The Australia Institute

Charlotte Walker gave her first speech in the senate last night, and being Australia’s youngest ever senator, her age played a very big role:

As the youngest ever Senator, I have received a lot of media attention about what I have said and what others have said about me, including some who really haven’t liked what I’ve said. They say I don’t have enough life experience.

I replied that I have 21 years of life experience. What I bring to this parliament is the experience of young people today, and I know what a privilege it is to do so.

Young Australians aren’t a side issue. We aren’t a future issue. We are Australians now. It’s hard to explain what it feels like to be a young person today, not because we lack the words or the insight but because so often, when we speak, we’re told we’re too sensitive, too entitled or too distracted by our screens.

We are told we spend too much time looking at our phones—although sometimes the person saying it has only just stopped looking at their own phone!

We’re told that we’re too young to understand how the world really works. But we do understand, because we’re the ones living in this world others built and we’re facing a very different set of challenges than any generation before us.

Homeownership, for instance, is increasingly out of reach. A dream once seen as an expected milestone of adulthood is now something many of us feel we may never achieve. And renting is now a lottery. I have friends who still struggle to find properties they can afford and others who have submitted over 50 applications before being accepted to just get a home.

We’re told the solution is to cut out smashed avocado toast or skip a daily coffee—or, in my case, a daily hot chocolate. But no amount of budgeting advice will fix a system where the price of a home
has completely outstripped wage growth.

The uncomfortable truth is that we live in a wealthy country but that that wealth is not being evenly shared between generations.