People before profit: 2023 NSW election campaign

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Our campaign

The cost of living is going through the roof. Nearly everyone is feeling the pinch.

Corporations and their wealthy owners increase prices, leading to inflation.

The housing crisis means more and more working people cannot afford to rent or buy a home. Meanwhile, greedy developers are making windfall profits thanks to state planning laws.

The system is geared to put profits before people’s needs, and this needs to be reversed.

State subsidies to fossil fuel corporations must end and funding redirected to public health, education, transport and climate action.

The overloaded health system, from the “000” call centre and ambulances to emergency departments, hospital wards and allied health, desperately needs more funding and safe staffing.

Public schools are underfunded, with talented teachers leaving because of poor pay, overwork and short-term contracts.

Public transport is being run down in favour of privatisation and tollways, which we are locked into paying for.

Extreme heat, cold, storms, floods and fires are reminders of the urgent need to rapidly transition to clean energy.

The energy industry must be returned to public ownership, to make the transition to 100% renewables, without leaving workers behind.

Capitalism creates problems which it cannot solve. To find solutions, we need to organise in our communities and workplaces to challenge the power of the corporations and to redistribute society’s wealth and prioritise urgent social needs.

Electing a socialist to parliament, who will live on a worker’s wage, can help build these progressive campaigns outside parliament.

Our policy platform

First Nations

• Negotiate treaties to respect First Nations sovereignty and land rights
• First Nations control of First Nations’ affairs
• End the disproportionate separation of First Nations children from their families
• Close the gap in First Nations health, education, employment and housing
• Implement all the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
• Stop Santos’ coal seam gas project in the Pilliga
• Funding for First Nations-controlled community organisations

Ease cost of living

• Cap electricity, gas and water prices for low-income households
• Remove wage rise cap for public sector workers
• Free, frequent and accessible public transport

Housing for all

• An emergency plan to build of 100,000 new public housing dwellings over the next five years
• Freeze rents for two years, ban “no grounds” evictions
• No forced evictions from public housing
• No public housing sell-offs or demolition in Waterloo and Glebe, South Eveleigh, Riverwood, Coffs Harbour and elsewhere
• End the privatisation of public housing to “social housing” run by charities
• Acquire and transform private dwellings left vacant for more than 12 months for public housing
• Expand emergency accommodation services to combat homelessness
• Mandate developers to allocate 30% of all new units to affordable housing
• Establish a state-owned body to provide low-interest home loans
• Renovate substandard landlord holdings for public housing
• Repair and decarbonise public housing

End developer and speculator greed

• Give decision-making on planning and heritage back to local government and communities
• Reverse forced council amalgamations
• Ban developers from holding unoccupied land for speculation

Better health

• Boost funding for public health
• Mandate and fund 1:4 nurse-to-patient ratios in all public hospitals
• Boost funding for public mental health services, especially for children and young people.
• Expand community-based health care networks (community health centres, reproductive and sexual health clinics) and include free paediatric care
• Raise spending on health education and preventative care to reduce demand on hospital and acute health services
• Boost funding and make public dental care free
• Reverse public health privatisations
• Provide victims/survivors of sexual or domestic abuse with free long-term trauma therapy, medical treatment and support services
• Legalise cannabis, decriminalise drug use, and treat addiction as a health issue
• Provide safe injecting facilities and pill testing

Boost public education, safety

• Reduce class sizes and teacher workloads by employing more school counsellors, teachers and education support staff
• Ban NAPLAN and all standardised testing
• Expand funding for more emergency services workers, firefighters

Public and active transport

• Return transport to public ownership and expand regional networks
• Make it free, 100% accessible for all
• Extend, upgrade and electrify bus fleet 
• Expand safe cycling infrastructure
• Return WestConnex to public hands
• Cancel the dangerous Western Sydney Harbour Tunnel project

