Lenore Taylor, political editor

theguardian.com, Friday 7 November 2014

As Australia mourns its great Labor leader, his vision of life-changing education reforms is being challenged

Gough Whitlam during a debate in 1992. Photograph: Michael Jones/Rex Features

We’ve analysed so many things about Gough Whitlam’s memorial service.

We’ve discussed the deep significance of a photograph that apparently revealed Julia Gillard was reluctant to sit next to Kevin Rudd.

We’ve agreed Noel Pearson’s eulogy was excellent.

We’ve had an interesting disagreement about whether it was, or was not, appropriate for Tony Abbott and John Howard to be booed at this occasion.

But we’ve spent a lot less time talking about what is happening, right now, to the Whitlam legacy that was so widely and passionately acknowledged as nationally important.

The eulogies lauded his introduction of free higher education and needs-based funding for schools. Many of those who gathered to remember him described how those policies changed their lives.

But even as they mourned, the vision behind Whitlam’s life-changing education reforms is being challenged.

Needs-based school funding was at the heart of the previous government’s Gonski review, conducted by independent experts who took 7,000 submissions and concluded that the current education funding system was causing disadvantaged students to fall further and further behind.

The former government’s response – a system with “loadings” for different kinds of student disadvantage – was so popular that before the election Tony Abbott insisted he was on a “unity ticket” with Labor on school funding and repeatedly promised parents could “vote Labor or Liberal and get exactly the same amount of funding for your school”.

If voters had read the fine print of his statements, they would have seen the promise only applied “over the forward estimates”, which meant for four years.

And in the budget the government duly removed $80bn promised funding increases for schools and hospitals after those four years – in the case of the schools funding citing the aforementioned fine print.

Last month it specifically rejected a Senate report calling for Gonski to be implemented, arguing that the Gonski report had “initiated a period of political rather than rational debate”, had “created fissures rather than consent and agreement” and repeating the Coalition’s argument that “teacher quality” and “school autonomy” were much more important – as if these were either/or propositions.

It cited a submission by economist Henry Ergas to contend there was in fact no evidence at all that an increase in per student funding would improve school performance, said the funding increases envisaged by Labor were “not sustainable” and that it would be up to the states to decide how much they spent and to allocate their remaining funds “as they see fit”.

Meanwhile the education department is conducting a review of the loading for low socio-economic status, taking submissions from invited organisations only, which are not being made public. Oh, and an analysis of Naplan results by former school principals Chris Bonnor and Bernie Shepherd showed that from 2010-2013 the achievement gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged schools got bigger, as the Gonski report had predicted.

“Needs-based funding”, as understood by Gonski, is obviously not the likely outcome of this process.

And that would be the end of an important, popular and potentially life-changing idea, but because it’s happening slowly and without political fanfare, it is likely to be overshadowed by all the passing newsy moments.

At the same time the Senate is debating the government’s reforms to higher education.

Whitlam’s free education was already long gone – it’s 25 years since a Labor government introduced the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS).

But the combination of the deregulation of university fees, the increase in the interest rate applied to student debts and the 20% cut in commonwealth funding was obviously going to have a huge impact on poorer students.

Modelling by Bruce Chapman, considered the architect of HECS, found poorer graduates would pay 30% more for a degree than the better off. Women who took time out of the workforce to have children would also suffer.

The government is now variously vowing to “negotiate” the reforms through what appears to be a Senate roadblock – but who can ever tell – or smash their way to the projected savings by freezing student numbers or cutting research grants.

This story will undoubtedly bubble into the debate in coming weeks, mostly assessed in terms of who “won” or “lost” in the detail of the Senate negotiation.

Of course school funding and higher education funding have to change over time. Of course we need to debate what can be afforded. But we didn’t really have a debate about priorities before these changes landed, nor about what tax we’d be prepared to pay for fairly available education.

We all got the pointed significance when Cate Blanchett and Noel Pearson spoke about Whitlam’s transformative changes to education. But with so many distractions, temporary outrages and momentary scandals, it’s easy to get distracted from the big, complex processes under way, even though they will determine the policies that change lives with their enactment, and can change them just as decisively with their reversal.

Our salute to Whitlam was excellent, but what about his legacy? | Australia news | theguardian.com