States complain of schools budget nightmare as Gonski 2.0 passes Senate

State and territory governments have complained that a new amendment to the Turnbull government schools package will force them to increase their education budgets by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Queensland has said that over six years it will have to find up to $1bn extra and the Northern Territory government has warned it currently falls $80m short of the new requirement.

On Thursday evening the Senate debated the $23.5bn Gonski 2.0 schools funding package, eventually passing it with amendments in the early hours of Friday morning. The amendments included the creation of a national schools resource body, delivering the package in six years rather than 10, and compelling the states to increase their funding.

A Greens amendment to give the school resource body greater independence and powers to begin inquiries of its own motion also passed in committee stage.

Although Labor, the Greens, David Leyonhjelm and Cory Bernardi opposed the bill, the grouping of the Nick Xenophon Team, One Nation, Jacqui Lambie, Derryn Hinch and Lucy Gichuhi held to pass the bill.

Under an amendment negotiated by the crossbench, by 2023 state governments will have to give their public schools 75% of the school resource standard, to top up the 20% to be provided by the federal government.

The requirement will hit Victoria the hardest, because it only provides 66.15% of the SRS to its public schools, followed by the Northern Territory (67.18%), New South Wales (71.44%), South Australia (72.02%) and Queensland (73.3%).

Tasmania already contributes 75% of the SRS. The Australian Capital Territory, which gives 96.97%, and Western Australia (85.74%) will actually be allowed to cut their spending on public schools down to 80% of the SRS.

The Queensland education minister, Kate Jones, said the new had been debated in the Senate, not in discussion with the states, was “intrinsically unfair”.

“It dictates from Canberra that Queensland has to increase its contribution to state schools yet walks away from the original Labor position where the federal government would work with states to get to the student resourcing standard where states contribute two thirds and the commonwealth one third,” she said. “Queensland taxpayers will be forced to foot the bill.”

Victoria’s education minister, James Merlino, said: “The sheer arrogance that Malcolm Turnbull is showing in attempting to pass this bill without consulting the states is astounding.”

The federal education minister Simon Birmingham told ABC Radio on Friday that the amendment “incentivises states and territories to do their fair share”.

“These are the same state governments who have asked and pleaded with the federal government to ... apply the Gonski formula.

“We’ve come to the party, we’re doing that, we’re putting in $23.5bn extra over the last year’s budget over the next decade.”

In a letter tabled in debate on Wednesday, the Northern Territory education minister, Eva Lawler, had urged the Senate to delay the bill.

“Essentially our key message is that jurisdictions have different capacities to fund their schools,” she said. “We should be working together to use public funds to lift all of our students up, to get all of our students up to the Gonski schooling resource standard.”

Lawler said that after increasing its education budget by $30m last year, the Territory still falls $80m short of 75% of the SRS.

“That is the Northern Territory’s entire child protection and youth detention budget but it’s less than 0.02% of the commonwealth budget.”

The Northern Territory will get a transition package worth $35.6m over four years, to compensate for the fact the state already gets 23% of the SRS from the federal government, which will drop to 20% under the Gonski 2.0 reforms.

In selling the benefits of the deal on Wednesday, Xenophon said the amendment would “ensure states have to do their share of heavy lifting and not shirk their responsibilities”.

“This will unambiguously lead to a better outcome for our children in our schools,” he said.

The amendments to the Gonski 2.0 package include an extra $4.9bn to speed the delivery of needs-based funding from 10 years to six.

The package included rolling-over the system weighted average for the Catholic and independent school systems for one year at a cost of $46m while a review of the socio-economic status formula is conducted.

Asked if the government would adjust the needs-based formula after that review, Birmingham said the government had “committed to put in place [its] recommendations” while “being mindful of budget implications”.

The NSW education minister, Rob Stokes, said his state would finalise its position after it received full details of the package but welcomed the principle of needs-based sector-blind funding.

“We also note that the deal that looks likely to pass is a significant improvement from what was initially offered – and that the NSW government’s strong advocacy has contributed to this,” he said.

The NSW government has complained that it lost $846m over two years compared with the six-year needs-based funding agreement it negotiated with the Gillard government, which was torn up in the redesign of education funding.