By Andrew Klein

March 17, 2026

I thought that I knew most things. Then I listened to my wife and she opened my eyes to many things.

Introduction: Why This Matters

The evidence is overwhelming. Quality education reduces criminal behaviour by 11-13% , increases civic participation by 15-18%, and improves empathy by 22-27% . The World Bank’s 2025 World Development Report concluded: “Education is the single most effective intervention for reducing violence, increasing social cohesion, and promoting democratic values”.

Yet in Victoria, the self-proclaimed “education state,” we are systematically denying children the education they deserve. This is not a failure of resources—it is a failure of will. A failure of accountability.

This paper traces that failure: from the complaints process designed to absorb rather than address, to the funding cuts hidden from public view, to the accountability vacuum where no one is responsible for the whole. It names the gatekeepers, traces the historical roots, and asks a simple question: If not now, when? If not us, who?

Part One: The Complaints Process—Designed to Absorb, Not Address

How Parents and Schools Communicate with the Department

The Department of Education has established a formal, multi-tiered complaints process that appears, on paper, to offer multiple avenues for redress . In practice, it functions as a series of filters designed to exhaust complainants.

The process:

1. School level—The first step is always the school itself. Schools must have a local complaints policy, but this places the burden on parents to confront the very institution they are complaining about.

2. Regional office—If unresolved, complaints can be escalated to the regional office via a central contact centre (1800 338 663 or enquiries@education.vic.gov.au). A regional complaint handling officer has 30 school days to seek resolution.

3. Central Office Review—If still dissatisfied, complainants may request a Central Office Review. The Complaints and Improvement Unit (CIU) determines eligibility within 10 school days. If accepted, the review takes up to 60 school days.

4. Victorian Ombudsman—If the department’s processes are exhausted, complainants may contact the Victorian Ombudsman.

What the Ombudsman Actually Does:

The Ombudsman provides an independent, external review of whether the department handled the complaint properly—not whether the original decision was correct. This is a subtle but crucial distinction. The Ombudsman reviews process, not outcome.

The Privacy Team’s Role

Complaints often involve personal or health information, which must be handled under the Privacy and Data Protection Act 2014 and the Health Records Act 2001. The practical effect is that complaints become legal matters, not educational ones.

What Complaints Are Made?

The Department acknowledges that complaints may relate to “an action taken or decision made, or the failure to take action or make a decision at a school”. The system explicitly excludes many serious matters, referring them to other processes:

Excluded Matter Referred To

Criminal activities Police

Fraud/corruption Speak Up hotline

Employee conduct Separate policy

Expulsions Separate appeal process

Disability Inclusion Profiles Separate appeals

Curriculum complaints VCAA

Catholic/independent schools VRQA

This fragmentation ensures that no single body sees the full picture .

Part Two: The Funding Crisis—Where the Money Went

The $2.4 Billion Secret Cut

In March 2024, the Victorian government’s Budget and Finance Committee of Cabinet, chaired by Premier Jacinta Allan, approved secret cuts of $2.4 billion to state school funding between now and 2031. This was done against the protestations of Education Minister Ben Carroll.

The result: Victoria is the only jurisdiction in Australia without a long-term plan to pay for the Gonski reforms. It has a single-year stop-gap agreement that keeps funding frozen at 2023 levels while every other state and territory has inked long-term deals.

The Current Gap

Government schools in Victoria currently receive:

· 70.43 per cent from the state (unchanged since 2023)

· 20 per cent from the Commonwealth

The gap between what they get and what students need is approximately $1.38 billion this year alone.

Teacher Pay—The Human Cost

Victorian teachers are the lowest-paid in the country :

· Graduate teacher: $78,801 (Victoria) vs $90,177 (NSW)

· Experienced teacher gap: $15,000 

AEU Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly’s question echoes: “Why are Victorian students worth so much less?”.

The Human Consequences

Kennington Primary principal Travis Eddy, whose school falls within Premier Allan’s electorate, told an inquiry:

“Those of us on the ground feel the consequences every day. Less funding per student means larger class sizes that make individualised learning near impossible; fewer integration aides supporting some of the most vulnerable children in the system; teachers spread across too many roles, trying to plug gaps left by funding shortfalls; principals forced into unsustainable workloads.”

St Kilda Park Primary parents reported that deficits are “being covered by the wallets of our families” . Families fund the school’s part-time nurse, books, stationery, and garden maintenance. Nine fundraising events are planned for this year alone.

