Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

This report backed up what we have been saying for some time—that the Turnbull government inherited 27 different special funding deals that were struck by then education minister Mr Bill Shorten in the Gillard government and the Rudd government to ensure schools around Australia have received vastly different sums of federal funding even where they have identical demographic compositions. So students in schools with the same demographic composition receive vastly different sums of federal funding in one state versus another state because of these special deals.

Beyond that, those deals locked in and grandfathered decades of other special deals that were put in place by the then Rudd-Gillard government and their predecessors, creating a hotchpotch framework that means that there will be no consistency across school funding in Australia for another 150 years if existing arrangements are left in place. That is why I am committed to making sure we have constructive discussions with the states and the non-government sector to get a fairer deal in the future. (Time expired)