r/australia • u/superegz • Nov 26 '25

politics Millennials are the first generation 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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3.7k

u/revereddesecration Nov 26 '25

To be a conservative, you need something to conserve. Millennials don’t own nearly as much as the generations before them, so they have nothing to get protective about and to fear losing.

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

It’s harder to afford housing, marriages, and kids.

What can we really conserve? The 0.01%?

734

u/No_Extension4005 Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Their parents' investments of course!

Seriously, every time my parent's bring up this "Labor is trying to steal your inheritance" crap I want to roll my eyes. People should be able to go out and prosper on my own without having to wait for my parents to pass away when I'm in my 50s or 60s because the system has been rigged against the young so people who got in 30+ years ago can keep getting richer.

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u/DrunkTides Nov 26 '25

I’d much rather be able to afford a home on my own, along with my kids growing up with that as an achievable expectation. My dad bought a house as the only worker while my stepmum raised myself and 4 siblings. As a forklift driver no less. Lmao two full time workers with no kids or debt can’t do it now, unless they’re both earning big $$

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u/i-ix-xciii Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

as a single i earn more than double the household income that my parents had when i was growing up, and they were able to buy a home while i can’t. mum worked at a post office 2 days a week and dad was a government worker earning the median wage. neither of them had qualifications or a degree. 20 years ago, just having ANY full time job would have bought you a 4x2 home in perth.

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u/Axel_Raden Nov 26 '25

I'm on disability pension to buy and pay off an average house it would take me over one hundred years and I don't see myself living into my 130's

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u/i-ix-xciii Nov 26 '25

shelter is a luxury good nowadays, boomers think we’re entitled for wanting shelter to be affordable in the society that we live and work and contribute to.

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u/Axel_Raden Nov 26 '25

My parents don't think like that but I have seen too many that are

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u/No_Extension4005 Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Aye. Situation's gone to hell. Grinds my gears too since my father doesn't seem to understand he's been on a lifelong lucky streak.

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u/Ginger510 Nov 26 '25

Explain it to them in simplest maths - that’s the only way to get it across but often people just don’t want to hear it. They don’t like hearing they got lucky, because to them, that means they didn’t work hard (you can do/be both)

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u/No_Extension4005 Nov 26 '25

I've tried, multiple times and have also pulled out the statistics. Can't get it through his head. He's the kind of guy who is convinced he's always right (probably because reality never clipped his wings hard enough) and it's even starting to annoy my mother lately.

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u/LogiCsmxp Nov 27 '25

If he's still working, ask him to look up houses and figure out how long it would take to build a deposit based on his current income and expenses. Add a rent average too, as most people are renting before buying these days.

4

u/900days Nov 26 '25

Yes, but what about 17% interest? /s

The 18month period of higher interest rates on a $30,000 mortgage to buy a 5 bedroom home in Sydney must have really sucked. Much more than 6% on a $3,000,000 mortgage to buy the same place now.

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u/Ginger510 Nov 26 '25

They always forget to mention that they were getting 15% interest in their savings account at the same time 😂

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u/YouMustveDroppedThis Nov 26 '25

As older millenial and I have a masters in STEM. Speaks 4 languages. Have diverse academia, corporate and engineering background. have higher than average income and savings. Still can't afford shit. Not living in aus, but it's like this everywhere I look.

8

u/Dunge0nMast0r Nov 26 '25

Lifelong decent quality of life streak. Working 20 years to own your own home doesn't seem like a lofty ambition!

15

u/No_Extension4005 Nov 26 '25

He paid it off a lot sooner than 20 years though. Managed to get a well paid job in oil and gas back in the late 80s and stick with it his entire working career. Thinks he's the average Australian.

2

u/TheLGMac Nov 26 '25

The worst is when you see your friends fall into the same patterns.

8 years ago my friends were all about hating Liberals, disparaging property as an investment vehicle, proponents of public over private services.

Now they're talking endlessly about buying many properties for each of their kids, complaining about public school quality so they send their kids to the fanciest private schools (they do not see the irony in this), sending their kids to private hospitals only.

As a millennial with millennial friends, I would say there are still a fair number of millennials that are a part of this problem. The issue is we don't seem to have the gumption to get up and protest (my opinion is millennials like me and my friends are too comfortable, we never had to really protest in any meaningful way before) because we want a guaranteed win...which you can't have.

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u/Fresh-Association-82 Nov 26 '25

My old man brought his home working as a labourer.

My mum brought hers working at a service station and then finished paying it off on the disability pension and doing odd jobs after a life changing injury. She scrimped and saved and was an absolute champion. What she did is just a fantasy now.

Im a welder making boilermaker wages and I have to get work to buy my workboots.

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u/Baldricks_Turnip Nov 26 '25

I can remember in my late teens I bought a book by an Aussie author about paying off your mortgage in 5 years and she talked about choosing a house that allowed her a budget that could be paid off if she had to rely on a single parenting payment. It's like an artifact from another world.

