Make power affordable and sustainable
Electricity in New South Wales has almost entirely been sold off to private companies. We were promised that privatisation would mean lower prices, greater efficiency and reliable supply. Instead, the average family now pays between $2000 - $2,500 a year for electricity, with prices having risen at roughly double the rate of inflation over the past 25 years.
From generation to supply, private energy companies extract profits every step of the way, making billions of dollars from an essential service people cannot live without.
People can’t safely stop using energy even if they can’t afford to pay, and this means hardship on a significant scale. Households are going without heating in winter and cooling in summer, rationing power use and going into debt. Energy is also a public health issue — living in homes that are too cold or too hot worsens existing conditions and causes new illness.
NSW Socialists believe energy is too essential to be left to the market. Public ownership is the way to guarantee households get power they can afford and we transition to the renewable and sustainable energy supply we need.
We’ll fight for
Cut energy prices
- Introduce an immediate cap on household electricity and gas prices, reducing bills to genuinely affordable levels, with the gap between capped prices and market costs funded from energy company profits, royalties and windfall taxes.
Bring energy back into public hands
- Bring NSW energy infrastructure back into public ownership, beginning with distribution networks and extending to generation and retail, with no compensation paid to shareholders for assets whose value was built on privatised public infrastructure.
- Establish a publicly owned, not-for-profit energy operator responsible for all aspects of energy provision, mandating energy security, affordability, democratic accountability and the full transition to renewable energy.