The NSW election race is heating up as voters get ready for the polls on Saturday, March 25.
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To cut through the campaign noise, ACM has broken down the major parties' position on five important issues: health, housing, gambling, education and roads.
Health
Liberals and Nationals:
- Employ 10,000 extra health workers in the next four years
- Recruit more than 2000 paramedics, build 30 ambulance stations and a new virtual coordination centre for dealing with triple zero calls
- Investing $11.9bn to deliver new and upgraded hospitals and health facilities over four years
- Committing to a further $1.2bn injection to build and upgrade 20 hospitals if re-elected
- Reform pharmacy regulations to allow access more health services without having to see a GP
- Establish 25 urgent care services starting in Wentworthville, Rouse Hill, Marsden Park and Castle Hill
- Invest $883m over four years to help attract and retain health workers in regional communities
- Offer free parking at regional hospitals and health services if re-elected
- Commit $7m for virtual consultation spaces in all multipurpose services for follow-up telehealth appointments with specialists across the state
- Invest an extra $20m in the Royal Flying Doctor Service over four years
Labor:
- Remove the wages cap on health workers
- Recruit 1200 nurses and midwives within four years
- Mandate minimum and enforceable safe staffing levels in public hospitals
- Fund an extra 500 rural and regional paramedics
- Build and upgrade hospitals across Western Sydney
- Fund an extra 29 McGrath Breast Care nurses across NSW
- Double the current funding for Women's Health Centres
Greens:
- Introducing safe nurse-to-patient ratios
- Abolish the public sector wage cap
- Give a real pay rise to healthcare workers with annual pay rises above inflation
- Bolster the public community health sector to allow access to health services for free
- Invest in the NSW regional health system to make free and accessible healthcare options available to all residents.
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers
- Incentive package to attract nurses and doctors to regional areas
- Increase hospital staffing and adopt patient-to-staff ratio
- Reinstate local boards at public hospitals
- Establish $500m independent grant fund for regional hospital equipment
- Independent audit of regional public hospital services
- Develop mental health services at every regional NSW hospital
- Expand NSW Government's Patient Transport Service
- Double travel and accommodation assistance for patients who need to travel more than 100km for medical treatment
- Stop privatisation of public hospitals
- Conduct inquiry into complaints within NSW Health regional district offices
Housing
Liberals and Nationals:
- Expand First Home Buyer Choice program to allow people to choose to pay an annual property payment on future property purchases instead of stamp duty
- Launched Shared Equity Home Buyer Helper to help essential workers, single parents and older singles buy a home
- Delivering $2.8bn housing package announced June 2022 including key worker housing in regional communities, rezoning, fast-tracking critical infrastructure, and upgrading affordable and social housing
Labor:
- Rebalance population and housing growth around transport infrastructure
- Abolish or reduce stamp duty for 95 per cent of first home buyers
- Introduce a target of 30 per cent affordable, social and universal housing on surplus public land
- Appoint a rental commissioner to be an advocate and voice for renters
- Ban rent bidding
- Make it easier to have pets in rentals
- Streamline the rental bond process to allow renters to directly transfer bonds from one property to another
- $30m pilot Build to Rent program on the south coast
Greens:
- Introduce a rent freeze and end unfair no-grounds evictions
- Invest in affordable housing and legislate that at least 10 per cent of all dwellings in NSW be public and not-for-profit social housing by 2040
- Invest in 10,000 new public and social homes each year for the next decade
- End homelessness through a Housing First approach
- Regulate short-term rental accommodation
- Tackle economic inequality and deliver affordable housing through a new land tax on high-end residential properties
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers:
- Oppose an ongoing property tax on family homes and farms
- Back the current exemption for transfers of intergenerational family farms to remain
- Unpaid property tax remaining on a deceased estate to be forgiven entirely
- Rates of applicable property tax to be fixed in legislation, not in annual budget finance papers, to allow for review by parliament
Gambling
Liberals and Nationals:
- Make all poker machines in NSW cashless by the end of 2028
- Support all eight recommendations of the NSW Crime Commissioner to eliminate money laundering at pubs and clubs
- Ban political donations from pubs and clubs
- Optional buy-back scheme targeted to acquire 2000 machines from venues over five years
- Legislate privacy privacy protections for player data
- Harm minimisation including mandating breaks in play and self-exclusion
- Cash feed in limit of $500 for new machines
- Transition taskforce
- Support for communities, organisations, pubs and clubs
Labor:
- 12-month cashless gaming trial in NSW to begin July 1, 2023, with at least 500 machines
- Ban political parties accepting financial donations from clubs with gaming machines
- Introduce cash input limits of $500 per machine for all new machines from July 1, 2023