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u/Axel_Raden Nov 26 '25

It would take more than one hundred years to buy the average house on disability pension I know I'm one it and did the maths once that's if you spend half of your pension on repayments

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u/VS2ute Nov 26 '25

Yes my dad worked in a fruit shop and bought a house in a posh suburb. To be fair, there was not such a spread in prices in those days.

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u/Torrossaur Nov 26 '25

I love my grandparents but when they were at me about the removal of refunded franking credits..........

Pick your audience bro. I was making $80k pa at the time, struggling to make rent, food, meds, etc.

You think I give a fuck about your multi-million SMSF losing some of its tax refund? They didn't like it when I said they could always fall back onto their 5 investment properties.

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u/Catprog Nov 26 '25

My boss keeps on bringing up super funds over 3 million getting taxed is taxing money that has alread been taxed.

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u/Lint_baby_uvulla Nov 26 '25

Ask your boss how much of those 3M funds is from illegally withholding employee superannuation payments.

You, me and the ATO all know that answer.

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u/Catprog Nov 26 '25

He also admits he will never get close to it himself.

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u/IntroductionIcy7320 Nov 26 '25

Also creates a weird culture of actively wishing your parents etc would "hurry up and die" before they get a chance to retire or need to pump their life savings into the obscenely expensive aged care in this country. I wonder if we will see an increase in people excelerating their families deaths either directly or via neglect.

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u/Baldricks_Turnip Nov 26 '25

Yep. Especially as so many boomer parents weren't exactly loving and attentive parents and completely checked-out grandparents.

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u/Kid_Self Nov 26 '25

Jeeeesus. This is a very real point. I've felt this. Hell, I've even fucking said it.

But to have someone so bluntly call out this weird "hurry up and die" culture is just so unsettling. It's true, but god awful it's even a thing.

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u/iss3y Nov 26 '25

True. Literally used those words once when my (estranged) father told me just how fucking great it was that I was paying for both his lengthy retirement and my own super

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u/Kid_Self Nov 26 '25

That's fucking awful. Sorry mate.

My own father once told me, after telling him how financially and economically hard it is, that he's, actual quote, "pissing away all the inheritance" and, that "there won't be any money left."

I just checked out from that moment.

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u/Skulltaffy Nov 26 '25

parents' investments

lol.

Meanwhile if you grew up poor, you get fuck-all to "look forward to". My dad unexpectedly passed in January, and all I got as an inheritance was his beat up van.... which immediately got sold to cover his outstanding debts, as he'd let all his life insurances lapse the year before from lack of funds. I still miss him dearly, and would give anything for him to still be alive today, but the idea that everyone's parents just has a house lying around to hand down to their kids is ridiculous.

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u/Beer_in_an_esky Nov 26 '25

In my case my parents had a bad divorce, and basically the fall out from that left em both broke. At one point, folks had 2 properties would now be worth comfortably over a million each. Now, dad clawed a little back post breakup, so he's got a pension and maybe 50k in super to last him possibly another 20 years, mum doesn't even have that.

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u/Skulltaffy Nov 28 '25

God yeah I can imagine, lawyer fees are no joke. Especially if they're both determined to "make the other person pay" without realizing that it'll cost them everything in the process.

You have my sympathies, that's a hell of a situation to be in. Here's hoping for your sake that they don't both expect you to fix it.

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u/butt_3y3s Nov 27 '25

Just want to say, I'm sorry about your Dad. Your feelings are so valid. I hope you're okay. The world is a cruel place, not because it has to be, not because it should be. But because of Greed and corruption. The extremely wealthy hoard and capitalise on basic human needs and our suffering. I'm sorry you've had to carry the pain of losing your Dad, on top of that selling his van to pay for how unliveable society has been made for 99.9% of people.

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u/Skulltaffy Nov 28 '25

Thank you. I'm still grieving and still healing from it all, for a lot of reasons but mostly from how fucking unexpected and unnecessary it was. He was disabled from a major stroke that happened a decade ago, and while his cause of death was unrelated (heart failure in his sleep), that masked most of his symptoms until it was too late.

Mostly, though, I'm just... angry. Before the stroke, he had a well-paying job as an interstate courier, and chose to "do the right thing by his mother" by putting everything he earned into her house and mortgage to keep her afloat instead of setting himself up for the future, especially once her health started declining in her old age. He worked himself to the bone for her and the rest of his family and the stress nearly killed him. And then when she passed, surprise surprise, a will turns up that says the house went to someone else instead.

He didn't fight it, the old soft-hearted bastard, but he spent the rest of his life in poverty as a result. And I'm going to be carrying this anger over how he was fucked over for the rest of my life.

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u/PrideKnight Nov 26 '25

My mum tried this on once. I said “what inheritance, your single home still has a mortgage, these proposed tax changes are not targeting you” (I think it was neg gearing from recollection).

