It’s time for a Millennials revolt

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By Leith van Onselen

Annabel Crabb penned a spirited article over the weekend asking why Millennials aren’t plotting a revolution against the unfair treatment they are receiving from the political class and older generations:

Fair dinkum – at what point is the youth of Australia going to rise up in a bloody revolution and put the rest of us against the wall?…

Just look at the crap we’re asking them to put up with.

There’s the matter of housing, where ageing beneficiaries of the property boom… outbid youngsters at red-hot property auctions so they can rent their third or fourth home to the underbidders at crippling expense…

What’s the secret to securing your first home in this treacherous environment?

Getting a well-paying job, as the Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar reminded us on Tuesday… [But] it’s probably best that job not be in retail or hospitality, given that that significantly youthful cohort of workers is undergoing, as a class, the rare and unpleasant experience of a significant, industry-wide pay cut…

What else sucks about being young at the moment?

Oh, yeah, I remember: The fact that faced with major existential questions of climate and energy security, the political class remains deeply committed to the complicated, absorbing and noisy task of doing bugger-all about it…

They will carry the crushing national debt we couldn’t shake because we couldn’t stomach the idea that any of us should be worse off…

We did make a few moves towards austerity.

We charged young people extra for their degrees – that was prudent.

Plus we made some other tough choices. Like cutting unemployment benefits to young people. (That was necessary, guys, because youth unemployment is so high these days that the bill for the dole is getting really expensive.)…

But how long can peace last between a generation that is making hay, and the children who will pick up the tab?

These are all questions that we at MB have asked over many years. In addition to the valid points raised by Annabel Crabb you could surely add the following inequities:

  • Importing large numbers of foreign workers in a bid to increase competition for jobs and lower overall pay and labour standards, as well as keep upward pressure on house prices, all under the cloak of “skills shortages”.
  • Related to the point above, the refusal by Australian businesses to take on new graduates and train local workers, as well as the increasing propensity for businesses to take on unpaid interns.
  • Failing to properly enforce Australia’s foreign ownership laws as they pertain to real estate, as well as deliberately failing to implement anti-money laundering rules on real estate gate keepers, despite promising the global regulator that Australia would do so in 2003.
  • Failing to apply adequate means testing of the Aged Pension, despite it being the biggest and fastest single cost to the Budget and the wealth of those aged over 60 skyrocketing over the past decade at the same time as the wealth of younger Australians has declined.
  • Failing to adequately unwind overly generous superannuation concessions that overwhelmingly benefit the old and wealthy.
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The key point is that it is Millennials that are being asked to bear the brunt of Budget cuts, in addition to being locked-out of home ownership or paying far more for housing due to scandalous public policies.

Australia’s parliament desperately needs to be occupied by a dedicated Australian youth political party to apply a lightning rod and to educate and mobilise Australia’s ravaged young. There is one that could be created. One that we at MB would have pursued long ago if only we had the time and resources.

To be effective, The Australian Youth Party would need to have liberal underpinnings and be committed to:

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  • markets not rent seeking;
  • housing affordability via both demand and supply side reform;
  • tax reform in the name of inter-generational equity;
  • social progressiveness, and
  • carbon mitigation policy.

Of course, it could be much broader platform given the youth perspective on pretty much everything will be different to that of the aged claw that is ripping their future to shreds.

Now is the time too. The Youth Party could galvanise enormous support very quickly and it would be immensely threatening to the Greens and Labor, while also providing a worthy counter-weight to the growing One Nation.

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But it needs some startup money and a seasoned team of people that understand how movements are started. After that, membership fees and public financing for political parties would fund it.

Who will raise their hand? It’s dying to be done. It could rock the major parties to their core, or at least force them to come up with more ‘youth friendly’ policies.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.