The Labor party has drifted away from its principles when it comes to funding public education, one of the nation’s defining democratic institutions.

There was a time when a Labor government would have regarded the sustained underfunding of public schools as inconsistent with its own identity. Today it has become politically manageable.

The ongoing debate over extending the Choice and Affordability Fund beyond 2029 shows that further support for the private sector remains conceivable, even while public schools still wait for resources already promised to them. For decades the debate has centred on funding formulas, sector agreements and competing claims over fairness. Those discussions matter and the evidence is now overwhelming: public schools have waited years for the funding they were promised, while many non-government schools have already reached, or exceeded, their agreed Schooling Resource Standard.

The evidence is no longer the issue. The politics is.

How is it that governments appear now to pay remarkably little political price for neglecting public education? How has this become politically acceptable?

Political parties rarely fear a political price unless they first recognise that their actions have drifted from their own values. In individuals we might describe that as healthy shame: the capacity to recognise that our behaviour no longer reflects the principles by which we wish to live, and the willingness to correct it. Political movements need that capacity as well.

Institutions rarely abandon their purpose overnight. More often, they adjust incrementally to changing environments until positions that would once have seemed inconsistent with their identity come to be accepted as entirely normal.

Political parties, like all enduring institutions, survive by adapting, which is not the........

© Pearls and Irritations