Dangerous or incompetent - it was name calling befitting the playground where it started.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten used a media event at a school on Wednesday to label Christopher Pyne Australia's most dangerous education minister Australia in a long time.
Mr Pyne's office quickly countered by describing Mr Shorten the most incompetent education minister in history when he held the portfolio in the former Labor government.
"Christopher Pyne is the most dangerous education minister that we have seen in Australia in a very long time," Mr Shorten told reporters.
"(Parents) reasonably expect that our politicians and the Abbott government should take a long term view to make sure their children get the best start in life, not the short term, cut funding approach of the Abbott government."
Mr Shorten was speaking along with Labor MP Julie Owens at St Oliver's Primary School, in Harris Park in Sydney's west, where they met parents concerned over planned changes to education funding.
The government used its May budget to signal it intends to boost funding to schools only by the rate of inflation once the first four years of Labor's generous schools funding agreements end.
Total funding will now hit about $25 billion by 2024/25, roughly $5 billion less than it would have under Labor's Gonski deal.
A spokesman for Mr Pyne says Mr Shorten, education minister under former prime minister Julia Gillard, left the sector in disarray.
"Bill Shorten was the most incompetent education minister in Australia's history, leaving school funding in disarray having only signed up three states to the new model and ripping $1.2 billion in funding from schools on the eve of the election," the spokesman said in an email.
"Now he is the most lightweight opposition leader in Australia's history, opposing the big reforms in higher education that will expand opportunity for students and ensure our universities don't fall behind our Asian neighbours."
Mr Shorten says the government's budget is becoming more and more unpopular every day.
Mr Shorten's comments come as the ANZ-Roy Morgan consumer confidence index stayed steady for a second week at 14 points, below where it was in mid-April when leaks about budget cuts and tax increases started to appear before budget night on May 13.
However, ANZ said that the fall in consumer confidence could be abating.
