About
Our vision for New South Wales
A vote for the Socialist Party is a vote for something radically different to the major parties. We want a New South Wales run for people, not profit. That means breaking with a system in which housing, energy, transport and essential services are organised around making money for developers, banks, big corporations, and billionaires, and fighting instead for a socialist society in which working-class people, our communities, and the environment we all depend on for survival, come first.
At the centre of our campaign is a simple idea: everyone should have what they need to live a good life. In one of the wealthiest societies in the world, no one should be struggling to pay the rent, keep the lights on or put food on the table. No one should be stuck for years on a public housing waiting list, priced out of their own community, or denied decent health care, education, transport, disability support or other essential public services.
The problem is not that New South Wales lacks the wealth or resources to provide these things. Its that more and more of the wealth created by working people is concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority. Property developers and investors make fortunes from the housing crisis. Banks profit from enormous mortgages. Private toll-road operators charge workers just to get around their own city. Meanwhile, billions in public money are spent subsidising big business and fossil fuel companies, funding elite private schools, and pouring more money into police and prisons.
For decades, Labor and Liberal governments have accepted the same basic priorities. They have privatised and outsourced public services, handed public assets and infrastructure to private corporations, held down workers’ wages and shaped housing and planning around the interests of developers and business. The result is a state that is enormously wealthy, but increasingly unaffordable and unequal.
Chris Minns has not broken with this legacy. His Labor government has established itself as one of the most right-wing governments in the country. It has waged war on public-sector workers — breaking wage promises, offering below inflation pay rises and denouncing nurses, doctors, teachers, paramedics and train drivers when they take industrial action for better pay and conditions. Minns has cracked down on the right to protest, introducing draconian laws and using police repression and legal threats against climate activists and the Palestine solidarity movement. Labor promised change after twelve years of Liberal government. Instead, Minns has shown that when workers fight, when protesters resist and when corporate interests are challenged, his government knows which side it is on.
NSW Socialists have completely different priorities. We want the rich and big business to pay more, and working-class people to get more. We want to reverse privatisation and put essential services back into public hands. We want a massive expansion of public housing, properly funded hospitals and schools, cheaper and better public transport, decent wages and conditions for workers, and serious action on climate change that puts communities and workers ahead of the profits of the fossil fuel industry.
Socialism means using society’s wealth and resources to meet human need rather than generate private profit. It means taking power and wealth away from the billionaires and corporations that dominate our economy and politics, and putting working-class people and our communities first. That's what socialism is really about: for the many, not the few.