Why aren't millennials rioting this election?

Lazy political distractions aren't addressing the bigger issues

For millennials the social contract has been fundamentally broken.

The agreement, we were told, was that if you got and education and worked hard, you’d be duly rewarded with the trappings of adulthood. You’d get a home, a salary that would modestly increase, and you’d live a comfortable, if not lavish, life.

This had been the case for every previous generation, why wouldn’t it work for us?

So we did what was advised – we studied, took on HECs debts, joined the workforce, and saved diligently for a home deposit. But by the time we accrued what should have been enough money, the market had bolted. Home ownership was out of the question for many.

So then we were consigned to be a generation of renters. Perhaps that might have been okay, but the market is hostile and favours landlords. Leases are short, protections few, and yearly rent increases standard.

Things weren’t great, but they got infinitely worse when the rental crisis hit. More and more of our salary went towards cramped apartments and leaky terraces. In most capital cities, it is hard to live alone on one salary. So many people into their 30s and 40s are consigned to having housemates, perhaps forever.

This really didn’t look like the adulthood we were promised at all.

This is what $510 a week gets you in Sydney: a dark room in Glebe with a shared kitchen.

Then inflation happened. Life became more expensive and it seemed the only thing not going up were salaries. We were told to cut costs, but how? Sure, cancelling Netflix saves $20 a month, but the medium weekly price for a one-bedroom rental in Sydney is around $700. If you’re lucky enough to own a property, interest rates are crippling. What levers are there to pull when keeping a roof over your head accounts for much of your outgoing costs?

A large swathe of my generation sits in simmering resentment. We were sold a lie and then branded as lazy when we complained. That rhetoric worked when we were in our 20s, perhaps. But now we're in, or approaching, middle age and are still falling further and further behind the rest of Australia.

We look to our politicians to see how this inequality might be addressed. In three years Labor has nibbled at the problem, but ignored any serious reform which might actually bring about change. Perhaps the Liberals will have a plan? We hold our breath as an announcement is made.

In the precious few weeks before an election, Peter Dutton makes a bold commitment: his Government will fire many, many public servants and put an end to the working from home arrangements of the rest.

Right. False alarm, everyone. Back to your avocado toast.

We are supposed to be happy about these job losses, as though public servants don’t have bills to pay, and are not themselves voters. As though this wouldn’t be interpreted as a political dog-whistle and a broader attack on working from home

The backlash was quick and inevitable. Rather than talking about their policies, Dutton instead had to spend time gently reversing his previously hardline stance. There will be some exceptions to the forced office return. This was only meant to be for the public service. Actually, we’d be happy with pre-Covid levels of working from home. Did I say all of the public service? I meant just the ones in Canberra.

But it was too late. He’d waved a lit torch over the already short fuse of Millennials and Generation Z. A group of people who have seen the dream of home ownership evaporate like a mirage, and (in many cases) are prioritising a work-life balance instead. People who like doing their job from home.

Perhaps what’s most staggering about this policy debacle, is watching the Liberal Party stumble into the same beartrap they had only just freed themselves from. Having spent four years swearing that they don’t have a problem with women – no really! They then attack working arrangement particularly favoured by young mothers.

When this was pointed out, Dutton touted job sharing as a solution. As though forcing women to cut their salary during an affordability crisis was going to quell the outrage.

But if the Liberal Party cannot have vision, may they at least find consistency. Aren’t conservatives supposed to believe in personal responsibility? Treating people like adults?

If a manager and their employee have both decided work can be satisfactorily completed from home, there is no reason for the Prime Minister to intervene. Personally, I would prefer Governments didn’t blunder into private working arrangements, as though workers were recalcitrant children truanting from school.

What good does it do anyone – businesses, bosses, families, Australia, humanity – if we force unhappy people into offices and onto long commutes (ever longer as we’re forced out of the city) if the work is getting done? Why would we sacrifice time with our families to appease the puritanical belief that work only counts if it is both drudgery and witnessed by another?

We have but one, gloriously short life – being happy is important.

One person who clearly knows this is Peter Dutton himself. After all, he’s declared he’d live in Sydney, not Canberra, should he win the election. How nice it would be to have a job that pays for an expensive aeroplane commute to suit one’s preferred luxury housing arrangements.

It’s yet another tone-deaf blunder by a man who seems incapable of sensing how deep generational rifts run.

Housing insecurity and wage stagnation is an existential crisis affecting many of the 8 million voting Australians under the age of 45. And yet these issues barely feel like they’re getting a mention.

The solutions touted from both parties are fuzzy and weak. They involve making it easier to get a bank loan (as though allowing people to overextend themselves with a mortgage is a good solution) or improving the housing supply, but without giving any real indication where, or how, or by when.

If you’re a renter, tough shit. You don’t even warrant a mention on the Liberal Party’s website of insipid promises. It’s outrageous.

For the first time, there will be more Millennial and Generation Z voters than Baby Boomers in the coming election. What has resonated with previous generations – culture wars, finger pointing, policies which favour asset-owners – aren’t going to work anymore.

Why would they? Younger generations have no assets to protect, no homes they want to see increase in value, and, importantly, no relief or clear way forward. Fuel excise cuts and mildly cheaper electricity won’t cut it.

The sooner that Millennials and Generation Z realise their collective voting power, the better.