state ministers unite against fed pyne, page-17

Crissy seems hell bent on the Fed running the show, he has said exactlt that.

Not a bad article seems to cover the issue better tan many.

"The Coalition never much liked the Gonski plan (although then education spokesman Christopher Pyne sometimes had a good word to say about the loadings). It initially flagged it would not implement it unless there was national (or “overwhelming”) agreement to it from states and territories.

But on the eve of the formal election campaign, Abbott dramatically put himself on a “unity ticket” with Labor, promising to match the ALP’s funding for the first four years of the six-year program (while reducing some of what the Coalition dubbed the prescriptive “command-and-control” conditions Labor was imposing on the funding).

Abbott declared on August 2: “We will honour the agreements that Labor has entered into. We will match the offers that Labor has made.”

Now the Coalition has walked away from that promise. It has used the dual rationale that the forward estimates in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook (PEFO) did not contain funding for those jurisdictions that hadn’t signed up, and that the whole thing is a shambles.

Well yes, it is a shambles, but the Coalition was fully aware of that before the election.

And it also knew that $1.2 billion had been removed from the forward estimates for the non-signatory states. The Coalition’s current claim that it thought the money was parked somewhere else and would subsequently materialise is laughable."

http://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-government-plays-fast-and-loose-with-trust-and-truth-20918