Adam Bandt Has Ripped Into The Turnbull Government For Its Attacks On Young People

It’s pretty rare to hear politicians talk about young people unless they’re deriding us as bludgers or making it more difficult to access welfare. But today in federal parliament, Greens MP Adam Bandt laid out all the policy failures hitting young people hard, from cuts to education, a brutal jobs market and skyrocketing house prices, and took the government to task for not doing more to help out our generation.

“Right now, young people are getting screwed,” Bandt told the House of Representatives today. PREACH.

He went on to lay out the dire economic situation facing young people in Australia and savaged the federal government’s response so far.

“Youth unemployment is at nearly 13 percent,” Bandt said. “That is more than double the general national rate. An Anglicare report that was recently released found that only one job is advertised for every six low-skilled jobseekers, who are often young people who have not had the opportunity to gain much work experience.”

And what was the government’s plan to deal with the tough employment situation for young people? “Their first plan was to kick people off Newstart and make them wait six weeks before they can receive this measly payment to try and support themselves,” Bandt said. Thankfully the Senate knocked this proposal over, but the government is still to force young people without a job wait four weeks before they can access welfare payments.

As Bandt says, “the landlord does not care that you do not have money coming from the government to pay the rent.”

Bandt, who is the Member for Melbourne, highlighted the enormous inequality in our housing market and the fact that the government provides generous tax discounts to property investors but provides no support to first homebuyers.

“The government should be making it easier for people to buy their first home not helping people who already have one to buy their second, third or fourth.”

According to Bandt, in 1994 young Australians held 10 percent of the nation’s wealth. But by 2014 it was only five percent. So our wealth has halved while successive governments have continued to hand out more money and more support to wealthy, older Australians.

It’s infuriating stuff, but Bandt didn’t just tear into the government, he provided some solutions as well.

“If we were serious, we would be investing in education,” he said. “We would be investing in big job-creating projects that will provide secure work for young people — like public transport and clean energy. We would be making it easier for people to get into education and complete it and we would end the unfair tax breaks that are pushing up the cost of housing and pricing young people out of the market.”

You can watch the full speech here: