It is because he understands that Gonski is more than a new approach to allocating recurrent funds to schools. It is a fundamental re-imagining of Australian education. It asks: ''What kind of country do we want Australia to be?'' And he does not like the answer to that question.

The correlation between poor student performance and aggregated social disadvantage is much stronger in Australia than in any other comparable western nation; indeed, stronger than the average for all 34 OECD countries. By consigning our disadvantaged children to the bin of under-achievement, we are failing to maximise our potential stock of human capital. It is primarily this, rather than any differences in curriculum and pedagogy, which puts us behind our international competitors. So long as aggregated social disadvantage continues to have such a significant impact on educational performance, our national decline will continue.

The essential thrust of Gonski is to target strategically our investment in schooling, from both commonwealth and state sources, in order to reduce the impact of aggregated social disadvantage on educational outcomes. As has been shown in NSW with the application of the Resource Allocation Model in government schools, the strategic targeting of resources on a school-by-school basis according to need is readily achievable, and cannot reasonably be opposed on the grounds that it is too complex to implement.

Pyne is shrewd enough to understand that strategic targeting of resources according to need will do much more than reduce the impact of disadvantage on educational outcomes. He knows that it will also reduce the impact of advantage and privilege. If school performance is neither advantaged nor disadvantaged by parental income, ethnic background, religion, school size and location, or whether a student attends an independent, Catholic or public school, success at school will be determined essentially by the student's ability, application and hard work.

In other words, Gonski will create a genuine meritocracy.