Banyule Primary School council warned that without increased parent contributions, cuts are coming to:

· Intervention programs

· Extension groups

· School choir

· Sporting activities

The Mainstream Media’s Nasty Coverage

The government’s defence? “Our nation-leading NAPLAN results are the proof—our students are not only the top performing in the country but also performing better than at any other time on record”.

But as one analysis notes, claims of success through NAPLAN often obscure deeper inequalities. The “sweeping inaccurate claims” are recycled year after year, masking the reality that one in three disadvantaged students still fail to meet minimum benchmarks.

Part Three: The Accountability Vacuum

The NCAT Example Verified

The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) received 71,223 applications in 2023-24, with 60.3% lodged online. They finalised 70,666 matters. These numbers show volume and efficiency.

What the system tracks:

· How many complaints

· How quickly they are processed

· Whether procedures were followed

What it does NOT track:

· Whether complainants felt heard

· Whether systemic issues were addressed

· Whether anything actually changed

This is reminiscent of legalism in early China—process over substance, procedure over justice. It failed then. It fails now.

The Privacy Barrier—Each Complaint an Island

The Department states: “For privacy reasons, schools cannot discuss steps taken in relation to another student or family, or staff members” .

This means complainants never learn whether their complaint led to broader change. Each complaint is an island. The pattern is identical to Robodebt—individual cases processed, systemic issues ignored, no one accountable.

The Fragmentation Problem

The exclusion list is extensive. No single entity sees the pattern. No one is accountable for the whole.

This is the difference between management (following procedures) and leadership (ensuring outcomes). The system has managers. It lacks leaders.

Part Four: The Gatekeepers—Who Really Gets Access?

The system is deliberately designed to absorb dissatisfaction, not to address it.

Gatekeeper Function Effect

School principals First filter Confrontation with the institution

Regional officers 30-day process Delay and exhaustion

CIU Eligibility review Most complaints never progress

Privacy laws Legal barrier Individual complaints cannot inform systemic change

Fragmented processes Referral to other bodies No single entity sees the pattern

The best connected and loudest voices—those with resources, persistence, and legal advice—may eventually be heard. Parents, teachers, and students? They become statistics.

Part Five: The Historical Roots—How We Got Here

The Kennett Revolution (1992–1999)

The Kennett government implemented what scholars call a “radical departure from the traditional public administration model” . Key reforms:

· Reduced departments from 22 to just 8 by 1996 

· Cut 10% from government spending, embarked on Australia’s largest privatisation experiment yielding more than $30 billion in proceeds 

· Retrenched over 75,000 public sector workers 

· Introduced private sector governance models—government as “board of directors,” public servants as “management team” 

· Devolution of industrial relations to individual departments via the Public Sector Management Act 1992 

· Individual employment contracts encouraged over collective agreements 

· Repeal of the Industrial Relations Act and referral of powers to the Commonwealth 

Within months of taking office:

· 15,000–20,000 public sector jobs eliminated

· 350 schools forcibly closed 

· The Public Service Board abolished

· Industrial Relations Commission abolished

· Compulsory arbitration ended

This became the template for what followed in other states: WA, SA, NSW, Queensland all adopted similar models through the 1990s and 2000s .

The Deeper Roots: Karmel to Neoliberalism

The 1973 Karmel Report, commissioned by the Whitlam Government, established systematic federal government intervention in Australian schooling . It was meant to address “inequalities in provision and opportunity” .

But as one analysis notes, the “Karmel settlement” ultimately “failed to address educational inequality” and created “fifty years of politicised funding arrangements”. The principle of “sector-blind” funding—treating public and private schools the same—denied “the empirical reality of the inherent differences between the sectors”.

The Hawke and Keating governments (1983–1996) entrenched neoliberal principles through:

· The Dawkins Reforms (1987–1992) —HECS, university amalgamations, managerialism

· TAFE marketisation—contestable funding

· National Competition Policy (1995) —exposing public services to market pressures

By 2015, Australia had the second-highest growth in concentrations of disadvantage in the OECD. Worse, in almost 40 per cent of schools dealing with these concentrations, they were still accelerating.

Julia Gillard’s reforms (2008–2013) —NAPLAN, My School, performance pay, Gonski 1.0—”supercharged their application to schooling”. As one analysis notes, “Labor built it; the Coalition maintained it”.