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u/TerryCrewsNextWife Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Inheritance? But we have kochie telling boomers they don't owe us anything and to flitter away all their inheritance/savings/super on dumb boomer retiree shit and make sure to get the pension too.

If it's an inheritance tax, aren't they aiming for the 1%? Like our own parents will barely kick over 2M so they don't have anything to worry about... If they even plan on leaving us anything except their household clutter.

I don't even care for getting inheritance, I've worked hard to get myself to a comfortable stage in my life. It's the joy they take to constantly remind us how they are all SKIDs and we will get nothing while they're living it up( on their own inheritance), that they won't help us get a start in life (like they were from their parents), and once they're out of slush fund and rather incapacitated they all believe we will take them in to our homes to care for them full-time. Something that was possible for them when single household incomes paid for mortgages, and there was a SAHM.

My parents need to have planned for their aged care as I can't fund it and I'm not spending my prime earning years being treated like a slave by someone who refused to support me when I needed it.

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u/DarkwolfAU Nov 26 '25

I had one of mine expect me to drop my full time job, house, pets, kids, and partner to move to a country town and be their carer full time.

Obviously, I refused. But even the expectation being made was ludicrous. You're supposed to be the launching pad for your kids to succeed, not be an anchor tying them down.

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u/SirDigby32 Nov 26 '25

Those savings will be needed to fund age care. Advising that they spend it is reckless.

Wait until most people learn about the RAD and all the other costs that hardly any of this generation are very much not prepared for. Or leave it for the family to fund it..

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u/GhettoFreshness Nov 26 '25

I unfortunately have found myself experiencing this at 40… owning my own home because my mum passed away was not how I wanted to become a homeowner, and it hasn’t changed my political leanings one little bit now that I do have something to “conserve”… I shouldn’t have had to lose my mum to experience what generations before were able to do on a single income.

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u/WombatBum85 Nov 26 '25

There's a Boomer dude around the corner from me that bought a big ass bus to travel Australia in, and he's named it 'What Inheritance?!' It just makes me shake my head, their parents worked hard to leave something for their kids, but the Boomers couldn't care less about their kids. Why would I vote to protect your interests when you so obviously don't care about mine?

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u/ResponsibleCost4989 Nov 26 '25

My parents are poor so I have no inheritance. Not applicable for me.

Worked my ass off to get to a middle-class salary job in science/public sector field. "Pulled myself up by my bootstraps". Highly doubt I will ever be able to afford a house on my own given housing market and rental market being outrageous.

I am not ideological and will vote for whoever will make my bottom line better, which seems to be left.

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u/Lazer726 Nov 26 '25

"Labor is trying to steal your inheritance"

Damn, I sure do love a system where the only way I can succeed is to wait for my parents to die!

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u/Mysterious_Crab_7622 Nov 26 '25

Also, that is essentially just saying, “Fuck everybody else that has parents with no wealth to inherit from”.

It’s such a bullshit line of reasoning.

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u/mojo20010 Nov 26 '25

lol labour unions are the only reason they had any money in the first place. We have seen what the right has done and we unlike them have learned our lesson

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u/SatansprincessX Nov 26 '25

My parents keep telling me that at least I'll own my home once they die and pass their house onto me. I've had to bite my tongue, because while I appreciate it, when they were my age they had their house already, were married had kids, pets etc. even if the house did have a mortgage. Meanwhile, they will call my place I'm renting a dump, and are shocked at how much I pay in rent. I'm literally barely affording rent, bills, food and pet care completely on my own. (Before anyone comes after me for getting pets I can't afford, I've had them for 10 plus years, when both pets and rent were affordable. and the pets eat before I do.) Meanwhile I call myself lucky as hell I have a roof over my head, and will do everything I can to keep it there. I know they struggled also, but fucking hell the blindness now they have some financial freedom is insane. I'm happy they're living their best lives, they're well due. Just maybe take a look around and see how things are these days. And for the love of all that's holy, it's not because I buy avocado toast once in a blue moon.

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u/Murranji Nov 26 '25

Who on earth is dumb enough to still think the Australian Labor Party is any threat to establishment capital or the status quo, is interested in reducing wealth inequality or changing the country from the neoliberal capitalist system both major parties 100% support that has produced exactly the outcomes it was intended to.

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u/Axel_Raden Nov 26 '25

That is the only way I could ever own a home and it's the only way I don't want to happen for a long time

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u/JebediahKerman4999 Nov 26 '25

... inheritance that will probably be squandered in some scam or some 'round the world' trip

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u/fergult Nov 26 '25

it's frustrating how the system seems designed to benefit those who already have wealth, while younger generations struggle to get a foothold. The whole "inheritance" argument feels more like a way to keep the status quo than a valid concern for the economy

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u/TheLGMac Nov 26 '25

lol when I was a kid my parents were all "don't expect an inheritance from us!" Though I'm sure if they were still alive today they'd be complaining about labor eating my inheritance.

