The federal Education Minister, Mr Clare, has demonstrated he cannot work constructively with even state Labor education ministers.
This morning, state Labor education ministers Prue Car from New South Wales, Ben Carroll from Victoria, Blair Boyle from South Australia, Dianne Farmer from Queensland and Yvette Berry from the ACT, joined a protest outside Parliament House against the Albanese government.
It takes a special sort of incompetence by Mr Clare for things to go this much off the rails.
As reported in the Herald Sun today and I quote –
Mr Carroll added fuel to the fire in an ongoing Labor versus Labor stoush over funding for public schools on Wednesday, applauding the former Coalition government for increasing funding to state schools.
In a brutal takedown, he also called on Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to beat what Turnbull did, “If I go back to when Simon Birmingham was education minister and Malcolm Turnbull was prime minister, they increased public school education funding from 17 percent to 20 percent, and that’s a conservative government.”
Asked to clarify whether the previous Coalition government had done a better job at funding public schools, Mr Carroll replied “yes”.
So this school funding war is absolutely a mess of Labor’s own making. Prime Minister Albanese went to the election promising full and fair funding, despite the fact the Commonwealth is fully meeting its 20 per cent funding contribution to government schools under the Gonski funding model.
But in an act of apparent hypocrisy by state Labor, a short time ago, I met with a teacher from Oberon Primary, they still need their roof fixed. There was a young man from Geelong High who’s having classrooms in a hallway.
So I say to Ben Carroll, please cut the hypocrisy. Get your funding priorities right and fix these issues.
Students deserve better. Thank you.