Being a burgeoning young person in this world, of backroom deals, ever flowing Grange and parental favours, is starting to look even more bleak. The penalty rates massacre was but the final straw, first you took our avo toast and we were angered, but take our Sunday rates and you better watch out.
A brilliant opinion piece by Annabel Crabb made the weekend rounds and she implored Gen Y to revolt at their treatment. And she’s not wrong. The reactions were mixed, millennials banding together enlivened by her plea and an echo of baby boomers cried foul. But before we start plotting said revolution, the dull murmurs of the older generation need to be addressed.
Differing opinions are of course to be expected, this is a somewhat free society, but the tweets just continue to roll in about young people. Our apathy, entitlement, freeloaders mentality and total disenchantment with the world our parents carved out for us. And by carved out I do mean ravaged by hand until there is nothing left to reap. Thanks Mum and Dad.
@smh @annabelcrabb Too busy buying the latest iPhone, I guess. The ones I know dont seem interested in politics, even tho it affects them.
— lynne clarke (@lynnecl35018667) February 25, 2017
@theage they should, but they’d rather their parents do it for them.
— Kane (@kanequarrell) February 25, 2017
@smh @annabelcrabb Never. They are too self absorbed and addicted to tech devices to get out of their own way let alone revolt.
— Ice Maiden (@virginsnowbunny) February 25, 2017
Every stereotype of awful youths (as Crabb so eloquently describes) hurled with intent, but instead of acting to disarm our cause they embolden it. For every quaint insult about young people being lazy, there’s now a dossier of climate change deniers holding place in our government. That’s not just lazy, that’s certifiably incognisant. The whole state of South Australia went dark, a blackout and the deniers had the audacity to blame it on renewable energy. Seriously, wind turbines are the enemy apparently. So it’s not only a disdain for our open minds, admittedly left agendas and environmental awareness but they actually believe we’re idiots.
There’s no other explanation. A calm air of confidence as we fail to tear down the system at each new terror inflicted. They are even working to shut down our nightlife entirely, plug our drinking capacity and funnel us into casinos. What would this great nation be without Bob Hawke necking longies like no tomorrow?
And that’s just within the borders of this land girt by sea, the world beyond is even more depressing. As Crabb so astutely notes, young Americans and young Britons were loudly, even violently against Trump and Brexit respectively. But by the voting power of their parents, grandparents and elders in general, they are left dealt with a hand they can’t possibly comprehend winning a single hand with.
The age of entitlement is over, they’ll shout from the podiums or below from their cigar smoke hazed balconies. And it it’s wake national debt, an ageing population with a knack for negative gearing and all out class warfare. It’s easy to sit from your family mansion, a palatial residence paid for with government funds or from the ivory building atop the hill in Canberra and lament young people. But would you, Minister, be anywhere near as comfortable without a plush system that bred you to the top?
But back to the revolution, the piece makes out like young people sit quietly by, headphones on and tuned out. However when we do protest, the lockout laws, the women’s march, asylum seekers, climate change, you name it we’re all but ignored. Handled still like children, we’re left to scream and cry then burped and put back to bed.
Without a house in our portfolio, a high paying job or much sway when it comes to change, you can see why our fellow generation Y-ers are despondent.
You can read the full piece published in The Age here.
Image source: Adam Amin Photography.
