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

The government is indeed working through some of the issues that were raised by Catholic Education in terms of the socioeconomic status review. We are doing that by having adopted a recommendation from the Gonski panel report to have an independent National School Resourcing Board, on which Catholic Education and others are represented. That will report by the middle of this year.

The opposition appears to have again rejected that approach. They have rejected the work of the independent National School Resourcing Board that is looking at these issues, in favour of going ahead and playing politics once again. It is little wonder that the Council of State School Organisations has slammed the opposition for their tactics and what they've done. It's little wonder that they have described Mr Shorten's policy as a partisan move by the Leader of the Opposition, which has astonished many parents, families and staff teams of public schools. They have criticised it as going against fair, simple, transparent and truly needs based funding agreements—and so it does. (Time expired)