Well, yes - Robert Menzies was the first PM to fund private schools but he basically built Science blocks. The Whiltam government initiated the funding formula which encouraged private schools to build new and better buildings and to take on debt to do so - an unanticipated and unintended consequence. David Kemp's reform, designed to focus on need, ran into the bane of all such initiatives: how to get reliable data about who was and was not needy. In the end, he chose census data and home addresses as the best he could get, which left him open to the charge that he was not targetting the genuinely needy. Interestingly, when the Victorian government in the early 2000s wanted to reach a funding agreement with private schools, it ran into the same problem of identifying the genuinely needy.

Just as a final point, the schools currently doing badly in Victoria are pretty much those that were doing badly 20 or 30 years ago. The difference today is that, thanks to the Kennett Government's accountability reforms, it's now possible to identify them clearly.

Government's before Whitlam did much more than I think you are crediting them for. I found this very good summary http://www.aph.gov.au/SENATE/COMMITTEE/eet_ctte/completed_inquiries/2002-04/schoolfunding/report/03ch1.htm.

I think the reason Kemp was targeted on the SES was because it was a much fairer system than the previous one for determining what schools were and were not needy. It shattered some people's illusions about who goes to certain schools.

The Howard/Kemp formula is an OK way of calculating need. What a pity is essentially isn’t used. Long ago it was corrupted by the inclusion of a no-loser clause, to the point where over-payments under the formula will total around 2.6b in the next four years. And guess which schools get a disproportionate share of the overpayments? So much for funding schools on need. Methinks the neo-liberals won out there!

Kemp used census collection district family income data because it was easy and less intrusive. But it is still flawed because in so many instances the enrolled kids are not typical of their suburb or town.

Yes the schools currently doing badly in Victoria are similar to those 20-30 years ago but in relative terms they are worse off because they have been stripped of their achieving and aspiring role models. Funny thing about Victoria – the highest academic profile schools include government schools safely tucked away in the bush, away from what we like to call competition. Think about it!

Just so long as we learn the lessons from the US.
Having a 2 tier system and catering for "elites" is asking for trouble down the road. Surely the myth of "private is better" has now been proven conclusively false. If they cannot get banking, which is pure commerce, right what hope for more esoteric endevours?
Seems the free market proponents aren't too proud for public handouts when it's them that benefit. They hate funding the poor, but it seems that "big government" is no problem so long as the handouts go their way. Banks have received Billions from government with short notice, basically subsidising the last decade of profits, yet public schools still cannot be properly funded nor even maintained.
And the irony of catholic school funding depriving needy schools...
It is shameful that some schools are getting improved tennis courts and boathouses while other schools cannot afford air conditioning.
The free market extremists truly need to pull their heads in.