Victorian Socialists policy record

Victorian Socialists publish more policy than either major party and no arithmetic to go with it. Renting is the clearest case: one page promises a 25% cut, the index promises a freeze, and both are live. If you want to know what a rent cut would cost or who would pay for it, the site doesn’t say.

Victorian Socialists hold no seats in either chamber. The ABC and Victorian Electoral Commission candidate tracker sources 79 Assembly candidacies and 10 for the Council¹ . The party says it is contesting all 88 Assembly seats and both houses statewide² .

In 2022 it won 48,865 votes, 1.34% of the statewide Assembly vote, and no seat³ . This page sets out what it has published across its 28 policy areas as at 29 October 2026, and marks where the record is thin or contradicts itself.

No costings, and no PBO process to supply them

No Victorian Socialists policy carries a published costing. The party’s answer to how it would pay is a set of new wealth and super-profits taxes, and it publishes no revenue estimate for any of them⁴ .

The Parliamentary Budget Office prepares costings at the request of parliamentary leaders, and releases only the ones a leader authorises⁵ . With no seats the party has no leader inside that process, so its platform sits outside the institution that prices the others. No Victorian Socialists costing appears on the PBO’s 2026 page.

We could not check the PBO’s election commitment tracker itself. Its data sits in a Power BI embed that did not load, so the absence of a Victorian Socialists entry there is unverified.

Renting: the signature promise, published two ways

Housing is the party’s most detailed area and the one where its own pages disagree. The policy index and the candidate pages promise a five-year rent freeze⁶freeze⁷ . The housing page promises a 25% immediate cut to all residential tenancies, then a five-year freeze⁸ .

After that, the housing page caps increases at whichever is lower, half of CPI or wage growth. Both versions are live and neither is dated.

The promises the party states two ways
Promise | One page | The other
Rents | Five-year freeze: index, candidates | 25% cut, then freeze: housing
Luxury property tax | 5% of sale price: taxation | 10% of improved value: housing⁶housing⁸housing⁴

A new Rental Inspectorate Victoria would investigate landlords, set rooming-house rents and order a property transferred into public ownership. Change-of-use evictions would need 12 months’ notice⁸ . None of it is costed, and the party publishes no estimate of what landlords would lose.

Public housing, and a cap on how many homes one person may own

The party would build 150,000 public homes over ten years, 15,000 a year, through a publicly owned construction company it says would create 20,000 jobs⁸ . It would stop the demolition of 44 public housing towers and refurbish them, and require 30% inclusionary zoning on private developments.

No capital figure for 150,000 dwellings appears anywhere on the site. The $400,000 shared-equity cap and 2% loan rate are policy settings, not costs.

An individual or for-profit business would be barred from owning more than five residential properties, and the excess seized and converted to public housing⁸ . Homes left vacant for more than two years would come into public ownership without compensation, taxed at 30% of capital improved value while they sit empty.

Tax: a suite, and one levy with two rates

The tax page proposes a 10% annual wealth tax on billionaires living in Victoria, and on Victorian assets held by billionaires living elsewhere. It would double payroll tax for employers with wages above $5m and set a flat 35% resource royalty. Two more levies: a 20% Bank Profits Tax on the five largest banks, and a 20% Major Retailer Super-Profits Tax on retailers earning more than $100m nationally⁴ .

The luxury property tax is the contradiction a reader should know about. It covers the top 1% of residences. The taxation page rates it at 5% of last sale price a year; the housing page rates it at 10% of improved value a year⁴year⁸ . Those are different bases and different rates, on the same website.

Wages, and a wage floor on government money

The party would mandate $35 an hour plus full penalty rates on all work the state provides or funds: the public sector, funded social services and state construction⁹ . That is a condition on government contracts and grants, not a change to the state award system.

It would remove restrictions on the right to strike, legislate a right to picket and ban prosecutions of striking state-sector workers. Executive pay in the public service, universities and state-owned corporations would be capped at five times Victoria’s median full-time wage. Wage theft would carry imprisonment for executives, with unions and workers given standing to prosecute⁹prosecute¹⁰ .

