Sydney - Middle East Times Int’l: The NSW Labor Government has marked one year in office, passing 74 bills and delivering on major election commitments.

We were elected with a clear mandate to rebuild essential services, invest in our frontline workers, address the housing crisis, and stop privatisation. That is exactly what we are doing.

The NSW Government’s number one priority is helping people across NSW with cost-of-living pressures. At the centre of that is housing.

We have unveiled some of the most transformative planning reforms in NSW that will increase supply, making housing more affordable and in well-located areas close to transport, jobs and existing infrastructure. These include: 

• Allowing more types of low and mid-rise housing to create a greater diversity of homes. 

• Accelerating rezoning around 39 transport hubs to marry new housing with existing infrastructure. 

• Putting aside $1.9 billion in the Budget to ensure new housing is supported by critical infrastructure.

• Encouraging more affordable housing with floor space ratio bonuses for projects that have up to 15 per cent affordable housing.

• Allocating $300 million to enable Landcom to accelerate the construction of thousands of new homes, with 30 per cent affordable housing.

To help tackle the cost of living, we’ve removed the former government’s unfair wages cap and are delivering a 4.5 per cent pay rise for essential workers in 2023-24 – the biggest pay rise in a decade.  

We’ve also given NSW teachers the largest pay rise in almost three decades and delivered professional pay and recognition for paramedics, ensuring they are amongst the highest paid in the country. 

In addition, we’ve introduced a $60 toll cap to help families by reducing the cost of moving around our city.

We have delivered on our commitment to ban mobile phones in public high schools across NSW and announced 100 new public preschools, the biggest expansion of public preschools in NSW history.

After record teacher vacancies over the last decade, we transitioned 16,000 teachers and support staff from temporary contracts to permanent roles, and started the school year with teacher vacancies down by 20 percent.

The NSW Government has begun the task of addressing the critical shortfall in police, committing to paying Student Police Officers while they study at the Goulburn Police Academy. This is an important workforce incentive to encourage more people to take up a career in the NSW Police Force.

We have begun rolling out Safe Staffing Levels in NSW public hospitals, which will improve health outcomes, reduce waiting times, take pressure off hospitals and help retain experienced nurses and midwives in the NSW Health workforce.

In 12 months, we have slashed the number of overdue surgeries by over 80 per cent from 14,000 to 2,000 so people aren’t waiting in pain for important surgery.

In the first 12 months, we put the NSW energy transition back on track, legislating a net zero target, and supporting enough renewable projects to get us almost halfway towards our 2030 generation target. This will ensure a reliable supply of affordable power for NSW homes and businesses.

We have delivered the biggest boost to environmental protection laws in more than 30 years, committed $172 million to save koalas in the wild, and have announced four new National Parks plus the expansion of Wolli Creek Regional Park.

We are completing the South West Metro from Sydenham to Bankstown, which will mean passengers currently on the T3 line will be serviced by a train every 4 minutes. 

We confirmed the construction of Metro West, with an enhanced focus on ensuring the project supports significant housing uplift in addition to doubling rail capacity between Parramatta and the Sydney CBD.

Meanwhile our Rail Repair Plan is making train services more reliable for everyone who uses our train network. 

Repairing the budget 

The NSW Government has begun the challenging task of repairing the state’s finances. We’ve reduced debt by $13 billion despite inheriting the largest debt ever passed from one government to another. 

This was all while delivering the biggest infrastructure pipeline in NSW history to build roads, rail, schools and hospitals.

We’ve also declared NSW open for business by scrapping the cap on concerts and abolishing red tape for venues to make it easier to get outdoor dining and reduce noise complaints, to create jobs and get the Sydney economy going again. 

NSW can’t afford to go back to a decade of privatisation, wage suppression and underinvestment in frontline services that we saw under the former government. 

We hit the ground running, to repair the damage done by the previous government and to undertake long-term reform. But that’s just the beginning.

We have an ambitious agenda and will not waste a second delivering reform to improve the quality of life for the people of NSW.

We don’t take government for granted. We are committed to working hard everyday on behalf of the people of NSW.