The Greens leader, Richard Di Natale, has outlined his demands for support of the Turnbull government’s schools package, including more money and an independent body to stop the ongoing education funding wars.
Di Natale urged the Coalition to go back to the drawing board on the Gonski 2.0 package by increasing the funding for the coming school years and implementing David Gonski’s original recommendation for an independent authority to determine future funding levels.
“There needs to be more money in the system,” Di Natale told the ABC’s Insiders program. “We need an independent resourcing body established. That’s what we need to do to fix it, to go back to the original Gonski plan.”
The government spends $17.5bn this year on schools but has promised this will rise to $22.1bn in 2021 and $30.6bn in 2027. Compared with the 2016 budget, this amounts to a $2bn increase over four years and $18.6bn increase over 10 years.
The model also realigns the school resourcing standard formula to reach a uniform level over 10 years. It means 24 non-government schools will lose funding and the funding for a further 353 schools will grow at a slower rate than under Labor after Julia Gillard promised no school would be worse off to neutralise a political campaign against her government.
Di Natale said the government was prepared to fix some of the problems with the school funding formula but had not committed enough money.
“We had Labor come in and basically make all these special deals for some of the richest schools who are deciding whether they build an equestrian centre or rowing sheds,” Di Natale said. “The government has said, ‘We are going to try and fix that but not going to put the funding those schools need.’ We have a hopeless compromise between two weak options.”
The Senate is holding an inquiry into the schools package, which will report on 14 June. After the committee report, the government has five days to win Senate support to pass the bill before the winter recess, given it will govern funding for the 2018 school year.
The government would need either 10 of the Senate crossbenchers or the nine Greens senators and one crossbencher to pass the bill given Labor’s outright opposition to Gonski 2.0.
Under questioning from the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young at the Senate inquiry on Friday, the education minister, Simon Birmingham, confirmed he would be writing to the states before the end of the year to end the 2013 agreements negotiated by Gillard whether the schools legislation was passed or not.
“Obviously for certainty I would rather see the legislation pass for all the jurisdictions before we do so but that will happen one way or the other before the end of the year,” Birmingham said.
The minister has previously warned that the government could revert to funding levels in last year’s budget and noted it was not bound to increase funding in all cases, although that is not the preferred option.
The deputy secretary of the education department, Tony Cook, confirmed that the federal government was within its rights legally to end the agreements.
“There’s a standard clause in any agreement, state and territory and commonwealth, which talks about any parties to the agreement can terminate the agreement in writing so the commonwealth has announced they would terminate that agreement at the end of 2017,” Cook said.
Birmingham told the inquiry that the Coalition had been clear on its policy since 2014 after Tony Abbott broke a promise to remain on a unity ticket at the 2013.
“Government policy has been quite clear since 2014, if not earlier, that this would be the last year in which those agreements would be applicable in terms of future funding and they would come to an end in this calendar year,” Birmingham told the Senate committee.
