Wed 30 Apr
This blog is now closed.
We are going to close the blog a little early today in anticipation of the next 48 hours. It is going to be a whirlwind, so strap in!
Thank you to everyone who turned in and followed along with us today – and for all your notes and messages! We don’t put the all in, but I do read them all and I am so appreciative to you all for giving this little project a chance.
We will hopefully catch you tomorrow?
Until then, take care of you Ax
(continued from previous posts)
Jahin Tanvir 24, is the CEO of the Australian School of Entrepreneurship and a multicultural youth advocate. He lives in Fowler and works in Parramatta.
In Parramatta and Fowler (and broader multicultural communities in the West), HECS debt isn’t just a number, it’s the quiet pressure young Australians carry every day as they try to build their lives. With the cost of living pressures already depleting the hopes of young Aussies, there needs to be a head-on approach by the elected government to provide some level of relief,” he said.
Politicians need to provide real solutions to the housing affordability crisis instead of pinning blame on international students and inflaming racism.
Young voters want decisive action on housing: More social and affordable housing, especially in growth corridors like Western Sydney; reform to tax policies that fuel investor-driven demand; and infrastructure investment to make the outer suburbs more liveable and connected.
Des Cai 27, is the national director of Tomorrow Movement and lives in the electorate of Wills.
Dutton’s comments this week about renters being less politically mature shows how out of touch he is. One third of all people in Australia are renters – instead of making condescending comments, we need real action to improve secure housing for everyone,” the said.
Young people are not being heard by the major parties: jumping on the latest TikTok trend doesn’t address the fact that we’re living in mouldy rentals and they’re approving new coal mines.
The top four priorities for young people that we’ve identified since we started Tomorrow Movement’s National Youth Voter Bloc last September are housing, cost of living, great public services and a safe climate for all.
The Economic Media Centre, which seeks to have different voices injected in our national conversations, particularly when it comes to economics (which in the main tends to be white, middle aged, conservative/centrist tinged men) has asked some Gen Z/Zoomers how they are feeling about the election and issues covered in the campaign. Here are some of those findings:
Imo Kuah 23, is an organiser with Tomorrow Movement and lives in Maribyrnong.
Labor and Liberal are spending billions on submarines and developer handouts while young people struggle to afford housing, find secure jobs, and face a climate crisis,” they said.
We’re here to tell them: the piecemeal solutions they’re offering to the cost of living, housing and climate crises that we face are not good enough.”
Max Stella 26, is a lawyer in Wentworth and tax policy researcher with ThinkForward.
This election campaign has been deeply disappointing. We have a serious problem of intergenerational inequality in this country. Younger Australians are being denied fair access to the wealth of this country by a tax, housing and superannuation system geared towards the interests of older wealth-holders,” he said.
For too long our leaders have treated us as an afterthought. Now, both parties will have you believe they are finally answering our calls for economic justice. But they’re not. Instead, they’re treating us like mugs. The ALP tells us that 5% deposits will restore our home ownership dreams; but that’s just a recipe for more debt and higher house prices. The Coalition tells us that depleting our super is the answer; yet, this does nothing for the average young Australian who has very little super.
I’m tired of the gaslighting from the major parties. And I’m worried that our politicians aren’t following the evidence and the expertise. Instead, they seem too scared about what the other will say if they dare propose anything that would actually change our situation. In that sense, despite their bravado, I think both parties are operating from a position of weakness. They are timid. It’s hard to find anyone my age who is inspired by either of the major parties right now.
If you are not following Ketan on BlueSky, you should be
And the ACT is not alone in this.
Thoughts with everyone in in-secure housing, or having to face a move with no where to go.
Everyone is now in turbo charged campaign mode, with the focus on the final 48 hours well and truly the vibe.
So the Albanese bus is about to start its travel for the blitz (from experience, they will most likely head to WA and then make their way back over to the east coast, although it could go Queensland-WA-SA etc) and the Dutton camp are in sandbagging mode, so they’ll be popping up where they need to hold as well as where they could, if all goes right, win.
Sophie asks: Wasn’t there or is there going to be a paper released on the state of higher education? I have a vague memory of Labor doing an enquiry and then not releasing the findings before we started the election.
It’s a great question, and one that’s made quite complicated by the sheer number of reviews on higher education matters during this parliamentary term.
We’ve had the Australian Universities Accord. That was the really big inquiry, and it reported in Feb 2024. The final report had 47 recommendations in it, and some of these have been taken up. But there’s plenty more to do, and after a year on the shelf, many measures are still need urgent action.
Early this year, the Senate Standing Committee on Education and Employment launched an inquiry into the quality of governance at Australian higher education providers. This was partly in response to claims of bad governance and lack of transparency, complaints about the exorbitant salaries of Vice-Chancellors, and concerns about antisemitism on campuses. The sector’s regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency (TEQSA, for short), has been repeatedly chastised for its failure to handle the first point and the third. (It claims to have nothing to do with the second.)
We’ve also seen more targeted reviews into things like Research and Development funding in Australia, the National Competitive Grants Program and more. Neither of these have been finalised just yet, and we wait to see what will happen with these, but both are extremely important for the future of research funding in Australia’s higher education sector.
During this election campaign, both major parties have tried to make it very clear that concerned about our spending on defence.
Labor plan to increase spending to 2.3% of GDP by mid-2030 with the Coalition wanting it increased to 3%.
With all this concern about defence spending, you would think Australia was either at risk of imminent invasion or was spending far less than our peers. But the evidence shows that neither of these is true.
Australia has an outsized spending on defence. In dollar terms, Australia is the 12th biggest spender on defence. We spend more dollars on defence than Canada, Israel, Spain, or the Netherlands.
If Australia were to increase its defence spending to 2.3% of GDP (as Labor wants) then we would be the nineth biggest spender, devoting more of its economy than France or Taiwan, and on a par with the UK.
If Australia went to 3% of GDP (as the Coalition wants) we would pass India, South Korea, and be closing in on the United States.
Do we really believe as a nation that our security needs are more urgent than South Korea, a country that is still at war with North Korea?
It is important to remember that the more resources we devote to defence, the fewer resources we have to spend on our other priorities. As former US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1953:
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.”
It’s like the LNP’s social media campaign is being run by edge lords in their early 30s who haven’t touched grass since they were 13 and who snigger when someone shows them the DOGE dog (they spell it dawg) and feel compelled to say TO THE MOOOONNNNNNNNN without quite remembering why.
(Continued from previous post)
What happens on Sunday?
What happens with close seats?
When will official seat declarations occur?
How does the full Senate count work?
Loading form…