The New South Wales Nationals education minister, Adrian Piccoli, has used his support of Julia Gillard’s Gonski funding reforms in state election advertising material and has called on the federal Coalition to restore education funding cut in the last budget.
Piccoli was the first state education minister to sign up to the Gonski reforms in 2013 and his consistent championing of the education funding formula contrasts with his federal National party colleagues, who have been notably quiet on the issue.
“As a parent, I know there is nothing more important than education. It’s about giving our kids the opportunities, the skills and the values they need in life to make a go of it,” Piccoli says in the advertisement.
“That’s why the Nationals supported the Gonski reforms right from the start. It’s good policy, that really benefits country schools and country kids. And thanks to the Nationals, NSW was the first state to sign up. Because we don’t play politics with our children’s future.”
Piccoli’s use of Gonski in advertising material across rural television spots takes the campaign one step further, as the Victorian Labor government was criticised by a Gonski panel member, Ken Boston, for unwinding funding reforms implemented by the previous Coalition state government.
“In advance of the recent Victorian election, the then opposition presented itself as the champion of Gonski,” Boston wrote in the Age.
“The legislation it has now passed is the antithesis: sector-based, needs-blind, top-down, politically driven, and ensuring that the ‘fair go for all’ envisaged by Gonski will not be achieved.”
The Gonski reforms emerged from a bipartisan education review headed by the businessman David Gonski, which recommended a new model based on providing a base level of funding for each student to be topped up with student loadings according to need.
The policy, championed by Gillard, the former Labor prime minister, proved popular with the electorate and at the 2013 federal election, Christopher Pyne promised that “you can vote Liberal or Labor and you’ll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school”. However, the fine print of the promise was that the Coalition would match only the first four years of the six-year reform plan.
The Abbott government’s first budget in 2014 avoided the biggest funding increases under Gonski due in the fifth and sixth years by tying commonwealth contributions in those years to the consumer price index. The effect was to cut growth in school funding.
Piccoli told Guardian Australia that unless the federal Coalition committed to fully funding the Gonski reforms, under-resourced public schools, many of which are in rural areas, and low-fee Catholic schools would continue to fall behind.
“There is a funding gap that won’t be closed [due to lack of funding],” Piccoli said. “We were not even going close to it fully with the full funding package.
“We will still have under-resourced schools, mostly low-fee Catholic and low SES [socio-economic status] schools, many of which are in the country.”
The former Gillard government had signed up the NSW government to fund schools in a joint deal which provided an extra $5bn over six years, with the commonwealth paying two-thirds and the state responsible for one-third, or $1.7bn. A total of $4.2bn went to government schools, which was a significant funding boost.
Asked why there was a split in the federal and state Nationals in the approach to the Gonski reforms, he said: “You would have to ask them that.
“I don’t know. I’ve certainly lobbied publicly, I have briefed the party room in Canberra about how Gonski benefits country schools the most, and I have given presentations to the central council meetings of the NSW National party.
“The ball is in their court.”
Piccoli said it was important to note that Labor did not specify where the extra school funding was coming from in years five and six, nor did Bill Shorten as education minister put the four years of Gonski funding into the budget as not all states had signed up.
“No one at the federal level is pure on this,” said Piccoli. “The biggest risk is that states are unwinding Gonski. The Victorian Labor government is unwinding it. NSW is the only state that has implemented the funding formula properly.”
Piccoli said no matter how the federal Coalition changed education policy, NSW remained committed to Gonski funding of $1.7bn over six years to government and non-government schools.
“That is the starting point we bring to any future negotiations.”
