New South Wales Not For Sale: 2019 NSW state election campaign

Community need not corporate greed

NSW urgently needs a radical shift in priorities, for social justice and environmental sustainability.

We are standing for the NSW Legislative Council and in some lower house seats to give voice to the people and not the profiteers. We believe that building community campaigns and running for office should complement each other.

But don’t just vote for us, find out more and get involved in creating a better world.

Policy platform

Indigenous Rights, Justice & Sovereignty

We recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the First Peoples, and that their lands have never been ceded.

We support land rights and a Treaty process led by First Nations peoples.

Land rights and decision-making power must be restored to communities — sovereignty.

We campaign alongside Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples against dispossession and genocide.

We support the Tent Embassies, land occupations and strikes, and we campaign to:

• End deaths in custody.
• End the stealing of children.
• End the Northern Territory Intervention / income-management programs.
• Stop the suicides.

“Closing the gap” requires Aboriginal control of the programs, services and resources in their communities, and these resources must be increased, funded by a progressive taxation system. This is the only way to ensure real advances in health, education, housing, jobs, child welfare and aged care. Read our full Indigenous Rights policy at socialist-alliance.org.

Ease Cost-of-living Pressures

Cost-of-living pressures mean that many people are being forced to choose between necessities, such as heating their homes and paying the rent.

Wages have failed to keep up with the cost of living and tax cuts favour the super rich. And rising energy bills, motorway tolls and public transport costs, not to mention rent or mortgage payments, mean that many are in permanent debt.

We campaign for:

• Taxing the rich, and scrapping the regressive GST.
• Ending the tax loopholes that allow corporations to avoid paying tax.
• Ending the hidden handouts to corporations.

Switch to Renewable Energy

The scientific evidence demands that society makes the switch to renewable energy now. Fossil fuels can be phased out while jobs and livelihoods are protected with fully funded retraining and new job creation in sustainable energy projects.

We campaign to:

• Make NSW a 100% renewable energy state: transition to renewables, including solar thermal panels with battery storage, on all public buildings.
• Mandate renewable energy for all new buildings and homes.
• Resist the GST bribe from the federal government to mine for gas and coal.
• Revoke all unconventional gas licences and prohibit unconventional gas mining in NSW.
• Ban fracking and exploration for unconventional gas deposits.
• Stop new coal mines, and phase out existing mines.

Expand Public Transport

We need more public transport to reduce air-polluting travel and provide much-needed jobs that are sustainable.

But successive state governments have been captive to the road industry. The result is poor planning, expanding and expensive road tolls, and much more carbon pollution

We campaign for:

• A Royal Commission into the WestConnex project, including the compulsory acquisitions, sell-offs and privatisations.
• Ripping up the WestConnex contract, scrapping the northern and southern tollways projects, and redirecting the funds to sustainable public transport.
• Directing infrastructure spending to maintain and extend light and heavy rail to take truck transport off the roads, create green jobs, and provide safer, faster and more commuter friendly transport.
• Free, fast and frequent public transport, including very fast trains between Sydney and regional centres such as Newcastle, and between the eastern seaboard capitals.
• No privatisation of rail and bus lines, and restoring to public ownership those services that have been privatised.
• No congestion tax.
• No to the Sydney Metro: it is a back-door method of privatisation and union busting.
• Stopping the second airport at Badgerys Creek: it will not deliver the promised jobs, but will exacerbate noise and air pollution across western Sydney and the Blue Mountains.

End Discrimination Against Women

Women still face sexual and other violence, within and outside the home, as #MeToo and the damning reports into sexual violence on Australian campuses reveal.

Decades on from the passing of anti-discrimination laws that promised so much equality, we still need to combat institutionalised sexism, misogyny and inequality.

We campaign to:

• Make abortion legal and treat it as a health issue.
• Stop “foetal personhood” laws: they are a back-door way of restricting women’s reproductive rights.
• Fully fund secular refuges and housing for women and children escaping family violence.
• Restore the Safe Schools (and equivalent) programs, which teach inclusion and respect, and remove religious instruction from public schools.
• Increase public transport, especially at night, and employ conductors to make it safer.
• Increase lighting in public spaces.
• Bring the student colleges under the control of university administrations.
• Establish permanent, trained sexual assault officers, operating from safe spaces, on all campuses.
• Restore full funding to the 24-hour 1800 RESPECT support service, and staff it with domestic violence and health professionals.
• Make the ACTU’s demand for 10 days’ paid leave the minimum domestic violence leave provision for all NSW workers.

