GARY HARDGRAVE: Jacinta Collins, the Senator, joins us now. She is Parliamentary Secretary for School Education. Well Senator, what is the Gonski Review going to achieve?

JACINTA COLLINS: Oh, there's quite a large amount of work that the Gonski Review can achieve, and these are very important factors for the Gillard Government. The important thing from your discussion just earlier I picked up is that it recognises the value of all sectors in our education system, and builds them all into one very clear and transparent model around funding, which does - as your earlier speaker indicated - acknowledge the contribution of parents and others in the community into our school funding.

GARY HARDGRAVE:But the Australian education unions say they just want three quarters of education money from the federal Government going straight into government schools, but that's not where parents are sending their students.

JACINTA COLLINS: And that's what's important about the recommendations out of this review. What the Australian Education Union is highlighting is that at the same time, the Gonski Review recommends we need to, for future's sake, focus our funding very clearly on areas of disadvantage regardless of which system children are within and it certainly is the case at the moment that a high proportion of disadvantaged kids are in government schools.

GARY HARDGRAVE:  And of course there's also the parish schools - I always think of the Catholic system. The parish lists that help disadvantaged kids go to the parish schools in the Catholic system, for instance.

JACINTA COLLINS: Oh, absolutely Gary, and some of the schools for instance in the Territory that are operated by the independent sector, under this model, those schools will receive the full schooling resource standard from government funds. So it's not so much who's delivering it but what the need is amongst the school population.

GARY HARDGRAVE: All right, well that sounds to my mind to be good news. Who are you supporting, Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd?

JACINTA COLLINS:  I am supporting the Prime Minister.

GARY HARDGRAVE: All right, we'll let Kevin Rudd's people know. Thanks for your time.

JACINTA COLLINS:No worries.

GARY HARDGRAVE: Senator Jacinta Collins. She works with Peter Garrett in the area of school funding. 13 13 32. I think it's important to note, though, that every parent that sends their child off to a non-government school is subsidising the public system and the private system, they're doing that heavy lift. It's 48 past 3.