Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

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 Boyer 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 far off the rails.

As reported in the Herald Sun today:

Mr Carroll added fuel to the fire in an ongoing Labor vs 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 from 17 per cent to 20 per cent 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."

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 School, and they still need their roof fixed. There was a young man from Geelong High School who was having class 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.