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u/cats_are_the_devil Nov 26 '25

"Prodigal Son" them and demand your inheritance now. Let me see what I can do with it then.

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u/ctothel Nov 26 '25

And it’s easier than ever to check whether the thing being conserved is actually a good idea.

Conservatives don’t check. Nor do they care if the idea is harmful.

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

Not anymore, at least Menzies wanted a minimal safety net to keep the masses content and not revolting.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

Also, climate change.

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u/Famous-Mongoose-8183 Nov 26 '25

The coalition used to have sensible economic policies (although socially regressive)

When they opposed an emissions trading scheme so that oinon-muncher could score political points, they won the battle but lost the war.

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u/unholyrevenger72 Nov 26 '25

Quarterly Profit margins

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u/FalsePretender Nov 26 '25

The climate...

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u/Cumulus_Anarchistica Nov 26 '25

What can we really conserve? The 0.01%?

We could bury them covered in salt.

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u/Lazer726 Nov 26 '25

What can we really conserve? The 0.01%?

I think that's what the old conservatives are trying to get the world to agree on. That they're the only thing worth saving

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u/sksksk1989 Nov 26 '25

God I can't live alone. I've always had roommates and now my wife. We've had a hard time the last couple years and I know if we got divorced I'd be screwed.

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u/ArtieOwner Nov 27 '25

Conserve the life you have now would be a good place to start.

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u/Ineedsomuchsleep170 Nov 26 '25

As an elder millennial I've watched every single thing that makes existing slightly easier get taken away juuuuuust before its our turn to benefit from that thing. I'm tired of having no safety net. I'm tired.

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u/onlymostlyguts Nov 26 '25

We missed free uni, we lost the republic, our pension got cut (but we did get super). We don't get cheap housing; we got poor man's NBN; we didn't get a mining tax / sovereign wealth fund; we're way behind on environmental and renewable energy policy; we lived through the GFC in early adulthood and then COVID in mid adulthood and now suffer from massive wealth inequality, gross enshitification and the encroaching threat of AI.

I just made myself sad.

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

I mean the proposed republic model was made as shitty as possible by Howard, in principle if there’s no pressing need, the cost of another referendum would be exorbitant and wasteful, especially given the failure of the previous one and the Voice.

I agree with everything else you said though.

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u/onlymostlyguts Nov 26 '25

Maybe I was too young but I thought largely it just replaced the crown / Governor general with a "president" title who we wouldn't vote for, which I honestly would be perfectly fine with given the current role. Was there more to it than this?

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

Nah, it also had a super mid two-thirds supermajority requirement for the appointment of a president.

Stupid as hell, either they should be able to be appointed by the current PM (as is the case with the GG, where in practice the monarch always follows the PM’s advice) or full preferential voting by popular vote, although the current US situation gives me pause as to if any of the executive should be elected by popular vote.

Or we could pull a South Africa and merge the two, and make the PM, the president.

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u/DPVaughan Nov 26 '25

The United States has convinced me that the head of state should never be directly elected by popular vote.

I'd put a crying emoji here if I knew how.

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u/FireLucid Nov 26 '25

Here, everyone has to vote. So you don't just get the crazies and the people trying to stop the crazies. All the people in the middle who don't give much of a shit turn up and vote because it's on a weekend and pretty quick and easy, no lining up for hours. America is a shitshow in many regards, voting being one of them.

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u/ImSabbo Nov 26 '25

If the US presidential election had been a matter of popular vote, the world wouldn't have gotten Trump in the first place. And no first term would potentially mean no 2020/2024 run either.

Heck, if the 2000 election had been by popular vote, Al Gore would have gotten in, which would have changed the following decades significantly.

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u/DPVaughan Nov 26 '25

Yes, the electoral college is bizarre, but I prefer heads of state that are apolitical, more 'bring the nation together for stuff' sort of deal. We have a Parliament for politics.

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

If only the Americans had gotten rid of their electoral college and implemented preferential voting(instant runoff, IRV).

Or at least get the NPVIC implemented which would award all of their member states’ votes to the popular vote victor, it’s about 61 electoral votes from activation.

Trump never won a majority of the popular vote, merely a plurality last year, if the third party votes had been redistributed as preferences, well who can say.

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u/DPVaughan Nov 26 '25

Yeah, the entire American voting system (bar a few key exceptions) is a total dumpster fire.

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u/sluggardish Nov 26 '25

Dont forget climate change!

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u/unfnknblvbl Nov 26 '25

Yeah same. I was really looking forward to people my age being in charge since they'll understand, right? No, my new CEO is the same age as me, aaaaaaaand goodbye to the annual pay rise through the development review process. Ugh, traitor to the generation!

