Sometime around 2.00 am Friday morning sleep-bleary parliamentarians gave a Gonski and allowed the government’s Gonski 2.0 education bill to pass.

Senator Jacqui Lambie, who voted for the legislation along with Senators Hinch, Hanson, Gichuhi and the Nick Xenophon Team, called it as she saw it: “Game over.”

And, it was, to the fury of Labor and the teachers’ union, and the wavering Greens, who, after initially indicating that they were responsive to arguments put forward in support of the bill, folded, after hard threats made by the unions to target Green seats and the refusal of the Lee Rhiannon faction within...