Getting Gonski off the ground

Eric Lobbecke

JULIA Gillard has started to use the term Gonski after avoiding the political shorthand for school education funding reforms for the past two weeks.

Attempting to inject some momentum into her campaign to get the states and non-government schools to sign her $14.5 billion six-year funding deal, the Prime Minister announced the ACT was the second jurisdiction to meet her deadline for agreement.

Using Barry O'Farrell's quick-fire agreement from the NSW Liberal government to pressure the other states and Tony Abbott, the Gillard government is aiming to get most states and territories to agree to the funding changes before June 30 and then go to the election in September accusing the Coalition of wanting to take funding away from education.

Combined with the national disability insurance scheme the Gonski education reforms are huge, and uncertain, financial commitments into the long term that will increasingly call upon taxpayers and governments for decades to come. A differentiation from the Coalition on education and a legislated deal with the states and non-government schools is also Gillard's last and best hope for a fighting election campaign.

As the political deadline approaches, the complexity of the funding models and the desperation of federal Labor to seal a deal has actually mired the process in confusion and checked progress.

This week Gillard's negotiations have started to get molasses in the cogs and she needed to produce a signatory to revitalise her campaign. While negotiations may not have gone backwards they are not going forward amid rising concern, suspicion and resentment.

Once again, Labor's lack of consultation, lack of time, rigid secrecy, corruption of policy principles, preparedness to put politics first and desperation to cut separate deals is endangering the fine policy and principle of seeking to provide equitable funding to ensure all children in Australia have an equal opportunity for a decent education.

Like the shemozzle that turned a perfectly reasonable proposal to create a minerals resources rent tax, as part of a simplification of our resources revenue, into a discredited and poorly performing tax, the Gonski proposals are being threatened by Labor's failure of proper process and implementation.

Before the federal budget the states and non-government school sector were prepared to act in good faith with Gillard, despite deep misgivings about lack of information, oppressive gag orders on negotiators, a ridiculously short deadline of June 30 and, most tellingly, their inability to plan spending for the 2014 education year. After the budget the resistance, resentment and uncertainty has grown and begun to break the banks; states that have not signed remain unconvinced about the amount of funding, the method of distribution, the concurrence of the non-government schools and, now, Gillard's tactic of seeking a separate peace with states and sectors by offering billions which seem to be outside the Gonski funding framework.

The Prime Minister's attempts to buy off sector by sector started with a guarantee to the Catholic system that its proportion of funding would remain the same to 2019, an apparent extra $1 billion over the six years.

Yesterday the ACT government was given an extra $90 million and the NSW independent schools another $73m.

But the separate deals are creating more resentment and confusion among the non-government sector and increasing the inability to calculate what specific schools will receive.

The real pressure point is now becoming what funding will be available in 2014 for schools with Peter Garrett left gabbling in parliament about "the long term" and "over time" for funding and utterly unable to answer what the funding will be.

While the ACT and the NSW independents are pleased with their deal, others still don't believe the figures and the Victorian government is hardening its opposition to the Gonski reforms. Victorian Education Minister Martin Dixon said in parliament yesterday the state wouldn't vote for "a slogan" and he has written, with the non-government schools in Victoria, to Education Minister Garrett warning that the process "would not appear to be able to produce a resolution".

Victoria is the next Liberal domino Gillard is hoping to fall to pressure Queensland into acceptance, but the growing dissatisfaction within the non-government schools is stalling progress.

"The current bilateral negotiations have not achieved results we would have liked.

"The commonwealth funding proposals to non-government sectors involve commitments of state funds to which the Victorian government has not agreed," the letter from Dixon to Garrett said.

The NSW Catholic education system is also continuing to insist it wants to see the modelling at work for funding for the state before making up its mind and calculates there is actually a cut for the non-government sector in the Gonski deal, at least in the next two years.

The Catholic position remains that funding is still unclear until there is statewide modelling, which is still impossible, and even allowing for that the Gillard government is still not able to provide 2014 funding figures.

Access to 2014 real funding estimates is now the prime concern for Catholic and independent systems despite assurance from the Prime Minister of more funding over time.

There is a growing pressure for the whole deadline to be extended and even to extend the current education funding agreement for another year so that the Gonski model can begin in 2015.

Even supportive South Australian Labor Premier Jay Weatherill has told his state's independent schools that while he was hopeful of settling a deal it was possible there may not be agreement, and he raised the concern of "how quickly the new funding model would be implemented in South Australia".

Of course, Gillard cannot defer her deadline because legislating the Gonski reforms by then is integral to her political campaign. Ensuring that she is involved at every level of negotiations and prepared to offer extra millions for support, Gillard is determined to succeed and may yet prevail with her divide and conquer technique.

Given the government got the Gonski report in 2011, the fact there is such turmoil and doubt about 2014 is symptomatic of a government that appears to be everything but the sure and methodical planner it claims to be.