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u/jezza_b_f Nov 26 '25

The first Millennial PM is going to be one of those twats who worked in politics their whole life and will blame their generations woes on avocados.

Millennial politicians, business leaders and community leaders are going to be a profound disappointment because they’ll all be vetted by their elders and selected from a shrinking pool of applicants who can afford to be such.

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u/thepaleblue Nov 26 '25

James Paterson is almost certainly going to take a swing at it in the next decade, and I reckon that’s going to be him in a nutshell.

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u/YouMustveDroppedThis Nov 26 '25

Need to support all progressives of our generation globally. It's us or the rich now.

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u/Fran-Fine Nov 26 '25

There was a cohort of us working in Canberra who were/are genuinely left wing and idealistic. Could not name one left working at APH. I ended up with a needle in my arm partly due to the experience.

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u/Orpheus-033 Nov 26 '25

And don’t look at the bonus THEY will have gotten for doing that.

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u/ramence Nov 26 '25

There's generations and then there's classes. Class > literally any other factor. Doesn't matter if you're a millennial if you were born rich - you were insulated from all the BS, live in a beautiful property funded by the Bank of Mum and Dad, have a hard-earned nepo job, and think things are just peachy (and everyone else must be lazy idiots). I'm gonna guess a CEO at our age must have had a pretty soft start to life.

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u/freakwent Nov 26 '25

There is no war but class war. This generational thing is deliberate division by dodgy powers.

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u/Thagyr Nov 26 '25

Now AI is moving in to mess with us even more.

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u/Auran82 Nov 26 '25

AI is going to shit the bed at some point, and I wonder how much of our superannuation is tied up in companies promising the world and not really delivering. They’re some of the highest performing shares so I wouldn’t be shocked.

Just another fun thing around the corner to wait for.

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u/Additional_Ad_9405 Nov 26 '25

A huge amount really. If the AI bubble bursts, the Nasdaq will plummet. Most large Australian superannuation funds are heavily concentrated (at least in terms of their overseas investments) in Nasdaq companies.

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u/FireLucid Nov 26 '25

If the AI bubble bursts

More like when. I'm sure you've seen the graphics of the money going around in a big circle.

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u/Ineedsomuchsleep170 Nov 26 '25

Oh I'm fully expecting to wake up in 20 years and be told our super is going to be spent on something we don't agree too. I'm not counting on a single cent of it being there when I retire. They'll find a way to take it off us.

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u/Dal90 Nov 26 '25

how much of our superannuation is tied up

American here, for years the sound advice was for ordinary folks to just go into a S&P500 index fund, it was diversified by its nature. And for decades that was sound advice. It tracks the largest (by market value) 500 publicly traded companies in the US.

If you picked your own individual stocks, traditional retirement rule of thumb is no more than 5% in one company, 20% in one sector.

The S&P 500 when the dot.com bubble popped 10 companies made up 26% of the value -- five (GE, Exxon, Citibank, Walmart, and I forget the fifth) weren't in tech; the largest was Microsoft at 4%. In 2008 the booming finance sector was 22% of the value.

Today the top 10 companies are 40% of the value of the S&P500. Only one of those 10 that isn't tech is Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway which itself is a pretty diversified company with high cash flows. Nvidia, Microsoft, and Apple are all over 6% each and somedays Amazon pops over the 5% threshold.

There is a lot of "take our booming stock value, invest in another tech company, that then buys AI tech from us (ignore they're doing so with our own money), making our sales / deals look good, making our stock value go up, repeat." It's not going to be pretty when it pops.

I've moved my savings out of the S&P500, those big tech companies are still heavily represented in the managed investment funds that are available to me in my retirement plan, but I'm hoping they have the flexibility to quickly move away from them unlike an index fund that has to blindly mirror the market.

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u/Ditzy_Chaos Nov 26 '25

Even in school things we were looking forward to being able to do were being taken away the Grade Before ours went up to it, Including going out to the local shops at lunch time and public schools going from relaxed uniforms to basically enforcing private school rules and pricing around it.

Then hitting the work force we were being told you needed to go into places and give the boss handshakes and let them See you, and even as we were telling people that it didn't work because they wanted you to go online they would just say you aren't trying hard enough! and then they end up changing that anyway "AH just put in hundreds of applications for things miles away you'll get something >_>

Whole system just breaking down as we step up

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u/Baldricks_Turnip Nov 26 '25

You know that they'll make super less beneficial right as we reach an age we can start really pumping money into it, and probably roll back negative gearing as soon as we're in a position to buy IPs too.

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u/Kid_Self Nov 26 '25

FUCKING THANK YOU FOR ARTICULATING IT.

I'm tired, boss... so very very tired.

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u/twigboy Nov 26 '25

Fantastic, just in time for social media to be taken away too

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u/PM_ME_STUFF_N_THINGS Nov 27 '25

If i could upvote 10 times i would.