End Discrimination Against Women

Women still face sexual and other violence, within and outside the home, as #MeToo and the damning reports into sexual violence on Australian campuses reveal.

Decades on from the passing of anti-discrimination laws that promised so much equality, we still need to combat institutionalised sexism, misogyny and inequality.

We campaign to:

• Make abortion legal and treat it as a health issue.
• Stop “foetal personhood” laws: they are a back-door way of restricting women’s reproductive rights.
• Fully fund secular refuges and housing for women and children escaping family violence.
• Restore the Safe Schools (and equivalent) programs, which teach inclusion and respect, and remove religious instruction from public schools.
• Increase public transport, especially at night, and employ conductors to make it safer.
• Increase lighting in public spaces.
• Bring the student colleges under the control of university administrations.
• Establish permanent, trained sexual assault officers, operating from safe spaces, on all campuses.
• Restore full funding to the 24-hour 1800 RESPECT support service, and staff it with domestic violence and health professionals.
• Make the ACTU’s demand for 10 days’ paid leave the minimum domestic violence leave provision for all NSW workers.

Increase Public Housing

Housing is a fundamental human right. In NSW, housing supply needs to be taken out of the hands of greedy developers and speculators.

At the last census, some 40,000 people were homeless and 50% of households experienced “rental stress”, meaning that more than one-third of their income was spent on rent.

The number of people sleeping rough in NSW was almost double the national average, and the waiting list for public housing is now more than 60,000.

Over the last decade, rents have increased at almost double the rate of household income.

We campaign to:

• End the sell-off of public housing across NSW.
• Restore and expand public housing: build 60,000 new public housing units in four years.
• Conduct an audit of vacant housing owned by speculators benefitting from negative gearing, and make it available to those in need of accommodation.
• Mandate 20% of all new apartment blocks for public housing, and make the NSW government responsible for covering the costs of heating and cooling.
• Cap public and private rent at 30% of residents’ income.
• Develop alternative housing options, such as co-housing, cooperatives and communal housing.

Planning Laws & Local Government

The NSW government’s pro-developer, profiteering approach, supported by the NSW Labor and Coalition parties, has led to environmentally unsound developments, a lack of public infrastructure, unaffordable housing and the privatisation of services paid for by the people of NSW.

Planning decisions must be put back into the hands of local communities, residents' groups and local government. We support the calls for a referendum on council amalgamations, which were rammed through despite widespread opposition.

We campaign for:

• A return to public ownership of all the public assets and services that have been privatised, including the electricity network, hospitals, port and transport services, and other public services.
• Return disability support services to the public sector.
• Investment in community building infrastructure in regional towns.
• Government reinvestment in community facilities, including public swimming pools, parks, sporting fields, art and cultural precincts and museums.

Planning Laws & Local Government

The NSW government’s pro-developer, profiteering approach, supported by the NSW Labor and Coalition parties, has led to environmentally unsound developments, a lack of public infrastructure, unaffordable housing and the privatisation of services paid for by the people of NSW.

Planning decisions must be put back into the hands of local communities, residents' groups and local government. We support the calls for a referendum on council amalgamations, which were rammed through despite widespread opposition.

We campaign for:

• A return to public ownership of all the public assets and services that have been privatised, including the electricity network, hospitals, port and transport services, and other public services.
• Return disability support services to the public sector.
• Investment in community building infrastructure in regional towns.
• Government reinvestment in community facilities, including public swimming pools, parks, sporting fields, art and cultural precincts and museums.

Protect Jobs and Working Conditions

Successive NSW governments’ corporatisations and privatisations have led to thousands of job cuts. We want to strengthen NSW industrial relations laws to protect workers and hold employers to account.

According to Fair Work Australia, 50% of employers are not paying the correct wages.

Seventeen percent of homeless people work full-time, and one in three homeless people work part-time, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The growth of insecure work makes it easier for employers to keep wages low.

