WA premier's Gonski claims nonsense-PM - Sky News Australia

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett is talking 'nonsense' in claiming Gonski education reforms are a power grab by Canberra, Prime Minister Julia Gillard says.

In WA for the first time since state Labor's pummelling at the state election, Ms Gillard was again not met by state Labor leader Mark McGowan, who was on annual leave as the prime minister ironically visited his electorate of Rockingham.

She was instead welcomed by stand-in leader Roger Cook and toured a local Catholic school before being quizzed by students on the future of the country - and by reporters on why she failed to come west prior to the March 9 poll.

She said she understood that Mr McGowan, who ran a very good campaign, had always intended to take leave with his family after the election.

The break was well deserved, she said.

Ms Gillard also hit back at Mr Barnett's warning to the federal government during the WA election campaign that he had no intention of handing over money and authority for education to Canberra.

'Why would you trust education in the commonwealth's hands when they can't even decide who should be prime minister?' Mr Barnett said.

But Ms Gillard dismissed that as a line being fed to the WA public by a political opponent, not an accurate representation of the intent of the Gonksi reforms.

'Here in WA I know that people have been told that this is a takeover of schools and we are going to try and run these schools from Canberra,' Ms Gillard said.

'All of that is of course, nonsense.

'States would continue to be the drivers of education in state schools and the public school system.

'Our drive here is not for a national uniform model, but for a nationally consistent model.'

Ms Gillard's office made no approach for a meeting with Mr Barnett during her three-day trip, although she said her aim was for a productive relationship.

'For us it is about now working productively with premier Barnett and we will continue to do that,' Ms Gillard said.

She also said federal Labor clearly had a lot of hard work to do ahead of the September 14 federal election.

'Each and every day we have got to strive to do better and better and better, and we will,' Ms Gillard said.