Teachers in election push for more school funding

The national teachers’ union is to unleash an army of members into marginal electorates in a bid for more school funding.

The teachers' union launched its national pre-election campaign in Melbourne yesterday. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Parents doing the daily school run will be the target of a beefed-up campaign by the national teachers’ union, which plans to unleash an army of members and volunteers into marginal electorates in a bid to force the Morrison government to ­increase spending on public schools.

The Australian Education Union, supported by the ACTU, yesterday unveiled a fleet of green vans and cars — each emblazoned with its “Fair Funding Now” campaign message — that will travel across the country in the lead-up to the federal ­election.

AEU federal president Cor­rena Haythorpe said the campaign, which would target 18 marginal electorates, including Boothby in South Australia, Queensland electorate Dickson, held by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, and Victoria‘s Chisholm, which will be vacated by Liberal-turned-independent Julia Banks, aimed to ensure that public education funding was a key election issue.

While the federal government has hailed its Quality Schools package for delivering “record funding to all schools”, the union has been prosecuting the claim that it represents a significant funding cut given it falls short of the previous Labor government’s Gonski funding model, which, although promised, was never fully budgeted.

Under the Coalition, recurrent education funding is set to rise from $17.5 billion in 2017 to $31.4bn in 2029. During 2013, Labor’s last year in government, recurrent spending was $12.9bn, with just $4.7bn going to government schools. By 2029, the ­Coalition is promising to spend $13bn on state schools alone.

ACTU's Sally McManus, Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe and ACTU President Michele O'Neill at the teachers' union launch, yesterday. Picture: Stuart McEvoy

Ms Haythorpe said the union had a “massive army” of volunteers “who will be … going into our schools and communities and talking to people about the clear choices as we head into this election”.

“We want every political party to invest in our schools,” she said. “We’ve got the commitment from Labor, we’ve got a commitment from the Greens, and what we’ve got from the Morrison government is $14bn of cuts. We want Scott Morrison to reverse his cuts. That’s our call to him.”

The federal government last month launched its own advertising blitz, promoting its record investment in school funding over the coming decade, as it continues to fend off criticism of its $4.6bn funding deal with Catholic and independent schools announced last year.

Education Minister Dan Tehan said the AEU campaign was “nothing more than a political stunt”. “It is the unions doing the bidding of the Labor Party and in return the unions will run the country if Labor win the election,” he said. “The unions aren’t asking the states and territories to increase their state school funding contribution even though they are the majority funder of state schools.”