Malcolm Turnbull’s return to schools damage control

Turnbull forced to intervene a second time to resolve school-funding fallout amid independent principals’ revolt.

Malcolm Turnbull is in damage control over plans to strip $2bn from the independent schools sector. Picture: Colin Murty

Malcolm Turnbull has been forced to intervene a second time to resolve the school-funding fallout and will hold crisis talks with the independent schools lobby next week following a backlash over plans to strip $2 billion from the sector.

The meeting was organised after a revolt by independent school principals who were blocked from seeing secret government modelling given to the peak independent school associations, which claim to represent more than 1000 schools and 600,000 students nationwide.

The Weekend Australian understands that representatives of the independent schools in Victoria have met privately with senior ministers including Dan Tehan, Michael Sukkar and Alan Tudge, warning them that any moves to take money back from the sector could backfire on the government.

The crisis meeting with the independents comes weeks after the Prime Minister met the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane Catholic archbishops to assure them that funding would be restored to the sector after a review confirmed Catholic schools had been short-changed by up to $2bn under Education Minister Simon Birmingham’s Gonski 2.0 reforms.

The Weekend Australian understands that several senior cabinet ministers have also raised with Mr Turnbull their concerns about the electoral damage being caused by the ongoing dispute with the Catholic schools sector.

The move to address the risk opens up a second front in the education funding stoush, and follows a public intervention by John Howard last week in support of the Catholic schools sector. The former Liberal prime minister is also understood to have privately told senior Liberal Party figures that Mr Turnbull quickly needs to repair the schism with the powerful Catholic school sector which now claims to have lost confidence in Senator Birmingham.

Speaking at the opening and blessing of two residential colleges in a Catholic tertiary college in Sydney, Mr Howard delivered a veiled swipe at Senator Birmingham as he called for the Catholic sector to be treated with “fairness” and “justice”.

“For decade after decade, Catholic education in this country received no assistance at all from the government — and I’m always proud in that context to acknowledge the extraordinary breakthrough in fairness and justice to Australia’s Catholic community that was delivered by the most distinguished of all my predecessors, Sir Robert Menzies, way back in 1963,” Mr Howard told the audience.

“And can I just say on the subject of the Catholic education system in this country, I was extremely proud of the association that I personally had and my government had with the various elements of Catholic education in Australia during the years that I was prime minister.

“It is a system that has carried a very heavy burden, it has discharged its responsibilities in a quite outstanding fashion and it is my earnest hope and wish that the Catholic education system in Australia continues to receive from governments of all political persuasions the support and fairness and justice to which it is undoubtedly entitled.”

The modelling for independent schools is believed to have revealed the potential funding cuts for individual independent schools, including the country’s most elite institutions, but was only given to the association bodies on the condition they signed a confidentiality agreement and did not share the information with member schools.

A senior government source confirmed that representatives from the various state-based Independent Schools Associations and the national body, Independent Schools Council of Australia, will meet the Prime Minister on Tuesday afternoon.

It will be the second time Mr Turnbull has been forced to come in over the top of his Education Minister to defuse the crisis.

Mr Turnbull is believed to have been told that up to 350 mainly low-fee Catholic primary schools could be forced to close if public funding was not restored. It is understood that the expenditure review committee has signed off on a $1.7bn package.

The review found that the independent schools had not been entitled to a $2bn increase in their funding, which has led to concerns in the sector that this would be taken off them and diverted to the Catholic schools.

A government source said that a solution was being worked on that would assuage the concerns of the independent schools as well.

Catholic Education Melbourne executive director Stephen Elder welcomed Mr Howard’s intervention. “John Howard knew it was all too easy for politicians in the Canberra bubble to lose touch with the realities of everyday life,” Mr Elder told The Weekend Australian.

“He never forgot that his ultimate bosses were the Australian people. In a democracy you have to bring the people along with you through persuasion instead of forcing things upon them through coercion.

“Simon Birmingham’s practice of zero community consultation produced a policy zero that has exploded in the Turnbull government’s face.”