Almost every one of the most overfunded private schools is in a safe Liberal seat, and the few that aren't are in safe Labor hands. Credit:Louie Douvis Gonski as a platform for more money from this government is dead. Gonski as a vehicle for redistributing education funding more evenly still has a chance. If a compromise must be reached, then there is one that everyone should agree on: there are some private schools that are publicly overfunded. Imagine if the same formula was applied to hospitals. North Shore private could receive millions of public dollars on top of its entitlement to settle patients into private suites, while Blacktown treated patients in its hallways.

Deputy Opposition Leader Tanya Plibersek. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Fortunately, health funding has its hurdles, but that is not how hospitals are funded. Which is why when federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham had the chutzpah to claim that some private schools were overfunded in September, he was right. A six-storey redevelopment at a Sydney school. So distorted has the model become that some have banked surpluses of $8 million and ploughed them into next year's facilities.

Private schools will tell you that public money is never spent on infrastructure. But any economist worth their pay would tell you a saving in one part of the book is a bonus in another. Hello school orchestra pits, and swimming pools with Olympic timers. Education Minister Simon Birmingha. Credit:Louise Kennerley Defending taxpayer dollars flowing to schools that already have more than 250 per cent of the standard funding per student AND demanding an extra public injection is absurd. And yet in an era where school empire building is taken on with the gusto of an arms race, we are now in a situation where Labor, the party of public education, spent months undecided over the fate of overfunded private schools because of one of the most short-sighted promises Julia Gillard ever made: "that no school would be worse off". I bet the old boys were thanking their lucky ties.

A multimillion-dollar pool development at a Sydney school. Terrified of how aspiring private school parents might vote, the Labor Party politicked itself into paralysis after Birmingham suggested some schools might be getting more than they were entitled to last year. It didn't even make political sense. Almost every one of the most overfunded private schools is in a safe Liberal seat, and the few that aren't are in safe Labor hands. Melbourne Grammar is in the seat of Higgins, held by the Liberals since 1975. It stands to lose $2 million if its overfunding was taken away from it, but would still get more than $5 million in taxpayer dollars a year.

Loreto Kirribilli and Monte in North Sydney would lose $5 million a year, but the seat's not going to switch to Labor on a margin of 15 per cent. The list goes on and on. It is a no-loss game for Labor to explicitly back taking funding away from the schools at the top of the list in the name of levelling the playing field. It won't lose any votes it wasn't already going to. Better still for the sake of improved policy, the Coalition isn't likely to lose those seats which it has held for most of the last century.

Bi-partisan win, win, right? Not as Labor sees it. Shadow education spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek has dismissed the concerns "about a very small number of schools" and a "drop in the bucket of the extra money required," compared to the $30 billion she claims is missing from the education budget. She's right, but the symbolism would at least push the funding equality debate forward. This month, she said she would be happy to "to slow the growth of funding to overfunded schools," meaning many would still remain overfunded. Adding to the uncertainty, Birmingham has yet to clarify if schools would be hit with a cut or a funding slowdown, while thousands of students are losing out on a more equitable piece of the pie.

"The sheer scale of the avarice is something to behold," says Save our Schools campaigner and former Productivity Commission economist Trevor Cobbold. Based on his analysis, a full needs-based redistribution from the current funding levels would move $5.6 billion a year. Now that really would take some political courage. Defending taxpayer dollars flowing to schools that already have more than 250 per cent of the standard funding per student AND demanding an extra public injection is absurd. It would be even if there was a bigger pie to distribute. It's not what Gonski wanted and it's not what Labor's really wants when they talk about a true needs-based funding system.

The Coalition is onto a policy and political winner: it should prosecute its case more vigorously. Eryk Bagshaw is economics reporter, Ross Gittins is on leave.