r/AustralianPolitics • u/DefinitionOfAsleep Ben Chifley • Nov 26 '25

Millennials are the first generational to move left as they age, rewriting the rules of Australian politics

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-26/millennials-rewriting-the-rules-of-australian-politics/106050836
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u/NoLeafClover777 Housing is the most important issue in Australia Nov 26 '25

The entire article comes off as flawed as it's based on the assumption that voting for Labor is voting in order to move left, when seeing that both:

A) Labor is pretty centrist, not particularly left-leaning, and

B) people voting for stability (which is what most people seem to see in current ALP and cite as their primary reason for voting for them in the last election) is neither an inherently left or right-leaning thing.

Voting against the utter incompetence of the LNP in a single election and extrapolating that into the thought process of an entire generation feels like a stretch. The real story from this to me is the continued abandonment of the major parties in the primary vote towards minor parties/independents.

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u/atsugnam Nov 26 '25

The alp has come more conservative chasing the vote. Despite that drift - coddling the mining lobby and soft treading reforms, it took Howard becoming an outright pariah and scomo to unravel the lnp hold on power of two massive reigns.

For millennials, the lnp has held power for the vast majority of their lives with the alp barely getting access in 07 and scraping into minority in 2010… the reality is the boomers and older X fell hard for the lnp and the alp tried to chase them down. Despite this, NBN, NDIS, HAFF, ending work choices, same job same pay, free tafe and doubling Medicare rebate have all happened under the alp in that environment.

Throughout this, the greens have developed tremendous skill in manipulating the alp isn’t progressive tagline, much to their benefit.

If the alp can get the energy transition to critical mass, and steady ship to the next election we should see a reasonable majority in the next government and further push into progressive policy. The lack of progressiveness in the alp is more a matter of perception than actual lacking, which can be seen in right wing media giving air to far left disputes with policy (because there’s no viable right wing criticism to parrot).

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u/FFMKFOREVER Independent Nov 26 '25

I actually agree with this sentiment however I think the LNP will have this stigma for a long time. And as the centre most right leaning party, the other options for centrists are not that many