Party hopes to have up to $4.4bn denied by Senate but Coalition says the $3.2bn component can’t be reversed

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Greens are threatening to have the changes to school funding disallowed in an attempt to redirect billions of dollars from Catholic and independent schools to public education.

Labor has not ruled out joining the push, instead calling on the prime minister, Scott Morrison, to explain how the $1.2bn school choice and affordability fund will be distributed and accusing him of failing to say why public schools cannot access the “sector-blind” fund.

While none of the changes announced by the Morrison government on Thursday will be contained in fresh legislation, the Greens have advice that the largest elements can be disallowed by the Senate.

That includes the $1.2bn fund – to be established by regulation – and $3.2bn worth of changes to the socio-economic status funding formula, made by ministerial determination.

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Government documents suggest that funding for the new formula to measure a school’s socio-economic status score based on parents’ income will be paid through the existing law.

While the Coalition concedes that the regulation for the $1.2bn fund is disallowable, it disputes that the $3.2bn for changes to the socio-economic status score can be overturned by the Senate because it believes they are administrative decisions and not legislative instruments.

The Greens education spokeswoman, Mehreen Faruqi, said the party “will not sit by and let education policy be dictated by whoever has the loudest lobby group”.

“If this grubby deal is allowed to go through, it will not fix the school funding wars, it will lock them in for the decade to come,” she said, warning that non-government schools would seek “yet another deal” to prevent needs-based funding in future.

“With public money, public schools have to come first. When this comes to parliament, we will use any and all options available to redirect funding from the $4bn special deals with the overfunded Catholic and independent school sector to public schools crying out for funding.”

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The Greens would need the support of Labor and at least four crossbench senators to disallow a regulation in the Senate.

Labor’s position on overturning the $1.2bn choice and affordability fund is still unclear, although its education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, has labelled it a “slush fund” with “no rules associated with it”.

“Labor has always supported the right of parents to choose to send their child to a Catholic or an independent school, and to make sure that the fees of those low-fee Catholic and independent schools are affordable for Australian families,” she said.

“But there is no genuine choice in education unless you properly fund public schools as well.”

Faruqi warned Labor that it “can’t sit on the fence” while billions went to non-government schools. “They need to join the Greens in committing to put 100% of this money into the public system.”

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On Friday, Morrison brushed off threats from the Coalition government in New South Wales and Labor government in Queensland not to sign up to any deal with the commonwealth unless it gave fair funding to schools. They argued that the $4.6bn package did nothing to improve funding for public schools.

Morrison said the Coalition was still giving “record funding” to public schools and he had “no doubt that New South Wales will want to be part of that”.

“I have no doubt that once [NSW education minister] Rob [Stokes] is across the detail of what has been announced, he won’t want to stand in the way of additional investment in state schools by the commonwealth and he won’t want to stand in the way of additional investment in non-state schools.”

The Australian Education Union president, Correna Haythorpe, told Guardian Australia she welcomed the “commentary by the states” because funding needed to be done through a joint federal-state agreement.

Haythorpe said the federal government had set an “arbitrary” cap of 20% of the school resource standard that it provides state schools, which would leave 80% of schools under the 100% target.