Labor has confirmed it will support a funding cut to hundreds of “overfunded” non-government schools. The shadow education minister, Tanya Plibersek, described it it as a “deal done”.
Despite the note of bipartisanship, Plibersek rejected the government’s higher education fee increases and cuts to universities in an interview with Sky News on Thursday.
The Coalition’s school funding policy, announced on Tuesday, increases funding overall by $18.6bn over 10 years but reduces it by $22.3bn compared with existing funding deals negotiated by the Gillard government.
About 24 non-government schools will lose funding and 353 more will receive less than promised by six-year needs-based funding agreements.
Asked about the cuts to the 353 schools’ projected budget, Plibersek said Labor “will happily support” the government dealing with schools that are already above the schooling resource standard.
“That’s fine. And in fact, the Independent Schools Association has also said that they’re happy to accept that arrangement so, deal done on that element of it.”
Plibersek said that if Labor had proposed such a “modest trimming … we would have been accused of hating children and wanting to destroy their lives”.
The Labor deputy leader said cutting overfunded schools “is not the main game”, citing the fact that just 24 out of 9,500 would actually lose funding.
“We decided that the main game was making sure that every school in Australia achieved its fair share of funding sooner … and we don’t want to be distracted with fights about 24 schools.”
The Greens have also indicated they support trimming private school funding to pay for improvements to public schools.
On Thursday Nick Xenophon told Guardian Australia his party would go through a process of consultation before deciding a final position on schools funding, but “insofar as some schools are overfunded, that’s an issue that needs to be dealt with”.
At a press conference in Canberra the education minister, Simon Birmingham, noted Labor’s partial support and called on it to “back us in to make sure that every state is treated equally by the federal government” by supporting the entire package.
Birmingham accused the Labor leader, Bill Shorten, of hypocrisy for “going to war over alleged unfairness towards the Catholic system only to say they’ll back us in fixing that problem”.
Although the identity of the non-government schools that will lose funding is not yet known, several states have complained they will receive less than promised under six-year deals.
Victoria calculates that it will lose $630m compared with its Gonski agreement.
The South Australian education minister, Susan Close, said her state would be $70m better off than under the Abbott government but “still $265m worse off than we had all agreed”.
The Western Australian education minister, Sue Ellery, said her state would be worse off by $93m in 2017-18.
Defending the changes at the National Press Club on Thursday, Birmingham said Western Australia’s per student funding would grow from $2,241 in 2017 to $4,341 in 2027.
He said that all states would be better off and accused the states of “disingenuous” calculations that compared Labor’s deals with the Turnbull government policy. “The alternative isn’t the Labor party’s policy – we won’t be implementing the Labor party’s policy.
“The alternative is the Australian Education Act as it currently stands or our reforms.”
Plibersek said that Labor was “fully committed to a proper implementation of a needs-based funding system”.
She equivocated on whether Labor would lift the schools budget by the precise figure of $22bn, at first saying it was “absolutely” committed but then suggesting the opposition would “have to work out exactly what the figures are as the next election approaches”.
“But you can judge us on our record of spending tens of billions of dollars more in school education than the Liberals ever wanted to,” she said.
On Tuesday the Coalition announced it would lift university student fees by 7.5% on average by 2021 and impose a 2.5% efficiency dividend on universities in both 2018 and 2019.
Plibersek said it was a “bad idea to increase student fees and take a dividend” from them because “universities are already struggling” and they had already taken $4bn in cuts since 2011.
Birmingham’s speech to the Press Club was interrupted by university student protesters.
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