We campaign for:

• Stronger state-based industrial relations laws to protect workers’ jobs and rights.
• Restoring state-based awards.
• An end to the public sector job cuts, reinstating workers who have been sacked, and removing the 2.5% cap on public sector wages.
• Increasing and enforcing the minimum wage.
• Reinstating penalty rates.
• Restoring workers’ compensation rights, including removing the limit on reimbursement of medical expenses from workplace injuries, and reinstating lump-sum payments and common law rights to sue for pain and suffering.
• Reinstating insurance cover for travel to and from work.
• No loss of working conditions in “exchange” for wage rises.
• Reversing the attacks on workplace health and safety.
• Extending the right to strike and scrapping the fines on workers taking industrial action: workers’ only power is their right to withdraw their labour.
• Clamping down on employers’ refusing to offer permanent contracts.
• Better regulation and unionisation of the gig economy.

Fund Public Education

Education is a fundamental right for all people, yet the policies of successive NSW governments have turned education into a privilege, accessible mainly to the wealthy.

At all levels, the public education system has been systematically dismantled, while private schools enjoy billions in taxpayer subsidies. Early childhood education is increasingly out of reach for most working people, leading to increased pressure on parents, in particular mothers, to exit the workforce.

We campaign for:

• Free education and an end to funding cuts to public education.
• Building new public schools in all new residential developments and wherever student numbers have increased: local primary schools for local communities.
• No high-rise schools, which will limit playground space.
• A fully public-funded TAFE and free access to a broad range of vocational training.

Youth Rights

Young people occupy a unique position in society: they face formal and informal discrimination, as well as disproportionate social and political exclusion.

They are often the first to be hit and are more affected by homelessness, violence, poverty, social exclusion, and attacks on workers’ and students’ rights.

Young people should be able to have meaningful input into the decisions that affect their lives. They should have opportunities to reach their full potential, free from exploitation, oppression and discrimination.

We campaign for:

• Funding for new programs and centres to assist young people to find work or access further training and education after leaving school.
• Boosting specialist mental health services for youth, and in some instances run by youth, including on TAFE and university campuses.
• Lowering the voting age to 16 years.
• Recreational and social facilities for youth that are not run by religious organisations or the police.
• Prioritising the housing needs of disadvantaged youth.
• Increasing state-funded apprenticeships as pathways to employment.

Make NSW a Refugee Safe Haven

While refugee policy is a national responsibility, state governments can and should show leadership in combatting racism and developing a humanitarian approach to refugees and asylum seekers

We campaign to:

• Close Villawood Detention Centre and process asylum seekers’ and refugees’ applications while they live in the community.
• Pressure the federal government to close down its offshore detention centres, and offer accommodation to those currently imprisoned on Manus Island and Nauru.

No Racism

NSW, home for many new and older migrant communities, must champion tolerance, and stand against racism and Islamophobia.

There is no need for state-based “anti-terror” laws that target people of Muslim or Arabic background: there are enough laws already in place to deal with actual criminal acts.

We support educational anti-racism programs in schools and other institutions.

Health Care

Health includes the physical, mental and social wellbeing of individuals and the community.

A healthy life depends on a healthy natural environment, safe working conditions and people’s individual and collective capacity to increase control over all aspects of their lives. Good health is based on the concept of community control.

We support universal access to good quality health care as a fundamental human right.

We campaign for:

• Stopping and reversing the privatisation of public health services.
• Increasing funding for public hospitals to increase the number of beds and staff, including implementing a nurse-to-patient ratio of at least 1 to 4.
• No private-public hospitals: build public hospitals instead.
• Increased funding for social, community and preventative health-care programs, including in mental health and disease prevention.
• Resourcing and empowering Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to meet the urgent health-care needs of their communities.
• Increased funding for rural and regional health-care workers and services.
• Free dental care for all, including at schools.
• A health-based approach to drug use, including improved drug and alcohol support services, an end to harassment strategies, and access to pill testing at public events.
• Reinstatement of Registered Nurses in every aged-care facility 24 hours a day, and implementation of union-supported staffing ratios in aged-care facilities and emergency care.
• Scrap the lock-out laws because it has proven to be no solution: while it has reduced street violence in specific areas, the violence has shifted to the home and other suburban areas.

Strengthening our Rights

The current social system encourages people and communities to be passive and leave change up the politicians. Given the unrepresentative nature of parliaments, which the electoral laws help maintain, this is inadequate and dangerous.

Protesting is a basic democratic right in a free society. We say that communities have to organise for the changes they want: history shows this is the only way to gain reforms.

We campaign for:

• Rescinding the raft of new laws that restrict people’s rights to protest and organise.
• Defend ICAC’s role in exposing corruption in government and corporations, and make its workings transparent.

Rural and Regional Support

Rural and regional communities are some of the poorest, and fewer services and jobs in these communities means that a growing number of people are struggling to survive.

