Anoulack Chanthivong admits he was surprised when Chris Minns asked him to take on the unforgiving portfolio of New South Wales corrections minister.
The former economist was the shadow finance minister when Labor was in opposition but says he finds the corrections role “rewarding”.
“It’s about keeping our community safe and always trying to find ways to change people so they can live better lives once they finish their sentence,” Chanthivong says.
The 48-year-old also has four other portfolios in the Minns government: industry and trade; building; better regulation and fair trading; and innovation, science and technology. But it is in corrections that his values and political nous have been most vigorously tested.
NSW is locking up a record number of people and Chanthivong has found himself, at times, at odds with the premier.
The prison population grew more in the four months to March than in the previous four years, according to Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research data released last week.
There were more than 14,000 people in jail in March.
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailThe rise has been driven by an increase in the remand population and Indigenous adults in custody. There is a record number of Indigenous people in jail, and people being held on domestic violence offences. The latter cohort made up 28% of the prison population.
Last year, there was a record number of Indigenous deaths in custody.
The state’s ageing prisons are struggling to cope. Some Victorian-era facilities are being retired later this year but parts of others still in use have been described as “dilapidated, unsafe and not fit for purpose”.
The stresses on the system, its workforce and those incarcerated have become ever more glaring.
The tough politics of jails
A 2024 ombudsman’s report examined more than 56,000 prison offences from 2018, finding that one in three charges laid against prisoners during disciplinary proceedings were incorrect. It warned against “watering down the standards or rules”.
Corrective Services told the ombudsman in January 2025 that the department had appointed a “small but dedicated” team to work through reforms after Chanthivong agreed to all of the recommendations.
But in October, the government went directly against the ombudsman and legal advice, announcing plans to lower the burden of proof for disciplinary charges.
Instead of the criminal threshold, corrections would only have to meet the civil standard, essentially reflecting what was already happening, unlawfully, in the state’s jails.
Prisoners can face harsh penalties for trivial infractions such as “looking untidy” or “eating food in a cell”.
The Public Service Association (PSA), the union representing prison staff, had been corresponding with Corrective Services about their concerns. The policy switch came days after the union wrote to Minns himself.
Documents released under a parliamentary call for papers show Chanthivong wrote back to the PSA at the premier’s request, saying he had sought further advice, but in the interim reiterated the ombudsman’s recommendation “that no reduction in the standard of proof should be considered”.
A departmental briefing note states the premier agreed to make “urgent amendments” to lower the standard after the PSA threatened industrial action.
It was not the first time it appeared that Minns had overruled Chanthivong – although the premier disputes this characterisation. “No, I didn’t overrule him on it; he made the decision,” Minns told a press conference in March.
Chanthivong says it was “a decision of government” and “everybody’s involved in the cabinet”. There are questions about what was discussed in cabinet.
The premier’s brother, Jim Minns, is a solicitor for the PSA. After union members at NSW prisons walked off the job in October, Minns told 2GB he knew the inmate discipline issue “back to front” because “my brother is the union’s lawyer”.
Chanthivong won’t say if Minns declared a conflict of interest over his brother’s role, which would require him to remove himself from cabinet discussions under the ministerial code. Minns is yet to answer the question, including in parliament last year, when he said his brother “has every right to participate in that role”.
Jim Minns has told the Sydney Morning Herald: “I never talk to [Chris Minns] about my job and he never talks to me about his job.”
Chanthivong says it is a non-issue as “the PSA is a representative of the workforce”.
The PSA says it supports the lower standard “because it is the only practical way to maintain order and safety within a correctional environment”.
Last year, thousands of staff walked off the job after a court decision not to extend the sentence of an inmate found guilty of seriously assaulting four prison officers.
Asked if the union has too much influence, at the expense of prisoners, the minister says: “It is my responsibility to listen to the workforce, to listen to their lived experience every day and how we can make changes that actually improve the safety of the environment, because a safer environment is a safer environment for inmates.”
‘Incredibly widely read’
While many of his peers were rubbing elbows in NSW Young Labor, working out which factions and unions to side with, Chanthivong was studying at night after working at his parents’ grocery business during the day.
“I lived in Campbelltown, I came into the [University of Sydney] campus at Camperdown and that was a long commute … I just didn’t have the time to get into student politics,” he says.
Chanthivong downplays his personal story but it has informed his drive to create conditions for people with fewer advantages to improve their lives.
“All of us are shaped by our upbringing, our societal environment, our own experiences,” he says.
Chanthivong was six when he arrived in Australia with his parents and three brothers from Laos, via a refugee camp in Thailand. They moved to south-west Sydney, where he has lived ever since, going on to join his local Labor branch and serve as a councillor for a decade, mayor for a year, local MP and now minister.
“I’m a child of penniless migrants, so if I hadn’t had those opportunities, public education, obviously a strong social safety net so families of limited means can actually get ahead … I perhaps might not be able to have what I have today,” he says.
“I was, and I am always, just a working-class lad from south-west Sydney.”
The independent MP for Wollondilly, Judy Hannan, a friend from council days, says Chanthivong is “a family man” who understands what working people “are actually going through”.
He was elected to the neighbouring seat of Macquarie Fields in NSW’s lower house in 2015, the same year Minns – who had been president of NSW Young Labor in 2002 – entered parliament.
The legislative assembly speaker, Greg Piper, a parliamentary friend, says he thinks the responsibility of corrections “weighs” on Chanthivong.
“There are a couple of portfolios that I really feel for people when they’ve got them, particularly if you’re an empathetic and caring person, and Anoulack clearly is,” Piper says.
The NSW planning minister, Paul Scully, another of Chanthivong’s close friends in government, says he is “incredibly widely read” and delivers an “academic and policy rigour” behind the scenes.
The book with pride of place in Chanthivong’s parliamentary office is a Bible once owned by his political hero, Gough Whitlam, a tenancy lawyer before he entered politics.
As minister for fair trading, Chanthivong is responsible for one of the Minns government’s key promises in opposition, reforming the state’s rental system, which houses a third of the NSW electorate.
In reforms overseen by a newly instituted rental commissioner, landlords have been limited to one rental increase a year and are no longer able to refuse a pet without a specific reason.
A landmark change was legislated last year to end no-grounds evictions, preventing landlords from evicting tenants without a valid reason, including renovations.
Initially, the legislation required a landlord to provide a quotation for planned work from a contractor. But this was watered down from the model originally legislated by Chanthivong after another reported intervention by Minns.
Since June last year, landlords have only had to provide a written statement to a tenant that renovation works are planned.
Minns cited “confidential feedback” but it remains unclear who lobbied for the changes, which appeared to have been made without consulting key stakeholders, including landlords represented by the Real Estate Institute of NSW or the Tenants’ Union.
“I don’t think there’s a loophole,” Chanthivong says when asked if the change undermined the government’s rental reforms.
“It’s unfair to assess a minor adjustment in terms of the broader reform of no-grounds evictions.
“All of these things add up for a renter – greater certainty, greater confidence that they can’t be kicked out of the house for no reason. Because a rental property is also a home.
“The reforms in rentals are some of the most significant things any government has done in the last 20 years.”
