At the 2022 New South Wales (NSW) Labor policy conference, eight hundred trade union and rank-and-file delegates unanimously endorsed an ambitious social democratic public housing program. This program was intended to commit the NSW Labor Party — which now holds government — to introducing laws banning “the sale, leasing, or outsourcing of any public housing assets or services.” The resolution also requires Labor to increase the number of public dwellings “at a rate exceeding private developments,” effectively forcing the NSW government to increase the supply of public homes in perpetuity.

This program was voted up following a campaign mounted by a coalition of public housing tenant activists, blue-collar unions and left-wing Australian Labor Party (ALP) branch members. According to rough estimated costings, its implementation could amount to as much as $10 billion per year spent on housing, placing NSW Labor’s program far to the left of the federal Labor government’s controversial market-based housing scheme. If implemented, it would offer hope to the fifty-seven thousand people who currently face a five month to ten year wait for social housing in NSW.

However, to implement this ambitious housing program, the Chris Minns state Labor government would need to break with a decades-long commitment to neoliberalism. The only problem is that neither Minns nor his housing minister, Rose Jackson, have any intention of doing this.