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’ 2019 federal campaign launch, Melbourne.
Victorian Socialists hold no seats in either chamber. The ABC and Victorian Electoral Commission candidate tracker sources 79 Assembly candidacies and 10 for the Council Election Tracker . The party says it is contesting all 88 Assembly seats and both houses statewide Red Flag .
In 2022 it won 48,865 votes, 1.34% of the statewide Assembly vote, and no seat Wikipedia . 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 them Victorian Socialists .
The Parliamentary Budget Office prepares costings at the request of parliamentary leaders, and releases only the ones a leader authorises Parliamentary Budget… . 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 freeze Victorian Socialists Victorian Socialists . The housing page promises a 25% immediate cut to all residential tenancies, then a five-year freeze Victorian Socialists .
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.
| 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: housing |
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’ notice Victorian Socialists . 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 jobs Victorian Socialists . 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 housing Victorian Socialists . 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 nationally Victorian Socialists .
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 year Victorian Socialists Victorian Socialists . 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 construction Victorian Socialists . 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 prosecute Victorian Socialists Victorian Socialists .
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 go Victorian Socialists Victorian Socialists .
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 claims Victorian Socialists .
It also promises to return “$16 billion stolen from Victorian schools since 2019” in the 2027 budget Victorian Socialists . 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 rates Victorian Socialists .
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 free Victorian Socialists . 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 operators Victorian Socialists . 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 2027 Labor , 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 program Victorian Socialists .
It would also ban new data centres, which it campaigned on outside Lily D’Ambrosio’s office in September Victorian Socialists . 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 built Victorian Socialists .
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 properties Victorian Socialists .
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 cost Victorian Socialists .
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 sighted Guardian .
- 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 neither Labor . 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
- HousingRent in Melbourne is $600 a week at the median, and 37.8% of the notices telling renters to leave are over unpaid rent. Housing still polls fifth at 8%. Labor’s scheme caps rent only inside its own five-year leases, and only the Greens would cap a private rent.
- Cost of Living and Energy PricesThe $2.5bn package takes $84 off a $1,591 power bill for households on the default offer, and its discounts rise with what a household spends. The top fifth of households draw $207m from the car registration discount and the bottom fifth $100m.
- Statewide TreatyThe treaty Victoria signed with First Peoples in November 2025, the repeal the Liberals and One Nation have both promised, and what the record says about stopping it.
- ‘Mass Immigration’ and RacismOne Nation’s plan to cut migration below zero, the racist imagery its launch ran on, and what the research says actually answers it.
- Crime and Community SafetyWhat the parties are promising on crime, what the recorded figures show, who is being policed and punished, and why the falling rate never answers the fear.
- Education and Teacher PayThe deal gives teachers 28.3–32.4% over four years and a $2,000 bonus, taking an experienced salary from $118,063 to $151,419 by 2029. It ended the dispute, and the revolt inside the union outlasted it. The record carries nothing on what the year did to schools.
- Emergency Services LevyA levy on land value since 1 July 2025, funding the CFA, VICSES and Fire Rescue Victoria, the farm bills behind the Bendigo rally, and an uncosted repeal.