At what point do politician’s lies become a form of electoral fraud? The sheer audacity of Anthony Albanese’s lies during the election campaign was so staggering that even the ABC couldn’t help but call him out on it (just once – even so, it must have killed them).
Another Big Lie of the Labor campaign has just been busted wide open. That lie is that Labor is the ‘party of education’, who are putting more money into education, while the wicked Liberals cut funding. The second part (should have been) easily debunked by the media: public education spending increased every year of the coalition government.
The first part has just been busted wide open, too – now that the election is safely done and dusted. Gosh, what coincidental timing from the MSM.
The state government secretly ripped $2.4 billion from state schools after delaying by three years its commitment to provide the funding required to pay for the long-promised Gonski education reforms […]
Confidential government documents seen by this masthead show the secret funding loss was signed off by the premier after she chaired a March 2024 meeting of cabinet’s Budget and Finance Committee. The unannounced savings were buried in last year’s budget papers.
Ah, but that’s surely just a Victorian state Labor issue? The only problem is that the Albanese government not only knew about it, but used it to strip funding from Victorian schools.
The federal government, when it became aware of the decision, reduced the funding it would have otherwise provided to Victorian state schools over the next decade.
This is reflected in funding agreements announced earlier this year by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Where Queensland will receive an additional $2.8 billion for its state schools from the Commonwealth over the next 10 years, Victoria will receive $300 million less despite having more schools and students.
Now, why didn’t the Age mention any of this just a week or two ago? Y’know, when Albanese was blatherskiting about his government’s education funding record? It’s almost like they deliberately withheld potentially damaging information to Labor from the voting public. Surely not.
The key change in Victoria’s education funding commitment is the year when the state government will provide to public schools 75 per cent of the School Resource Standard (SRS). This is the amount of government funding a school requires to meet the needs of its students under the Gonski reform model.
The Commonwealth has agreed to lift its share of funding for state schools to 25 per cent, but this is contingent on the states first reaching their benchmark.
If that sounds suspiciously like different levels of government churning the same tax money through multiple layers of costly bureaucracy… that’s exactly what it is. But, by failing to churn the money correctly – basically, redirecting federal money to other yawning pits in the state’s multiple black holes of debt – Victoria is handing the Albanese government the excuse it needs to redirect money intended for Victoria’s education system to other yawning pits in its multiple black holes of debt.
Tell me this isn’t a government operation.
In November 2023, the Victorian and Commonwealth governments signed an agreement which committed Victoria to provide 75 per cent of the SRS by 2028. Cabinet-in-confidence documents reveal Victoria quietly abandoned this commitment four months later and is now not planning to reach the benchmark until 2031 […]
By 2027, the difference in annual state funding is more than $300 million, and by 2028, it is half-a-billion dollars. The cumulative impact across the forward estimates of the state budget is $1 billion, and by 2031, the year when Victoria will reach the 75 per cent benchmark, the total shortfall is calculated to be $2.4 billion.
When the resultant reduction in federal funding is added, Victoria’s state schools will be left nearly $3 billion worse off.
Yep, that’s Labor the ‘party of education’ for you.
State opposition education spokeswoman Jess Wilson said […]
“These secret cuts have exposed Labor’s utter hypocrisy on public school funding and their failure to provide Victorian students with the education they need and deserve,” she said.
Utter hypocrisy, like this:
Albanese declared during the federal election campaign he had secured support from all state and territories to fully fund the Gonski model.
So, he lied through his teeth. Again.
And how long did the mainstream media know this and sit on it?
