You can’t handle the truth about Victoria’s secret school cuts

As Ben Carroll was standing before his bathroom mirror on Wednesday morning knotting the striped tie he’d selected for his appearance before budget estimates, Victoria’s education minister faced an important choice.

Knowing he would be interrogated about his government’s unannounced decision to delay by three years extra money public schools need to deliver the Gonski reforms, Carroll could either fess up or maintain the charade.

“You can’t handle the truth,” bellowed Jack Nicholson as Colonel Nathan Jessup in A Few Good Men.Credit: Castle Rock Entertainment

A part of him felt like channelling Colonel Nathan Jessup, Jack Nicholson’s scene-stealing character in A Few Good Men. Colonel Carroll, did you oppose these funding cuts? You’re God damn right I did!

Such a spontaneous outbreak of political honesty, aside from providing a moment of catharsis for Carroll, would have cleared the air around a bad decision already costing the Allan government more than the money it will save in future years.

Alas, there are no Hollywood endings in Spring Street and too few good men.

Carroll’s other choice was to stick to a cynical script approved by advisers within the premier’s private office in which he neither confirms nor denies the funding delay, refuses to acknowledge the financial impact on government schools and offers a vague promise to fully fund the Gonski reforms “through the life of the agreement” – in other words, sometime in the next 10 years.

Having centred his tie to his satisfaction and given his neatly clipped, salt and pepper locks one final look in the mirror, Carroll decided discretion was the better part of valour.

He took his seat in estimates, looked back at his questioners and declared with Delphic circularity: “We are getting on with doing everything that we are bound to do.”

Not even Jack Nicholson could do much with that line.

So, what did we learn from Carroll’s appearance before budget estimates? As it turns out, quite a bit.

First, a quick recap on what this is all about.

The long-awaited Gonski reforms can only be delivered once the states and Commonwealth together provide government schools sufficient funding to meet the School Resource Standard, a formula that calculates the minimum financial needs of every school based on the advantages and disadvantages of its students.

The Victorian government last year played a critical role in getting the Albanese government to agree to a 75/25 funding split. But secretly, the Allan government had already welched on its previous commitment to fully fund its share by 2028.

Cabinet-in-confidence documents seen by The Age show that in March 2024, a meeting of the government’s budget and finance committee of cabinet pushed back that commitment until 2031.

This means government schools in Victoria will receive $2.4 billion less over the next five years than they otherwise would have.

When this issue was raised by non-government MPs in Wednesday’s budget estimates hearing, the most telling exchange came between Richard Welch, a first-term Liberal MP with a background in international finance, and Department of Education acting secretary Tony Bates.

Welch asked Bates whether the department provided Carroll advice on the impact of delaying its commitment to fully fund the School Resource Standard.

If Bates was seized at that moment by the same impulse that compelled Colonel Jessup to confess about ordering the code red, he might have replied: Of course we did. I lost three months of my life working up all sorts of modelling for my boss.

Instead, Bates at first deflected – “we provide the minister with all sorts of advice, Mr Welch” – before eventually confirming the department had provided the minister “advice on a range of scenarios”. When asked to produce this advice to the committee, Bates said he couldn’t because it was covered by executive privilege.

If only Welch knew how close he was to blowing things open.

Bates, in his previous job within the Department of Education, was the assistant secretary responsible for the government school system. Acting on instructions from Carroll, he led extensive work done by the department to build a compelling case against the funding delay.

He was a good person to ask about modelling done on the financial impact of pushing back the Gonski reforms because he helped write briefing material provided to the minister ahead of the budget and finance committee meeting where Carroll lost the argument.

During the hearing, Bates volunteered a detail that places the School Resource Standard in a bigger financial context.

The Victorian government is this year providing public schools 70.43 per cent of the SRS. Bates in his evidence said 1 per cent of the SRS equates to $145 million. This means the difference between what the Allan government is this year giving public schools and what they need to be fully funded is $663 million.

For $663 million, the Victorian government could join NSW in fully funding public schools this year and reclaim its status as an exemplar state in education. Or, for the sake of $663 million in savings, it can continue to short-change the state school system and families it professes to champion.

Public school teachers outraged about this will stage their first protest rally outside Carroll’s office on June 19 after classes.

Here’s a tip. When Victoria this year sits down to negotiate with the federal government a new bilateral agreement mapping out SRS increases for the next 10 years, the Allan government will quietly reverse the cuts and restore its commitment to fully fund its share by 2028, if not earlier.

The easiest way of putting additional funds into the school system is through a pay deal with teachers and as luck would have it, the Australian Education Union and Victorian government are due to start negotiating one in a matter of weeks.

If and when this happens, Carroll will be happy to be proven right and this column will be happy enough to be told it was wrong all along. And Tony Bates, like any dutiful public servant, will be content to never say another word on the matter.

Chip Le Grand is state political editor.

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