Drought is also having a major impact on farmers’ ability to make ends meet, and townships are suffering as produce is reduced.

We campaign for:

• Emergency assistance to struggling farmers, including for sustainable farming and programs to help farmers set up cooperatives.
• Restoration and rebuilding of transportation links.
• Rebuilding local TAFEs.
• Reopening and maintaining state government offices and post offices, and increased funding for public health services, including hospitals and access to doctors.
• Assistance to promote the transition from coalmining and fracking jobs to sustainable jobs.
• Boosting mental health services and other supports to help prevent suicides.
• Free, fast telecommunication access and maintenance services.
• Support for people who want to move to regional areas to find housing, education and employment.
• Removing the water subsidies to industries, and fining companies that are contaminating water resources and clearing forests.
• An end to agribusiness’ theft of water from the Murray Darling river system.

Animal Welfare

We support a national framework for protecting animal welfare, and the enforcement and monitoring of existing laws that criminalise cruelty to animals and regulate conditions for the captivity, transport and slaughter of animals.

We campaign for:

• An end to intensive, factory farming in meat, dairy and egg production.
• An end to the export of live animals for food.
• Tightening and enforcing standards for free-range farming practices.
• Alternatives to shark nets and the culling of sharks.
• A ban on trophy hunting of animals, including native water birds.
• Abolition of cruel or inhumane use of animals for sport, recreation or entertainment.
• Proper labelling of animal products, such as eggs.

Electoral Reform

There is a deep-seated and systemically corrupt culture of money politics in NSW. It is not confined to a few “bad apples”.

We need to reclaim democracy for the common good.

We stand for real participatory democracy and decision-making, and we campaign to:

• Replace the present voting system with proportional representation at all levels of government.
• Abolish restrictive and onerous electoral laws that privilege the major parties.
• Abolish the current electoral funding model, which entrenches the status quo and benefits the major parties.
• Introduce publicly-funded election campaigns, with a fixed spending amount decided before each election.
• Oblige the NSW Electoral Commission to publicly distribute the platforms of all parties and candidates, and to hold community information stalls to explain the voting system.
• Allow voters to recall elected representatives from all levels of government if 10% or more electors petition for a recall election.
• End political careerism and rorting by legislating for all elected representatives to be paid an average worker’s wage and receive an average worker’s retirement pension.
• Require all electoral donations to be publicly declared, and reject any restriction on trade union donations so long as they are democratically agreed to by the union members.
• Lower the voting age to 16 years.

NSW Legislative Council team

Socialist Alliance is fielding a ticket of 18 activist candidates for our NSW Upper House ticket. It is headed by Rachel Evans, Peter Boyle (both leading Socialist Alliance members) and Sam Ashby (an independent socialist from Newcastle).

Rachel Evens: Rachel helped instigate the successful campaign for marriage equality.

Peter Boyle: Peter is a leader in the campaign to fix NSW transport.

Sam Ashby: Sam is a unionist and a community campaigner in Newcastle .

Also on the ticket (in order) are:

Andrew Chuter (unionist and public transport campaigner),  
Paula Sanchez (Latin American solidarity activist, nursing educator and unionist),  
Phil Craig (student activist from western sydney),  
Pip Hinman (feminist, Stop CSG activist and anti-war campaigner),  
Raul Bassi (unionist and solidarity activist with First Nations struggles),  
Margaret Gleeson (Stop Adani activist, trade unionist),  
Jim McIlroy (public sector unionist and anti-privatisation campaigner),  
Coral Wynter (feminist, solidarity activist and No WestConnex activist),  
Zebedee Parkes (film-maker and refugee rights activist),  
Semra Coban (left activist),  
Duncan Roden (GLW journalist and environmental scientist),  
Topia Ryan-Jones (socialist feminist activist from Wollongong),  
Joel McAlear (socialist activist from Wollongong),  
Nicole McGregor (Hunter Valley farmer) and  
John Coleman (former rail worker and RTBU member from New England).

Our ticket comprises 50% women candidates.

Donate to the campaign today!

You can donate via direct deposit/EFT to:
Westpac Bank  
BSB: 032-039  
Account number: 189 150  
(Please include your name in the description and email us at nsw@socialist-alliance.org to be provided with a receipt.)

or DONATE SECURELY ONLINE via credit card

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Socialist Alliance doesn't accept corporate donations and relies on our supporters to fund our election campaigns.