Pyne's simple lesson on voter betrayal

Eric Lobbecke

IN politics, trust is hard to earn but easy to lose. The decision by the Abbott government to abandon its commitment to implement Labor's school funding regime has shattered voter confidence.

There is no doubt that Tony Abbott and Education Minister Christopher Pyne have broken their promise to voters and have opened up a yawning credibility gap in a vital area of public policy.

On the eve of the election, Abbott said: "We will honour all of the agreements that Labor entered into." To neutralise school education, a potential election wedge issue, he added: "There is no difference between Kevin Rudd and myself when it comes to school funding."

And just in case this wasn't clear enough, Pyne pledged: "Over the next four years, we will maintain the new school funding model and the budget that went with that."

Last week, Pyne announced the government would ditch the funding agreements, signed with a majority of state and territory governments, after next year. Agreements with two conservative governments (NSW and Victoria) and two Labor governments (South Australia and Tasmania), plus the ACT Labor government, will be scrapped.

Abbott and Pyne are treating voters as if they are mugs. The difference between what they told voters before the election and what they are saying now could not be more different. The voters have been betrayed.

Worse, they claim that Bill Shorten, when he was education minister, cut funding by $1.2 billion. This funding was cut because Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory did not sign up to the reforms to claim the money.

This is dangerous territory for a new government. Abbott has undermined one of his core commitments to voters: to be a government of "no surprises" and to restore "trust" in the political process.

Labor now sees an opportunity to expose this multi-faceted hypocrisy.

But the Opposition Leader knows he can't say the voters got it "wrong" when they voted Labor out of power. So the opposition has settled on the formulation that "voters did not get the government they voted for".

Labor, however, doesn't need to lead the attack on the Coalition for breaking its promise to voters on school funding; it has the conservative state governments to do the job for it.

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell wasted little time in lashing Abbott and Pyne.

"This issue has escalated because of the poor way in which it has been handled," he said on Tuesday. "That is not acceptable when we are talking about the education of future generations of Australians."

NSW Education Minister Adrian Piccoli accused the Abbott government of being "immoral". In damning words, Piccoli told this newspaper: "There's no doubt that what seems to be happening is that states that signed up are being punished and the states that didn't are being rewarded."

Not only are a majority of state and territory governments offside with the Abbott government, so are advocates for the public, private and Catholic school sectors. So much for another of Abbott's promises: to usher in a new era of co-operative federalism.

The funding model developed by the Gillard government is based on the Gonski report. It is worthwhile debating whether moving to a per-student funding arrangement will do much to improve the education of children. Although spending on school education has significantly increased over the past decade, there has been a decline in the literacy and numeracy results of students.

How to lift teaching standards, boost school performance and improve student results are key challenges for policymakers.

But Abbott and Pyne extinguished the time for that debate during the election campaign when they pledged a "unity ticket" with Labor to implement the new funding model and the agreements already signed.

Moreover, Pyne has comprehensively failed to articulate why this model he promised to keep is now a complete "shambles", as he puts it.

Has he even read the Gonski report? One of the myths propagated by Pyne is that the Gonski report "had little to say" about matters such as teaching standards, school autonomy, parental choice and accountability. This is plainly wrong.

Not only does the Gonski report deal with these aspects of school education, so do the agreements now in place that guide how the funding will be spent.

As Piccoli has noted, NSW schools will control 70 per cent of their own budget. No money from the federal government has been used to boost teacher pay.

NSW has also put in place new measures that improve teacher training, development and mentoring, as the Gonski report recommends. Public school principals now have a greater say in appointing staff. Parents and teachers have a greater say in how their schools are run.

Pyne said last week that the starting point for a new school funding model will be the Howard government's SES model. This model is flawed. As Piccoli said last week, "the socio-economic status model has failed".

It allocated funding for non-government schools based on a student's postcode, not on what a student needs.

Playing politics with education is fraught with danger. Anybody who has been within cooee of a school recently knows that teachers, parents and local communities are behind the "I give a Gonski" campaign.

Now schools are worried that an Abbott government will take money away from them.

Rarely has a government elected with such goodwill and popular support squandered so much of it so soon.

For the Abbott government, the political lull that coincides with the Christmas break could not come sooner.