Some of this runs into Commonwealth law. The party proposes to legislate around the Fair Work Act 2009 using state powers, and publishes no constitutional pathway for doing so.

On democracy, MPs’ basic salary would be capped at $96,000, a sixth-year nurse’s wage, with increases pegged to the nurses’ award. Voting would extend to all permanent residents and to 16-year-olds, and all legal restrictions on protest would go¹¹go¹² .

Schools: the $16 billion figure is not a costing

The schools platform ends state funding for high-fee private schools, caps classes at 15, hires 12,000 teachers and support staff, and fully funds the 2026 AEU log of claims¹³ .

It also promises to return “$16 billion stolen from Victorian schools since 2019” in the 2027 budget¹⁴ . The party describes that as money taken out since 2019, and publishes no method for the number. Read it as an advocacy figure with an unpublished methodology, not as the price of a program.

The same platform would abolish NAPLAN and VCE. Neither has a cost or a transition plan attached. Childcare would be free five days a week through 3,200 new state-run centres, with early childhood educators paid at teacher rates¹³ .

Health, transport and power

Health would get at least three public hospital beds per 1,000 Victorians and free ambulance. Health workers would get 2.5% above inflation now and again in 2028, and community health centres would offer GP, dental, allied health and reproductive care free¹⁵ . No capital figure is published.

All public transport would be permanently free, with train, tram and bus operations taken back into public ownership without compensation to the operators¹⁶ . Tolls would go, outstanding fare-evasion fines would be waived, and cycling would get at least $140m a year, the only transport number the party publishes.

Fares are contested ground now. Labor’s $30 weekly cap runs for two years from January 2027¹⁷ , so the difference between the two is permanence.

On climate, the party would cut emissions 75% below 2005 levels by 2030, reach a zero-carbon economy by 2035 and net-negative by 2040. It would close Loy Yang A by 2030, prohibit all new fossil fuel projects onshore and offshore, and reverse the 2025 offshore gas exploration program¹⁸ .

It would also ban new data centres, which it campaigned on outside Lily D’Ambrosio’s office in September¹⁹ . Household electricity and gas prices would be capped immediately and household utility debts wiped. No compensation figure exists for taking generation, distribution and retail into public ownership.

Police, prisons and Treaty

The age of criminal responsibility would rise to 16, mandatory sentencing would end, and bail would carry a presumption in favour of release. Police funding increases of the past decade would be reversed and redirected to social welfare, patrol police would be disarmed, and no new prisons would be built¹⁰ .

On Treaty the party goes further than Labor or the Greens. It would extend the powers of state-wide and local Treaties, implement the Yoorrook and deaths-in-custody recommendations, and fund reparations through a tax on commercial and investment properties²⁰ .

Its own assessment of the process is harsher. The party calls the Treaty process hollow in practice, and publishes no figure for what extending it would deliver or cost²⁰ .

What the party has not published

These are silences in the record as it stands, checked against the party’s 28 policy pages, its candidate pages and its news index.

• A costing for any commitment, including the tax suite that is meant to fund the rest.
• A capital figure for 150,000 public homes, the 3,200 childcare centres or the hospital beds.
• Any estimate of compensation for energy, transport, port or airport assets taken into public ownership.
• A legal pathway for state industrial law that would override the Fair Work Act.
• A how-to-vote card. The Guardian reports the party will preference the Greens above Labor, and no card has been sighted²¹ .
• A cost or transition plan for abolishing VCE and NAPLAN.
• A state-level position on population growth, or on the federal migration intake beyond sanctuary status.

How this compares

Labor’s cost-of-living measures carry a price and an end date. The promises on this page carry neither¹⁷ . The gap between them is mostly about what each party is willing to put a number on.

The pages for the other parties set out their records in the same form, and the issue notes take the same evidence by topic.

Linked notes

https://terrain.pub/notes/housing

https://terrain.pub/notes/cost-of-living-and-energy-prices

https://terrain.pub/notes/statewide-treaty