Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
You could almost taste the desperation in the air as various Liberal MPs attempted to justify their self destruction; but perhaps the most tasteless excuses were when it came to justifying their decision to the next generation.
Leader (for now – those who wanted net zero gone will wait for the polls to officially end her career) Sussan Ley was particularly egregious, answering the question of “what will you tell your grandchildren?” with:
“The other thing that I want to be able to say to my grandchildren is that you should inherit a better standard of living than my generation and your mum and dad’s generation. Right now, they are set to inherit the worst standard of living since the Second World War.”
Now, enough words have been written on this most recent bout of stupidity, but those particular words lingered.
The same week the Liberal Party sucked up any and all political oxygen, the Victorian Labor government made a mockery of evidence-based solutions and research by capitulating to populist scare campaigns and announcing that children as young as 14 could be treated as adults in court.
This is happening as the federal government makes a big song and dance about banning under-16s from social media. Too young for TikTok but apparently old enough to face the adult incarceration system.
But we don’t care about children when there are tough-on-crime headlines to be made.
Just as we don’t care about children when setting climate policy – even as the consequences hit us. Both major parties have voted against having a duty of care for future generations included in legislation, as well as having fought against it in court. Children are to inherit our consequences, but have no say in the decision-making.
Just as we don’t care about children in the housing mess we have created. Ley owns multiple properties – it is safe to say her children have no issues with establishing themselves in the housing market, or planning for their own families’ future. But as house prices continue to jump higher and higher, pricing people out of homes in favour of property investors creating never-ending subsidised wealth, while refusing to give renters rights to treat their leased properties as secure homes, we are cementing inequality and insecurity.
Owning a home doesn’t just provide capital, it helps create community. It gives people a chance to plant roots, to map out desire paths to favourite spots, build relationships and, year by year, builds a sense of security. Renters are not allowed that luxury. They rely on finding a “good” landlord who won’t price them out of their home, or rip it away one year at the lapse of a contract.
We don’t think about renters, so why should we think of children growing up in rental homes who don’t have the luxury of marking a wall with height milestones, or even knowing what school catchment they’ll be in?
We don’t think about children when setting welfare rates, because we don’t think of their parents and what the mutual obligations system means for their ability to have agency over their own life, let alone what stress below-the-poverty line payments create for anyone attempting to survive on them.
We don’t think of children when privatising services that provide care for our most vulnerable, because we don’t value care outside of capital. The end point of that has been the horror stories from the royal commission into aged care and disability services, and millennial and gen Z parents having to read articles on how best to guard their young children from paedophile predators in day care centres.
We don’t think of children when addressing Australia’s complicity in Israel’s genocide because, for many politicians, not all children are equal.
Politicians using children for political point-scoring is as old as politics itself. Ley claiming she wants her grandchildren to inherit a better standard of living while actively working against their generation’s chances of a better future is to be expected. What counts is how those who have claim to have principles, and the power to put them into action, respond.
For all the talk about wanting to help families and future generations, the Coalition has acted like the political equivalent of a toddler hyped up on sugar from grandpa’s house, overdue a nap and given access to the saucepans – you’ve just got to wait them out at this stage, until they inevitably collapse.
If the Coalition truly wanted to address falling living standards, it would not be trying to extend the use of the most expensive energy sources – fossil fuels – and beating the most expensive dead horse of them all, nuclear. It would at least remain committed to previous policies, like an emissions trading scheme (2007) or even the gas reservation policy (2025), which it dropped like a hot potato as soon as Peter Dutton exited.
The Coalition has no policy for welfare, beyond the middle and upper-class welfare of tax cuts for the rich. But it doesn’t. Because this isn’t about future generations, or lowering the cost of living, or even having a sustainable energy network. It is about the individuals in the Coalition and them only.
It is beyond time for them to be seen and not heard. Attention should be on those who have the power to make changes and claim to have principles but don’t put them into action.
Like establishment Democrats who skate by on the Republicans always being worse and respond by changing nothing, Labor is trying to present itself as the adult in the room, by pointing to the toddler tantrums in the opposition. That’s not governing for the future. It’s babysitting.
There is no saving the Coalition. But Labor should not take that as an endorsement. If anything, it is a warning.
Amy Remeikis is a contributing editor for The New Daily and chief political analyst for The Australia Institute.
Originally published on The New Daily.
