Federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne has defended the government’s chopping and changing on schools funding, saying where you finish the race is more important than where you start.
The Abbott government is being accused of flip-flopping on Labor’s schools funding model.
Mr Pyne last week appeared to walk away from the so-called Gonski reforms after claiming a $1.2 billion shortfall.
But the government yesterday effectively recommitted to the model for the next four years and announced it had found $1.2 billion for schools in the non-signatory states of Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory.
“I think it is where you finish the race that’s more important than where you start,” Mr Pyne told ABC radio this morning.
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“The bottom line is that we’ve promised before the election that we’d put the same level of funding into the schools system as Labor – in fact, we’re putting $1.2 billion more.
“I’ve delivered a national model which (former education minister) Bill Shorten never managed to do.”
Labor education spokeswoman Kate Ellis accused Prime Minister Tony Abbott of a “humiliating backflip”.
“But it was a backflip that didn’t go anywhere near far enough,” she said.
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Ms Ellis said the deal did nothing to guarantee no school would be worse off under the funding model, and gave states the “green light” to cut their education budget.
The Labor government’s Better Schools model had strings attached, which prevented states cutting school budgets, required a co-contribution of $1 for every $2 put in by the federal government, and indexed funding at three per cent.
“All of that is gone,” Ms Ellis told reporters in Canberra.
“What Christopher Pyne has done is thrown around some blank cheques, handed over some money to his mates but done absolutely nothing to ensure that that money going into schools doesn’t then just go straight back out the backdoor through state government cuts.”
SA Premier Jay Weatherill yesterday vowed to keep fighting for “every dollar and every cent” promised to the state under the signed agreement with the commonwealth on school funding.
He said South Australia remained concerned there had been no mention of the final two years of the deal the state signed with the previous government and no mention of the model to be implemented.
He described the federal government’s handling of the issue as a “pantomime”.
“We’re going to look very closely at what they’ve announced,” the Premier said.
“But we want every dollar and every cent put back where it belongs.”
