When NSW Labor came to power in 2023 there was hope that the housing affordability crisis might ease. Now, after two years on, those hopes have been dashed.
Under Chris Minns’ government, with Rose Jackson as Minister for Housing, the neoliberal policies of the previous Liberal government’s 12 years have continued. The cost of housing has continued to dramatically rise.
In the lead-up to the 2023 NSW election, the disastrous record of the Coalition government on public housing was hard to miss.
Premiers Barry O’Farrell, Mike Baird, Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet had sold off $3 billion worth of public housing, including the iconic Sirius building in the Rocks and all of it in Millers Point. They also privatised about a third of all public housing under the Social Housing Management Transfer Program.
Labor wanted to distance itself from that and made a number of pre-election promises to stop the sale of public housing and stop privatisation.
Minns announced: “We are immediately freezing the sale of all public and social housing”. He sent SMS messages to Waterloo residents that read: “ONLY LABOR WILL STOP THE SELL-OFF & PRIVATISATION OF PUBLIC HOUSING IN NSW! VOTE [1] RON HOENIG”. Jackson, then-shadow NSW housing minister, and several Labor councillors sent similar messages.
Labor’s breaking of its promises started to become apparent soon after its election. The biggest demolition and privatisation plan, on the books from the previous government, was at Waterloo. At a housing forum in June 2023, Jackson claimed that the plans could not be stopped. Since then, the revised plans still have about 70% of the renewal area being private housing, or privately owned, and managed “affordable” housing.
Since then, very similar public housing privatisation plans have continued under Labor in Redfern, Glebe, South Eveleigh, Telopea, Mascot, Maroubra and Kingsford, despite vocal community campaigns to stop them.
If Labor was going to break its promises, it might at least announce targets against which its actions could be judged. The number of households on the NSW public and community housing waiting list since mid-2023 has grown from about 56,000 to 66,000.
Activist group Action for Public Housing wrote to Jackson in February asking if there was any target to reduce the length of the wait list. Homes NSW’s response was effectively “no”. Homes NSW stated that “the size of the waitlist may not be the best measure of how effectively the NSW Government is addressing demand for social housing”.
Its response made no reference to any other existing target, but merely mentioned they were “giving careful consideration to setting targets”.
If Labor was not going to keep its promises, or set meaningful targets, at least one could hope for an admission of truth about the matter.
A strong pro-public housing resolution was passed in 2022 at the NSW Labor conference. Moved by Zac Gillies-Palmer and seconded by Rita Mallia, then President of the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union NSW branch, it bound a future Labor government to “implement legislation which places a moratorium on the privatisation of public housing including the sale, outsourcing, or leasing of any public housing assets or services”.
At the June 2023 housing forum, Jackson, now the housing minister, said she considered Labor’s conference motion to be government policy. Federal Labor MP Tanya Plibersek was also present at the forum.
Action for Public Housing wrote to Jackson in April given the ongoing privatisation and outsourcing of public housing. It asked if there would be any attempt by NSW Labor to enact the motion with a new law. Despite repeated requests, she has not replied.
Gillies-Palmer told Green Left that “the actions of the NSW Labor government betray the binding motion delegates passed unanimously in 2022. And, if Rose Jackson won’t admit that she’s torn up Labor’s promise, or reply to questions about it, then I think that’s cowardly.”
To make matters worse, Jackson and the Minns government now refuse to admit that their “redevelopment” of public housing are simply privatisations, even though the resulting proportion of private homes is usually more than 50%, with the rest in some combination of private management or ownership.
In a letter sent to the hundreds of objectors to the redevelopment plans of the once 100% public housing site at 600 Elizabeth Street, Redfern, Jackson wrote: “I agree privatisation of this project would not be in the public interest, which is why Homes NSW is partnering with Bridge Housing, a not-for-profit community housing provider.”
But this is Orwellian double-speak. Community Housing Providers (CPH) are still private; CHPs typically pay their chief executives more than $300,000 a year. Transfers of public housing to CHPs threaten public sector jobs and have led to public housing offices being closed. The greater use of the umbrella term “social housing” is used to erode the important distinction between public and private housing.
Labor’s dishonesty and lack of will to do anything useful to fix the housing crisis is leaving 35,000 people homeless every night. There are 3 million people at risk of homelessness, and millions of others in housing stress.
It is a grave failure and breach of trust with the people of NSW.
[Andrew Chuter is a member of Action for Public Housing.]