The Federal Government’s announcement today that it’s planning to implement the Gonski education funding reform by injecting an additional $9.4bn over six years is a con job.
Gonski found that an additional $5bn a year is needed to turn around the serious under-investment in Australian schools, which amounts to $30bn over six years. When the need for updating Gonski’s figures and applying indexation over the forward estimates are taken into consideration the figure is considerably higher.
So even if all of the states and territories contribute the requested 35 per cent in additional funding, which at this point in time seems to be very unlikely, the reality is that today’s $14.5bn announcement is over $15bn less than what’s needed. And the shortfall is closer to $20bn if Gonski’s figures are in fact updated and indexation is applied.
Moreover there’s yesterday’s cut to tertiary education of as much as $2.8bn which almost certainly brings the total shortfall in federal education funding over the next six years to something well in excess of $20bn. That is genuinely appalling and all the more dreadful considering all the promises this government has made about education.
The bottom line is that the Federal Government has turned out to be a terrible disappointment on education. Gonski was a once in a lifetime opportunity to bring education funding up to where it should be and what Australia can afford. But instead it turned out to be just another political fix.
Andrew Wilkie, MP, Independent Member for Denison
