We don’t need no educashun. We don’t need no Gonski. Nuffink wrong with literacy here in Channel Court, Kingston
Christopher Pyne. ABC pic
• Mark Kenny, SMH: Gonski backflip: $1.2b more for schools
Tony Abbott has taken charge of the government’s spiralling schools funding crisis, announcing that a massive $1.2 billion of ”new money” has been found from the education portfolio to restore Labor’s original schools funding plan.
”Following negotiations with Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory the government has secured a national agreement on school funding,” Mr Abbott said.
The sudden U-turn, which effectively erased last week’s declaration that the so-called ”Gonski” system was ”unimplementable” and ”a shambles”, came just minutes before the government fronted up for what was shaping as a torrid question time in Parliament.
It means the four-year funding model is back in place with all jurisdictions included, albeit without the ”strings attached” of matched funding which the Coalition had attacked as the ”command and control” aspects of Labor’s Canberra-based approach.
A defiant Mr Abbott told Parliament ”the money that the Leader of the opposition ripped out, we are fully putting back”.
Education Minister Christopher Pyne.
The late change rescued the government from being forced to admit in Parliament that it had broken a major promise – its relief obvious as frontbenchers tried to turn the attack back on the opposition.
However, Labor slammed the backflip as hypocrisy writ-large, complaining that by offering the new money to the non-signatory jurisdictions of Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, without the co-funding commitments required of the states which had already signed up, some schools would go backwards.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/gonski-backflip-12b-more-for-schools-20131202-2ym3u.html#ixzz2mLlUDdou