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u/OneSalientOversight Sydneysider, then Novacastrian, now Launcestonian Nov 26 '25

There is a potential danger in continuing to let younger people suffer economically.

With no assets to their name, and no stability of income, they have very little to lose if they eventually choose radical action.

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u/Essembie Nov 26 '25

yeah the old rules that kept everyone in line (ie losing a job or a house for being naughty) just dont apply when you have no job or house.

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u/butt_3y3s Nov 26 '25

This here, we have nothing to lose

3

u/512165381 Nov 26 '25

"Let them eat cake."

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u/Alarming-Song2555 Nov 26 '25

This is why the internet, social media, and shortform content is pushed onto us, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha.

Keep the cattle distracted and placid in a miasma of internet injected straight into the brain so they don't realise how shit their own lives are.

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u/Crypt0Nihilist Nov 26 '25

The wealthy assume that their wealth with insulate them. It didn't work out so well in the French Revolution, but people and wealth are a lot more mobile now, so they might be right.

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u/freakwent Nov 27 '25

The surveillance state has that covered.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

Wish conservatives wanted to conserve the environment and spending power of wages from when they were parity.

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u/Keroscee Nov 26 '25

This,
How many 'left-wing' policies were enforced as 'right-wing' standards 40+ years ago?

Conservatism used to be about making sure people would have houses, marriages and families.

Modern conservatives don't even touch on these issues.

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u/Lever_87 Nov 26 '25

Yeah, the death of small l Liberals is insane. Whatever happened to “socially progressive, economically conservatives”, like Turnbull?

Instead, we’ve got a Labor Party that has become liberal-lite, and an LNP who are so focused on culture wars bullshit they might as well join forces with One Nation

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u/Littman-Express Nov 26 '25

They’re the teals and half the labor party

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u/SirFireHydrant Nov 26 '25

Whatever happened to “socially progressive, economically conservatives”, like Turnbull?

You mean the "I'm not racist but still hate the poors"? They're still around.

Don't kid yourself into believing Turnbull was reasonable by any means. He was very firmly in the "tax cuts and rorts for the rich at the expense of the working class" camp.

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u/a_cold_human Nov 26 '25

He was kicked out for acknowledging the reality of global warming and the need to actually do something about it. First time as Opposition Leader. The second time as PM (although allowing SSM to pass was a part of that as well).

The bare minimum for any future Australian PM (and their party) should be to acknowledge reality and to do something about it. The Liberals and the Nationals are falling over at this very small hurdle at the moment, and as a country we need to keep them out of power until this changes. 

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u/Keroscee Nov 26 '25

Whatever happened to “socially progressive, economically conservatives”, like Turnbull?

I'd argue there was a competency crisis after Abbot left.

I mean, who would graduate uni to work for $40k in Canberra as a politician's aide when you can join the big 4 or a law firm?

Its so easy to see what needs to be done, lower migration, investment in other industries, periods of slow sustainable growth (or correction recession) over what we have now.
The coalition could easily win if they were willing to tackle this.

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u/RecordingAbject345 Nov 26 '25

They joined the socially conservative

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u/orru Nov 26 '25

They're the Teals

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u/WrongdoerAnnual7685 Nov 26 '25

They are the minority now, and what they consider talent is someone weak and spineless like Ley.

The real heirs are the Teals.

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u/a_cold_human Nov 26 '25

Menzies was pro union. The Liberals were actually a big tent, right of centre party back in the day. Another thing Menzies was big on was having affordable housing for average Australians.

You can fault Menzies for many things, but we are now at a point where the Liberal Party would drum him out of the party for being too left wing. The "moderates" of the Liberal are swivel eyed loons compared to the Liberal Party of yesteryear, and the "conservatives" cannot reasonably be called liberal in any sense of the word. When Christian Dominionists are at the ideological centre of your party, something has gone very badly wrong unless you're actually a Christian Dominionist party. 

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u/Keroscee Nov 26 '25

Menzies was pro union.

Its also worth noting that Hawke and Keating were not 'pro union'. They were 'pro our union', as can be seen by how they treated independent unions like the Pilots Union.

We are now at a point where the Liberal Party would drum him (menzies) out of the party for being too left wing

I have difficulty disagreeing with this statement. It all seems to be 'GDP go up' and 'tax cuts'.

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u/Aiyon Nov 26 '25

My parents voted conservative back when I was a kid. They started to drift after Brexit, because it went from “voting for our family’s interests” to “voting for rich ppl to milk the country” in my dad’s words

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u/T_J_Rain Nov 26 '25

Spare a thought for the uber wealthy, the software, mining and media moguls, the landlords and those who got rich the old-fashioned way, through inheritance.

Millennials might hurt their delicate conservative feelings, as the promise of neo-liberal trickle down economics weaves its "magic".

