pouring concrete and laying tracks. The Education State has become the High-Vis State, where you can earn as much as a state school principal by holding a stop-go sign at a Big Build site.

The only reason we know about last year’s raid on schools funding is there are people working in government who are passionate about the value of education and willing to speak up about it. They don’t necessarily think the SRL is a bad idea. They just know a good education will do more than a new train line to help young people get where they want to go.

Chip Le Grand is state political editor.

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