For a safe climate, affordable energy

• Put energy back into public hands
• Boost investment for 100% renewable energy by 2030
• Phase out fossil fuels: halt Whitehaven Coal and other coal mine expansions
• Ban unconventional gas exploration and fracking for coal seam gas
• No to coal seam gas: halt Santos’ coal seam gas project in the Narrabri
• No coal mining in the Sydney-Illawarra water catchment area
• Oppose the plan to raise the Warragamba Dam wall
• No building on flood plains and retreat from flood-prone land: NSW to acquire the land for open space
• End subsidies and tax breaks to fossil fuel corporations
• Guarantee new, well-paid jobs for workers transitioning from the fossil fuel industries
• Make Kurri Kurri and the Hunter Valley a manufacturing hub for renewable energy
• Establish a Hunter Valley Authority and fund from coal royalties

Save our forests and green spaces

• End logging in native forests, transition to plantation timbers
• End land clearing and logging in important water catchments to preserve water quality
• Build the Great Koala National Park corridor through the Coffs Harbour hinterland
• Create more parks and green space in urban areas, including wildlife corridors
• Create and fund alternative employment for logging communities
• End toxic incinerators in regional NSW and Sydney’s Western suburbs
• Boost sustainable recycling of waste, including plastic bags

Women’s & LGBTIQ rights

• Expand funding for women’s refuges and community-anti-violence campaigns
• Expand access and make abortion free, including in regional NSW
• Oppose discrimination, including transphobia, Islamophobia
• Reinstate safe schools, LGBTIQ spaces
• Support the LGBTIQ community, including free gender affirming healthcare
• Fund programs targeting gendered poverty
• Fully decriminalise sex work and the sex industry

Invest in jobs and skills

• Fully fund TAFE, no tuition fees for TAFE students
• Increase incentives for new health workers, disability support workers, teachers and education support staff, including: free tuition; wages for students doing placement; permanent jobs for those who want it; reduced workload; and increase wages
• Fund more graduate program positions for all health care workers.
• Legislate apprenticeship ratios
• Provide services for those who miss out on NDIS funding

Justice

• For rehabilitative, not retributive, justice.
• End mandatory sentencing and for non-violent offences redirect people to community service
• Raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 and stop detaining children under the age of 16
• Holistic early intervention support to children and families
• Better support for asylum seekers and refugees, especially those without access to Medicare, Centrelink payments or work rights
• Stop police investigating police: Establish an independent misconduct investigation agency
• End the militarisation of police and ban their use of guns
• Waive the COVID-19 fines, especially those imposed on young people and poor communities
• Repeal punitive bail laws
• Guarantee funding for the Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Ombudsman
• Invest in homes, not prisons
• End over-policing and racial profiling of communities
• Increase funding to NSW Legal Aid and Community Legal Centres
• End the privatisation of prisons

Democratic rights

• Scrap anti-democratic anti-protest laws which criminalise climate activists
• Scrap all anti-worker and anti-union laws which restrict unions’ ability to take industrial action and organise on the job
• Stop police busting up union picket lines
• Reverse the restrictions to workers’ compensation laws to ensure justice for injuries suffered in the workplace

Animal welfare

• End live animal exports
• Abolish the cruel and inhumane use of animals for sport, recreation or entertainment
• Mandate alternatives to shark nets and the culling of sharks
• Ban trophy hunting of all animals, including Australian native water birds
• End the inhumane intensive factory farming of animals
• Support comprehensive and enforceable standards for free-range farming practices for all animals

Gambling reform

• Launch a well-supported education campaign about the predatory practices and consequent harms of the gambling industry (like the campaign against cigarette companies).
• A harm minimisation and educational approach to all for-profit forms of gambling, ranging from online sports betting, horse and greyhound racing, as well as electronic gaming machines in clubs, pubs and casinos.
• Implement responsible product designs so that electronic gambling products do not contain features that increase risky gambling behaviour — for instance poker machines that turn themselves off after a period of time to break “the zone” to help minimise harm.
• Ban all gambling company advertising.
• Phase out poker machines and other forms of electronic gaming machines from clubs and hotels and restrict them to casinos.
• Take measures to help individuals understand and potentially manage their own gambling. This ranges from the use of cashless cards (with features recommended by the Alliance for Gambling Reform) to emergent strategies to manage online sports betting.
• Provide communities, especially regional towns where poker machine venues are significant employers, with alternative job creation.
• Return NSW Lotteries to public ownership.