Turnbull says Labor split on schools

No one can take Labor's school funding promises seriously when even its own members can't, the federal government says.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has used comments by South Australian Labor premier Jay Weatherill to attack the opposition's plans to fund the final two years of the Gonski education agreements.

He seized on Mr Weatherill's scepticism about how his federal counterparts could fund education pledges without a "coherent or sustainable" plan.

"This is the judgment of (Bill Shorten's) peers - this is one of the leading figures in the Labor party," Mr Turnbull told parliament on Tuesday.

"If he hasn't seen it, why does the leader of the opposition expect anybody else to take it seriously?"

Mr Turnbull also poured cold water over how Labor planned to fund the $4.5 billion in education spending.

He said the opposition's pledge to reap $70 billion via a range of measures including targeting multinational tax avoidance and hiking the cigarette excise would not work and were modest in the context of the whole budget.

However, Labor has accused the government of abandoning the Gonski reforms and making the states fight over the scraps of remaining future school funding.

It was a "farce" for the prime minister to talk about innovation at the same time as cutting funding for schools across the country, opposition education spokeswoman Kate Ellis said.

Unions want the impasse over Gonski broken, calling for a bipartisan commitment.

Australian Education Union president Correna Haythorpe says the reforms are yielding results.

"The future funding of every school in Australia will be decided at this year's election," she said.