THE Premier has sought to distance Tasmania from the Liberal states in a stoush with the federal government over education reforms.
Tasmania is the first Labor-led state to criticise the proposed implementation of the Gonski reforms, set out in the draft Australian Education Bill 2012
Education Minister Nick McKim, in a public submission to a Senate inquiry to the bill, said its implementation was "premature" and "in its current form achieves very little apart from legislating aspirations".
But Premier Lara Giddings said that the government strongly supported the Gonski reforms and that issued raised in the submission had been "largely resolved."
"We want to work with Julia Gillard around Gonski," she said.
"We do not want to do what the Liberal states are doing, which is trying to stop a process purely, I believe, based on politics alone."
Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu has said he will implement his own education reforms, and Queensland and Western Australia also oppose the bill.
Mr McKim's submission, dated February 7, said there had been "no opportunity for genuine consultation on the draft bill."
It criticises the draft bill's failure to recognise that education is a state constitutional responsibility, and it also criticises the "overemphasis on engaging with Asia" compared with school improvement and needs-based funding.
It says the reforms impose an unknown cost on the states, have not been approved by them, and in linking school funding to a national improvement plan make it difficult to negotiate "in good faith".
The reforms are said to cost $6.5 billion, split 70-30 between the states and territories and the federal government, and to be implemented by 2014.
Opposition education spokesman Michael Ferguson said the government was not able to implement the Gonski reforms because it had chronically mismanaged the budget.
"Unions have claimed that the Green-Labor government would need to find an extra $70 million a year to meet the state contribution of 70 per cent of new funding to implement the reforms," Mr Ferguson said.
"And even that figure needs to be clarified in view of the current state education budget funding cuts."