- Ban all external gaming related signage
- Reduce the amount of poker machines in NSW
- Introduce Responsible Gaming Officers in venues with more than 20 poker machines
- $100 million fund for harm minimisation programs
- Introduce third party exclusion and mandatory facial recognition technology
Greens:
- Make pubs and clubs pay a pokies 'super tax' and reparation fund for affected communities
- Phase out poker machines from pubs in five years and clubs in 10 years
- Introduce mandatory cashless gambling card
- $1 bet limits and midnight to midday pokies curfew
- Ban gambling donations to political parties
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers:
- Oppose implementation of universal pre-commitment cashless gaming through poker machines
- Oppose government mandated and controlled pre-commitment cards
- Support industry supported, implemented and run programs once proven for problem gamblers, with no harm test to local regional communities as part of such programs
Education
Liberals and Nationals:
- Deliver $15.9bn early years commitment including free universal pre-kindergarten in the year before school and building 500 preschools at public schools
- Improve classroom behaviour with the newly appointed chief behaviour advisor
- Share school texts and learning resources with parents and greater support to resolve disagreements
- Invest a further $1.2bn for new and upgraded schools over the next four years
- Continue the $250m small group tutoring program in 2023
- $100m commitment to pay excellent teacher salaries of up to $152,000
- Introduce a one-year masters qualification for aspiring high school teachers and make 15,000 teachers and support staff permanent in 2023
- Double the number of teaching undergraduates in the bush
Labor:
- Build 100 public preschools co-located with government primary schools in its first term if elected
- Invest and expand 50 preschools at non-government schools
- Deliver new and upgraded schools in high growth areas of NSW
- Convert 10,000 temporary teachers to permanent roles
- Reduce administration hours for teachers by five hours per week
- Make teacher salaries more competitive by scraping the wages cap
- Create a $400m Education Future Fund and establish a permanent, ongoing literacy and numeracy tutoring program
- Ban mobile phones in all public schools
- Guarantee minimum funding and rebuild TAFE
Greens:
- Give school and TAFE teachers a pay rise
- Reduce hours of face-to-face teaching per week for teachers
- Recruit and retain 12,000 new teachers over the next decade
- Invest $1 billion to address a school maintenance backlog by 2026
- Provide at least one extra school counsellor for every public school over the next four years
- Provide extra funds for free public school breakfast and lunches, cover excursions and other individual student costs
- Make TAFE free
- Ensure free and universal preschool by 2030
- Deliver 100 new government preschools in the next three years
- Wipe student university debt
- Fund universities adequately and disallow privatisation of the tertiary sector
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers:
- Incentivise teaching in rural and remote schools
- Replace the professional ethics standards department with an independent external body
- Support to establish and maintain classes in stage five and six agriculture and stage six vocational courses in primary industries
- Require schools with students failing to meet literacy and numeracy standards to address this by implementing strategies in a three-year cycle
- Campaign for the NSW Government to recognise target shooting, hunting and fishing as appropriate cultural activities and sports for public schools
- Support development and expansion for TAFE and oppose funding cuts
Roads and transport
Liberals and Nationals:
- Invest $1bn in better road and rail connections in the regions; $400m to help regional councils fix local roads, $300 million to tackle freight pinch points on the road and rail network, and $300m to invest in stronger, more resilient roads and transport infrastructure
- $12 million to upgrade airstrips across western NSW and support air services to remote communities
- 1000 young regional drivers to upgrade to a safer, newer vehicle with a $5000 subsidy
- Subsidise heavy vehicle courses for young truck drivers and appoint a new supply chain commissioner to unblock supply chains
Labor:
- Introduce a $60 weekly toll cap for two years from 2024 and overhaul the toll network
- Build new trains in NSW and replace ageing Tangara fleet
- End privatisation of public transport
- Build Parramatta light rail stage two
- Establish an industry taskforce to improve bus services across NSW
Greens:
- Introduce free public transport
- Prevent further privatisation of public assets and services and reverse privatisation of the bus network
- Bring rail assets under direct government ownership and control
- Regulate tolls
- Fast-track transition of bus fleet to electric
- Allow pets onto public transport with restrictions
- Improve accessibility on public transport
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers:
- Advocate for an immediate review of regional road projects and priorities key projects
- Advocate for a greater share of road funding to go to regional NSW
- Call for a maximum distance between rest stops on major highways and roads be regulated
- Oppose re-establishment of the Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal
- Campaign for a portion of Snowy Hydro sale funds to go towards sealing regional roads