‘The work starts today’: Minns, senior MPs meet to tackle Labor’s urgent priorities

Premier-elect Chris Minns will convene a snap leadership meeting with his most senior MPs on Sunday to prepare to implement his new government’s policies to tackle cost-of-living pressures and remove the Coalition’s public sector wages cap.

Just hours after he claimed a historic win for the NSW Labor Party, which is on track to form a majority government for the first time in over a decade, Minns said scrapping the 3 per cent wages cap for nurses, teachers and other state workers was an urgent priority.

“We’ll sit down of course with essential workers as well as their representatives about the next stage forward,” he said.

“We’ll be having a leadership group meeting this afternoon with senior ministers elect in the coming hours to talk about our responsibilities to ensure that we’ve got our plans in place ready to go from day one, hour one, on behalf of the people in this state.”

Minns said his party was in a unique position, emboldened from Saturday’s thumping election win, to begin changing the direction of the NSW public sector by boosting staffing at schools and hospitals and legislating against further privatisation of government assets.

“We’re not going to waste the day. The work starts today, and we’re very serious and our message to the people of NSW is we’re not taking an hour or a day off,” he said.

Minns confirmed Summer Hill MP Jo Haylen would become the state’s next transport minister, and expected her to receive immediate briefings on the city’s beleaguered train system, which suffered serious delays as recently as Saturday evening.

Meanwhile, Labor deputy Prue Car will also keep her shadow portfolio and become education minister, as will Ryan Park with health.

While Minns confirmed the key ministerial positions of his leadership team on Sunday, he said he would wait until he knew the full results of Saturday’s election were known before finalising his cabinet.

Former Labor MP Steven Whan – who held the Monaro for two terms between 2003 and 2011 – wrestled back the seat from the Nationals on Saturday, with senior party figures speculating he could walk back into a cabinet position.

Minns credited Labor’s win on Saturday to a clear and simple campaign based on essential state government services and cost-of-living issues in an election held amid surging inflation.

“I think Labor went into this election campaign with specific, credible and common sense initiatives that would actually make a difference to our schools and our hospitals and the rising cost of living for the people of this state,” he said.

He said the opposition’s lack of resources meant that key shadow ministers were dealing directly with frontline staff and voters to shape policy, which ultimately ended up helping the party.

“Myself and my senior shadow ministers were very close to the ground, speaking directly to nurses and teachers speaking directly to community organisations,” he said.

“There was never a buffer between us and the people of this state.”

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