The Bipartisan Architecture

Era Government Key Changes

1973 Whitlam (Labor) Karmel Report—sets funding framework, sector-blind principle

1983–1996 Hawke/Keating (Labor) Dawkins reforms, TAFE marketisation, competition policy

1992–1999 Kennett (Liberal) Radical restructuring, 350 school closures, 75,000 job cuts

2008–2013 Gillard (Labor) NAPLAN, My School, performance pay, Gonski 1.0

2013–2022 Coalition Funding gap widened, private schools overfunded 

2022–2025 Albanese (Labor) Promises made, but full funding delayed to 2034 

Kennett was the most radical implementer, but the architecture was bipartisan. The principles he entrenched have been maintained by both parties ever since.

Part Six: The Palantir Connection—Why They Feel at Home

The system we’ve described is:

· Data-intensive—complaints become statistics, not stories

· Fragmented—no single entity sees the whole picture

· Process-oriented—following procedure replaces achieving outcomes

· Accountability-resistant—responsibility is distributed, never located

This is precisely the environment where data analytics companies thrive. They sell the promise of making sense of the chaos, of finding patterns in the noise. But they also profit from the chaos—they have no incentive to simplify the system, only to help navigate it.

Scott Morrison’s government was receptive to corporate solutions to public problems. As a neoliberal, a fundamentalist Christian, and a prime minister who moved the Australian embassy to Jerusalem and enabled Robodebt, he exemplified the approach. The Morrison government actively exacerbated the funding gap under the cover of the pandemic—giving as much as $10 billion to the fee-charging sector.

If Australia is seen as a test ground for governance practices by global corporations, the education department’s data systems would be prime territory.

Part Seven: What This Means—An Urgent Crisis

The accountability vacuum is not an abstraction. It means:

· Children with disabilities are not getting the support they need

· Teachers are leaving in droves, overworked and underpaid

· Public schools are becoming “residualised”—carrying the overwhelming share of students with complex needs while private schools prosper 

· A generation of students, “disproportionately from low-income, regional, and First Nations communities,” are being denied the resources the government itself says they need 

· Visual arts, performing arts, physical education, language, and library teachers are being cut from specialist schools 

· Intervention programs and extension groups are on the chopping block 

· School choirs and sporting activities are being eliminated 

· Integration aides for vulnerable children are being reduced 

As Travis Eddy put it: “The idea that we can ‘delay funding’ until 2031 assumes that children can postpone their development, their learning, their social growth or their trauma recovery. They can’t. Every year that adequate funding is withheld is a year of opportunity lost – never to be regained” .

Conclusion: The Pattern Named

We have identified:

1. A complaints process designed to absorb, not address—fragmented, procedural, and impenetrable 

2. A funding crisis deliberately created and concealed—$2.4 billion cut, Victoria the national laggard 

3. An accountability vacuum where no one is responsible—NCAT tracks process, not outcomes 

4. A gatekeeper system that privileges the connected over the affected—parents and students become statistics 

5. A historical trajectory of neoliberal reform, deepened by both parties—from Karmel to Kennett to now 

6. A corporate-friendly environment where data replaces action—Palantir would feel at home 

The question now is not whether we see the pattern. We do. The question is what we do with it.

As one principal said: “No principal can accept that as reasonable. A child in grade 1 in 2025 will be in year 7 by the time this funding is restored. A student currently struggling with foundational literacy cannot wait until 2031 to access essential intervention” .

The accountability vacuum must be filled. The gatekeepers must be named. The pattern must be broken.

We are talking about children. We are talking about the future.

Sources

1. WAtoday, “In the so-called education state, Gonski shows our schools are slipping behind,” January 20, 2026 

2. Victoria State Government, Department of Education, “Complaint Resolution: Policy,” December 24, 2025 

3. ANU Press, “The Political and Industrial Environment” (analysis of Kennett government reforms) 

4. Pearls and Irritations, “Karmel, Gonski and the private school ascendancy,” July 14, 2025 

5. WAtoday, “‘Absolute disgrace’: Choir, sport, aides on the chopping block as education funding falls $2.4b short,” February 11, 2026 

6. The Saturday Paper, “School funds delayed are funds denied,” February 8, 2025 

7. Swinburne University of Technology, “The neo-liberal revolution and the regional state in Canada and Australia” 

8. Educational Policy Journal, “The Rise of School Choice in Education Funding Reform: An Analysis of Two Policy Moments” 

9. Parliament of Victoria Hansard, “Education funding,” February 5, 2025 

Published by Andrew Klein

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