Politics live as Malcolm Turnbull goes to the wire over Gonski education reforms

Time for me to wrap up. What happened?

• the Turnbull government has secured enough support from the crossbench to pass its education funding changes;
• this is a big win for the government;
• the Nick Xenophon Team, One Nation, Derryn Hinch, Jacqui Lambie and Lucy Gichuhi are voting with the government;
• despite being willing to negotiate the Greens found themselves out in the cold; and
• the vote could take place late tonight.

My thanks to Alex Ellinghausen and Andrew Meares for their magnificent work and to you for reading and commenting.

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Alex, Andrew and I will be back in the morning. Until then, good evening.

The education changes will be voted on tonight.

There's quite a bit of procedural stuff to happen in terms of amendments needing to be moved and so forth.

The government is trying to get the Senate's hours extended so it can sit later tonight (bad luck State of Origin fans).

One more thing to catch up on.

Medical and welfare groups are trying to head off a Turnbull government move to strip disability benefits from people whose health problems were caused solely by their own substance abuse.

The reform will take effect from July 1 unless it is disallowed. A vote on it is due in the Senate this afternoon.

The groups opposing the measure include the St Vincent de Paul Society and the Royal Australian College of Physicians.

This is what the government agreed to do to secure the votes it needed:

• the delivery of the package has been sped up from 10 years to six;
• this will add $4.9 billion to the $18.6 billion in extra spending over a decade the government had already announced; 
• there will be new rules forcing state governments to increase their spending on public schools; and
• an independent schools resourcing body as recommended by the Gonski report will be introduced.

Politics - it's a brutal business.

Senator Hanson-Young says she must condemn Pauline Hanson's comments about children with disabilities in mainstream classrooms.

And then Senator Di Natale calls time.

Senator Di Natale is getting a hard time from reporters.

He is asked if the Greens would support a one-year transition period for all schools.

He says the Greens cannot support any special deal for the Catholic schools system.

Senator Di Natale says he thought he was negotiating with the government on a deal to pass the legislation when, all of a sudden, a vote was brought on.

"I'm not complaining, I'm just explaining," Senator Di Natale says.

"Now if the government has decided it wants to fund an alternative pathway that's for them (sic)."

It is "absolutely not" true, Senator Di Natale says, that he failed to convince his party room to stand up to the Australian Education Union.

"It would be madness not to talk to an organisation that represents hundreds of thousands of individuals."

"How they have campaigned on this issue is a matter for them."

He says he is "proud" of the role the Greens played which was "constructive" and not at all like the Labor Party which took a "just say no" approach.

"I went to a public school, my daughter goes to a public school, I am a proud public school result," education spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young says.

"It is time we stopped doing special deals for privileged schools." 
 

Greens leader Richard Di Natale says his party will not support the government's education changes.

"We made it very clear from the start that any agreement needed to be sector blind and needs based," Senator Di Natale says.

Question time is over so now it's on to the Greens.

And the Greens will be holding a press conference in a quarter of an hour's time.

Stay tuned ....

And a bit more from the Senate ....

Meanwhile, in the Senate....

"It's no wonder the opposition leader's initials are B S because he's a fraud," Treasurer Scott Morrison says.

Mr Smith promptly tells him off and Mr Morrison withdraws the remark.

Is it hot in here or what?

"It is not an aspiration on their part, it is a hallucination," Mr Turnbull says in answer to another question from Labor about education.

(It's very interesting that Labor's campaign about funding cuts never cut through with the crossbench.)

"Sometimes yesterday feels like last week," Speaker Tony Smith says.

Only one more question day to go Mr Smith.

Mr Shorten takes a turn on education funding and asks when Mr Turnbull will delay his education changes given "everyone hates them".

"We may well ask when the Leader of the Opposition will stop spreading falsehoods," Mr Turnbull says.

"You think we could at least be united on standing for our Australian values," Mr Turnbull says in reply to one of his own MPs who wants to know about the citizenship changes.

He goes on to quote a speech from Labor frontbencher Tony Burke which, he says, could have come from a speech from Peter Dutton, Mr Turnbull says.

"Now, it's snobbery to ask people to respect our values...Now it's snobbery to ask people who seek to come here to have competent English."