AMUST interviews NSW Labor leader Chris Minns

This exclusive interview was conducted on Wednesday 22 February 2023, with NSW Australian Labor Party leader Mr Chris Minns, discussing various issues affecting Western Sydney, including the state of hospitals, housing, equitable treatment during COVID lockdowns, support for multicultural communities and media, and addressing discrimination based on faith.

There has been great concern in the state of the hospitals in Western Sydney specially at Blacktown Hospital with substandard medical as well as nursing standards. How is Labor going to address this for Western Sydney residents?

Chris Minns: That’s a good question. So what we’re going to do is invest in the people that help us. So that means introducing safe staffing levels. So emergency department sets 1 nurse to every 3 patients in New South Wales.

Public hospitals are going to return 600 beds to Western Sydney because the Government has been cutting beds from New South Wales hospitals.

And we need to make sure that we’re keeping pace with the health crisis in the state. There are many issues affecting the health system, but you can’t just put your head in the sand and say that it’s too hard and it’s also a Commonwealth Government problem.

We need to make sure that this government, this election isn’t about passing and Labor is committed to turning around the performance of our hospital system.

There is a strong concern re housing in Sydney. Guardian newspaper has reported this morning that NSW Government has initiated fast-track rezoning in the wrong places. There is land in Marsden Park area where growth areas needs rezoning. What initiatives can you take if Labor comes to power?

Chris Minns: Yes, absolutely. I hear what you’re saying. We need to make sure that there’s infrastructure in place to keep pace with the growing population, particularly in Western Sydney.

I have been to too many suburbs and too many communities where people have been waiting desperately for the infrastructure that hasn’t arrived. So we need to make sure that there’s fairness in Sydney. We’re going to start with Western Sydney.

We want to make sure that particularly fast growing parts of Western Sydney believe that they’ve got a government that’s looking out for them. And I think that to say that a community or electorate is away from Macquarie Street with townhouses, there’s a tendency to believe that.

People particularly in South Western Sydney LGA’s were made to suffer re restriction of movement during COVID lockdowns. This kind of discrimination based on areas of residence were perceived to be highly resentful. How is Labor going to be equitable regarding these matters in future?

Chris Minns: So I think there’s a tendency to believe that they’re not getting the kind of support they need from the government. And I’m going to make sure that if we are elected on the 25th of March, we represent everybody equally and there’s real fairness.

Second point here is the current government has a real history of pork barreling were they. Money into their own electricity, expensive other tax payers in the state. I think that’s fair. Those multicultural media for dissemination of information to reach into the multicultural communities?

Chris Minns: The leading reason is because during COVID, we really relied on multicultural candidates to make sure and in particular ethnic media stories about vaccinations and restrictions that were in place to keep people safe.

Yes. To make sure that you’ve got the ability to push out public policy messages, because in many cases, government departments don’t have translation services and they’re not providing infor are concerned about discrimination in New South Wales and no one should be discriminated against on the basis of their race or their religion.

We’ve been we’ve been well-served by waves of immigration from countries around the world that those of Islamic faith have made their home in Australia.

They’re proving to be wonderful Australians starting businesses, starting families, paying taxes, growing the economy and adding to the wonderful culture, a multicultural culture that we have in Australia.

So we’re so glad that waves of immigrants have chosen Australia as it made us better and we’ve all got an obligation to make sure that discrimination doesn’t take hold in the country because we’ve got a great place in Australia and we don’t have the problems that many countries around the world do, despite the fact that people come to this place from hundreds and hundreds of different countries and have many, many different races and religions.

The last question is, how confident do you feel to win the state election on Saturday 25 March?

Chris Minns: Look, you know, we’re very hungry about the next election, but we’re very humbled to, I think it will be close. But we’re going to work hard on behalf of the people of New South Wales and look, fingers crossed.

Thank you very much for your time and we will be wishing you for a successful outcome and we will be praying for you as well. Thank you.

Chris Minns: I need those prayers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

There were a couple of more questions that could not be answered due to the shortage of time and therefore a Labor spokesperson later provided the answers:

There has been very late preselection of candidates both by Labor and Liberals. Indecision for the seat of Cabramatta has been of great concern where Tu Le seems to be ignored again as she was during the federal election last year in the seat of Fowler. Any update on this?

Preselection of candidates is a matter for NSW Labor.

Oppression of Palestinians by the state of Israel is rife and any criticism of atrocities committed by Israel is being defended by accusing these criticisms being anti-semitic according to definition being pushed by IHRA . This is being perceived as gagging any criticism of Israel. What are your views on it?

There is bipartisan support for the IHRA in NSW. I will leave events in Israel for the Federal Government to comment on. But I will say that in NSW there is a great deal of cooperation and understanding between people of different faiths. NSW has Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus and people of many other faiths living together in harmony.