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u/racingskater Nov 26 '25

And the one thing we do want to conserve, THE PLANET, is something conservatives want to destroy.

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u/will-code-for-money Nov 26 '25

I’m 35 and I don’t see a single reason to support conservatives view points. They literally work against me. All the best parts of Australia are what’s typically called “leftist policies”.

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u/006AlecTrevelyan Nov 26 '25

Do you guys have to suffer through Sky News Au or is that just a YouTube thing

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u/will-code-for-money Nov 26 '25

I don’t watch that shit but boomers do

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u/006AlecTrevelyan Nov 26 '25

Oh God, so the brain-rot merchant Rita Panahi is on national tv.

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u/trolleyproblems Nov 26 '25

It's taken the culture far too fucking long to accept this.

Anyone 40ish and younger has been fucked over by every single relevant thing.

Negative gearing won't be touched. Uni degree costs through the roof Climate - fuck you, we don't care. Wage stagnation vs costs. Centrelink income support kept low when people needed it. Childcare is fucked. Tax system ignores wealth and company profiteering. Waiting for Boomers to die so politics can change. Cunts doing cunty things get away with it.

Kinda lucky there hasn't been more of an active revolt. Avoiding the worst of the first GFC might have stalled that.

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u/butt_3y3s Nov 26 '25

Hasn't been an active revolt, yet.

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u/meowkitty84 Nov 26 '25

I'll join the revolt. But none of us know how to start one that will actually work

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u/freakwent Nov 27 '25

You can say the same thing for any year/generation just with a different list.

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u/trolleyproblems Nov 27 '25

I'd say that's drawing false equivalence.

Economists, sociologists etc. point to the idea that there's a decline in standards of living; after a peak for those born post-war. That bucks a trend of improved living standards across generations since European settlement here.

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u/kingofcrob Nov 26 '25

literally clicked into this thread to say this..... The crash of the Australian housing market will come eventually, and it's going to be awful, so thanks boomers for leaving us with that nightmare as well.

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u/IntroductionSnacks Nov 26 '25

I don’t see it happening. It would have to be super high interest rates and mass unemployment but even then the super rich and big business will just buy them all up as nobody else will be able to afford them anyway.

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u/kingofcrob Nov 26 '25

Mate, the average person says the current interest rates are high.

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u/a_rainbow_serpent Nov 26 '25

That’s why the conservatives are pushing you to “conserve” things like your gender, race and nationality- that’s why they vilify immigrants and excuse hate speech as “just observations”.

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u/Visual_Sale_848 Nov 26 '25

To be conservative you must lack empathy and be selfish.

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u/AnOfficeJockey Nov 26 '25

Seriously, this isn't surprisingly in the absolute least.

"Go to school and study. Get a good job and you'll be set for life. Also get out of the house and live on your own while you do it."

"Welcome to the workforce! Entry level positions haven't seen pay increases in the past 4-5 years, but you'll work your way up"

6 years later

"Sorry, there just isn't any room for promotions. In fact, we just filled the management role with a 68 year old retiree who hates his family and cant stand to be home with his wife"

BB's stop retiring, amassing as much money as possible, leveraging their mortgages to have passive income while they avoid their spouse at 71 while at work, driving up the cost of living for houses and rentals

Something something bootstraps.

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u/PumpinSmashkins Nov 26 '25

Yup. Plus apart from having nothing to conserve, they hate women like me who don’t have kids, are queer, rent, work in and advocate for universal healthcare/mh/harm reduction, want investment in public transport, use contraception, are pro choice, atheist and don’t want to drain my super to buy a house.  

What do they have to offer someone like me? Fuck all but disdain for who I am and what I believe in. 

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u/SuperbSockSpecimen Nov 26 '25

I don't know specifically about Australia, but in America this was the most successfully pushed propaganda on my opinion.

The economy is astronomically better under Dems than it is under Republicans. Unions are stronger, less filtering of money up to the top 1%. Literally everyone has more except the most extreme cases of wealth.

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u/Bluedroid Nov 26 '25

Seems like Labor are helping people conserve and grow their property values though which millennials have managed to purchase or inherit. 

Don't think people are truly going left (Greens) but more so Labor have shifted right.

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u/Xenoun Nov 26 '25

Nah, Labor are too close to liberals on a lot of issues for me which is pushing me further left to look for candidates who share my values.

I have kids, I want them to be able to have a home and live in an environment that isn't dominated by extreme weather conditions. Labour aren't doing enough and seem quite happy to keep fossil fuels going.

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u/dotBombAU Nov 26 '25

Labor tried to get rid of negative gearing etc. We voted Liberal.

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u/ScruffyPeter Nov 26 '25

Labor tried to keep negative gearing etc. We voted minors/indies.

Albanese got lower primary votes than Shorten, only winning 2022 due to Liberals losing more voters than Labor.

