The real story behind the Gonski train wreck PAUL KELLY, EDITOR-AT-LARGE THE AUSTRALIAN DECEMBER 04, 2013 12:00AM 79 SHARE expand Share on facebook YOUR FRIENDS ACTIVITY Hi MSM Discover news with your friends. Give it a try. To get going, simply connect with your favourite social network: Facebook THE train wreck over Gonski school funding is a template for the diabolical fiscal dilemma facing the Abbott government -- this was a case of cabinets Expenditure Review Committee pushing for more savings but falling foul of the Coalitions election pledges. Christopher Pyne was personally given a letter by Tony Abbott that embodied the ERCs deliberations. He was given a tough job but he mishandled it, causing deep agitation within the PMs office. The ERC decided to commit to promised Gonski school funding for one year for the non-signatory states. Pynes brief was to run a public operation and private negotiation to try to get savings from the total pool of Gonski money given that NSW and Victoria had been generously treated. After an internal debate the ERC felt, given the magnitude of the funds, it had to try to find more savings from Gonski. But this was a politically explosive ask. It was never going to be realised because it ran into the brick wall of the election campaign pledges made by Abbott. When the Prime Minister briefed Pyne, his Education Minister was scarcely happy. It was agreed he would begin by making a political issue of Labors removal of $1.2 billion from the pre-election estimates as the prelude to getting a better overall deal for the national government. The ERC knew the operation might not be feasible. The project was derailed from the start. It became the single most damaging event in the brief life of the Abbott government. In the end it was battered into political submission. Last Sunday night at a meeting involving Abbott, Julie Bishop, Joe Hockey, Pyne and Peta Credlin the decision was taken to cut their losses. This was a political imperative but it took them some time to accept cold political reality. The communications disaster flowed from the impression the Coalition was breaking its election promises to keep the Gonski funding along with the core of the existing formula. The public gyrations of Pyne sent tremors of distrust across virtually all stakeholders and governments. Abbotts pledges were being trashed in public. Bill Shorten began to channel the Abbott campaign against Julia Gillard over her broken carbon tax promise as Pyne lost control of the agenda. The deeper key to grasping this fiasco is to realise the Coalition never really sorted out its attitude towards the Gonski school funding issue. At the September election it had two positions, one private, one public. Pyne never liked the Gonski model. Abbott and Pyne refused to endorse Gonski the way they endorsed the National Disability Insurance Scheme. They tried to suffocate the policy at birth. They pressured the states not to sign. They were horrified by the huge funds involved. But they lost this political fight. As a result, at the start of the campaign, Abbott and Pyne sued for peace. On August 2 came the neutralising statement: they declared a unity ticket with Labor. The principle was that Abbott in office would match Labors funding for the states that had signed Gonski while giving the states that had not signed the same funds as if they had signed up. It was a no losers pact. There is no difference between Kevin Rudd and myself when it comes to school funding, Abbott said. Gonski never became a frontline election negative for the Coalition. But there were two vital qualifications to the Abbott-Pyne position. First, the Coalition funding pledge covered only the four years of forward estimates, not the full six years of Gonski. And the big money came in years five and six. The budget showed an extra $9.8bn from Canberra across six years but only $2.9bn in the first four years. So the Coalition was never pledged to two-thirds of the full Gonski money at any time. Labors model would never really be implemented. Second, the Coalition position abandoned Labors tied deal: $2 from Canberra matched by $1 from states and territories into schools. It was philosophically opposed to such dictation. And Pyne pledged to amend Labors act to remove what he called the command and control accountability imposts on the states. This history informs the recent chaos. The Coalition had a political tactic of neutralisation yet it distrusted the entire policy. Hence the ERC search for more savings had to target Gonski. When Pyne declared the fiscal cupboard was entirely bare the alarms were sounded. He tried to blame Labor, saying it had ripped $1.2bn from the system pre-election. These were the funds that would have gone to the non-signatory jurisdictions, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory had they signed up. These funds were included in the May budget. They were not included in the pre-election fiscal statement because such agreements had not been realised. If Labor had won the election it would have concluded agreements with the holdout governments and the $1.2bn cost would have been reincorporated into the budget estimates. Under repeated questioning last week Pyne refused to honour the full four-year funding commitment to the non-signatory states. He incurred the wrath of the signatory states, NSW and Victoria, because they feared their funds would now be raided. Pyne said the Gonski model was an unimplementable shambles and that he had to return to the drawing board to secure from 2015 a different agreement. He spectacularly mismanaged the policy and the politics. But he was acting on instructions for a mission never going to be viable because of the multiple promises breached. The government found itself at war with several Liberal states, the ALP and most education stakeholders. It was imperative for Abbott to restore the pledged Coalition status quo. He did this with Pyne on Monday. It meant honouring the $1.2bn to the non-signatory states and not disadvantaging the signatory states. The lesson of the past week is that the Abbott government cannot scrap Gonski completely and start again. The result is an untenable hybrid. So what will happen? The $2.9bn Gonski money for the next four years is confirmed. But Pyne has told parliament that, once he finalises the details of his agreement with the non-signatory states, he will use this template to legislate this new formula across all states from 2015. His model will keep the present needs-based loadings, dismantle the command and control elements and abolish the tied federal-state funding compact. Will Labor accept this model? No. So the battle is not over. The school funding fight is merely deferred until next year, though its terms are changed. Pyne and Abbott cannot afford a repeat of this blunder. facebook twitter linkedin google reddit email - See more at: theaustralian.au/opinion/columnists/the-real-story-behind-the-gonski-train-wreck/story-e6frg74x-1226774531284?sv=702e69ccfa262c2c1eb51d5b2477041f#sthash.tpsVGv8j.dpuf
Posted on: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 09:31:36 +0000
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