So they won't sign up because..............5 years in planning and a lack of detail, rushed planning, funding being ripped out of higher education, why doesn't that surprise? another policy, another policy failure from a lame duck PM who nobody trusts.
She'll now try to pit one against the other to get something through, something she desperately needs to have for her so called legacy. It's all about her again, all about her "legacy" all about the politics of division which she is so good at.
Prime Minister's agenda is left high and dry by: Dennis Shanahan From:
JULIA Gillard got nothing from yesterday's meeting with premiers and chief ministers.
Indeed, the Prime Minister has suffered a stunning setback in her keynote campaign to implement the school education reforms and revamp federal-state funding.
The attitudes of the critical states that went into the COAG meeting have hardened and not even the most sympathetic states felt obliged to give Gillard a break.
Gillard has expressed determination to pass the changes before June 30 and hoped to exercise the authority of her office and the persuasion of federal money over the states and territories.
But Gillard's authority is ebbing by the day and the federal money is seen as insufficient, illusory and less important than some of the educational, governmental and equity principles involved.
There are cross-party concerns about the level of federal control that comes with the federal funding in the Gonski reforms, the balance of state funding for government and non-government schools and the maintenance of funding at existing levels to richer private schools because of the federal undertaking that no school would lose funding.
Nobody expected all the states and territories to rush to sign up for Gillard's far-reaching and complex proposal.
But after Gillard had been working on the reform agenda for more than five years it was reasonable to expect federal Labor would be in a position to get some of the Labor states further down the path and not go backwards at a COAG meeting.
Yet a combination of rushed planning, a lack of real discussion and the funding of the school changes coming from higher education has led to a real reluctance to accept Gillard's vision.
Almost conceding there will be no universal acceptance of her plans, Gillard now proposes to deal with the premiers one by one in the hope of picking up support and building momentum.