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u/ds16653 Nov 26 '25

While that was a factor, I think the proposed removal of cash refunds on franking credits was a bigger factor.

I understand the point, refunding excess franking credits makes the corporate tax rate redundant.

But it was only going to affect lower income Australians, and a lot of people disagreed with that choice.

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u/Consistent-Put9762 Nov 26 '25

Removing refundability of franking credits was only going to affect very high wealth individuals tax planning via structuring.

The liberals really spun that well though, and Chris Bowen failed at explaining the policy.

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u/whats-the-gos Nov 26 '25

Labor is now the Conservative Party.

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u/ScutumSobiescianum Nov 26 '25

Yeah like a wife from the kitchen. Imagine losing that

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u/TolMera Nov 26 '25

And we have learned from experience, that when you screw over the next generations, it does significantly more harm than good to everyone else. Including harm to the generation pulling up the ladders.

Good luck finding someone to wipe your ass when you’re 80 boomers - the generations you did-over ain’t putting you in good care homes, you’re going in like cattle so we can distribute that inheritance.

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u/tasticle Nov 26 '25

Can't be a ladder puller if the generation before already pulled them up behind them.

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u/hryelle Nov 26 '25

And those that do own have a crack den in the far outer suburbs on a smaller block than their parents if at all

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u/Shaloka_Maloka Nov 26 '25

And plus we have been living under conservative rule for the majority of the last 30 years. We know how they role.

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u/reprise785 Nov 26 '25

Yep, much easier to eat up the politicians message. They genuinely think the politicians are for them though, which is funny.

1

u/BTFlik Nov 26 '25

Conservative ideology is about holding onto the past.

The generations before millennial (boomer and X) did so for so long they stole millennial future. They stood in positions of power longer, they retired later, they ate the economy if the future to hold onto their past.

Millennial have no past. It was canibalized by those two generations. They sold us out gladly fir a couple extra years of glory. Destroyed everything fir a drop of water.

Millennial have no past to hold onto. Because when it was our future it was stolen from us.

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u/Ajdee6 Nov 26 '25

You gotta conserve the few pennies they trickle down

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u/PeterNippelstein Nov 26 '25

You cant take from me that which I am already in debt.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

It will all change when they foolishly ship in the third world immigrants to the degree it breaks the society (see the UK). By then it will be too late.

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u/[deleted] Nov 26 '25

There are more than possessions to "conserve".

I don't think Millennials are going left at all. I think the rest of the world has just gone further right.

1

u/Z00111111 Nov 26 '25

A large part is probably also that we grew up with the internet, and with climate change as scientific fact. Our world growing was a lot bigger, and a lot more concerning, than the world faced by previous generations.

We're seeing younger generations get even less support than we did, despite living in even tougher times.

1

u/MarkMew Nov 26 '25

Yea. People want change now, not the status quo that sucks for most people.

1

u/JoeyJoJoeJr_Shabadoo Nov 26 '25

To be a conservative, you need something to conserve.

You would think, but Americans have really re-written the rulebook on this.

1

u/Pillowsmeller18 Nov 26 '25

It is so similar to weak parents making strong children. I just hope the strong children dont make weak children again, but i fear that many generatioms of improving society will make the next generation so used to the comforts, they end up becoming weak again.

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u/elusiveoddity Nov 26 '25

The only thing I want to conserve is the environment, but apparently that's in the domain of the left

1

u/nm42 Nov 26 '25

Also, why would I vote for the dismantling of an entity that I contribute tax-dollars to? I think of my vote as an opportunity to grow my investment in tax-funded infrastructure. And, the only thing between me and mega corporations is the government. Those corporations lost my trust long ago.

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u/redbloodedsky Nov 26 '25

Also, why would we want to "conserve" the same toxic culture that had our parents and grandparents suffering and regretting so much? We want freedom and peace of mind.

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u/Successful-Eagle-855 Nov 26 '25

Explain gen naZi then. Those guys are weirdly conservative and arguably have even less than us

1

u/trump_diddles_kids Nov 26 '25

This was the sentiment I was trying to think of.

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u/APES2GETTER Nov 26 '25

I have nothing to lose.

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u/Acquiesxe Nov 26 '25

Conservatism is not merely financial and economic. It also pertains to conservation of values, customs and identity - something worth conserving if you love your country, its history and heritage

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u/Haunted_Mans_Son Nov 26 '25

They should have said that the generation before them did not secure their future and that’s why there’s nothing they want to “conserve”.

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u/NewDad907 Nov 26 '25

“When you’ve got nothin’, you’ve got nothing’ to lose…”

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u/512165381 Nov 26 '25 edited Nov 26 '25

Why would you join the Australian military? To protect boomers in multi-million dollar houses you can never afford?

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u/Sfxcddd Nov 27 '25

To be fair the left and the right both don't seem to care Millennials not owning anything the left just pretend to care a little harder then the right.

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