This week came the news that Australia’s millennial generation are the least optimistic in the world. Fortunately the study was done prior to this week’s events in the federal parliament, because any young person observing what the government did would quickly find themselves even more despondent.

The big legislative move this week was the government seeking to pay for its child care policy by introducing numerous cuts to the family tax benefit and to areas which will affect young people more than others. Among the most pernicious was to increase the age at which someone is considered a “youth”.

The government is seeking to raise the eligibility for Newstart from 22 to 25 years of age; all those under 25 would instead have to claim the Youth Allowance. For a single person living away that would mean going from receiving $528.70 a fortnight to $437.50.

The reasoning for the policy goes some way to demonstrating the contempt this government has for young people.

The social services minister, Christian Porter, told ABC’s RN drive on Thursday the reason for the change was that currently the system “structurally disincentives” people aged 22-24 from studying. This is because students are on the lower paying Youth Allowance rather than Newstart.

Porter argued the system needed to be changed “because the option consistently exists for [the students] to go onto Newstart and receive slightly more money and not pursue studies”.

Such a belief exhibits both a breathtaking lack of logic and a huge amount of disdain for the intelligence of 22-24 year olds. Porter is suggesting a 22-year-old would give up study and the prospects for a better paying job over the rest of his of her lifetime in order to get an extra $45 a week now.



Even worse is that Porter’s own defence of the policy destroys the reasoning for it. He told ABC’s Patricia Karvelas the changes would not see people worse off because students are able to earn up to $437 a fortnight and still claim the full amount of the youth allowance.

The change is about targeting a segment of the public the government believes cannot hurt it at the ballot box.

But the problem for Porter is that system already exists. If, by Porter’s own words, going from Newstart to Youth Allowance does not make someone “materially worse off ... if they are able to engage in employment”, then where is the disincentive to study?

The reality is the change is all about saving money by targeting a segment of the voting public the government believes cannot hurt it at the ballot box. It has nothing at all to do with encouraging people to study.

And cuts to Newstart are particularly harmful for young people, because youth are more likely to be unemployed than those over 25. People aged 20-24 account for 10% of the labour force but 19% of the unemployed.

The unemployment rate for people aged 20-24 is now 10.5% – the highest it has been since 2001. Since the end of 2015, the unemployment rate for people over 25 has fallen from 4.6% to 4.2%; while for those aged 20-24 it has risen from 9% to the current rate.

In periods of weak employment growth life is always toughest for the youth – especially when underemployment is also at record highs. You’re not only competing for work against those who are older and more experienced, you are also competing against those who are older and more experienced and who already have work but are looking for more hours.

It’s worth noting that when Christian Porter was a 22-year-old in 1992, only around 15% of those aged 20 to 24 were studying full-time compared to around 31% now – and students are much more likely to be also working than were Porter’s generation back in the 1990s.

But then as government backbencher Luke Howarth unintentionally revealed this week, life was a bit different for youth back then.

Howarth argued that the big issue of housing affordability was young people not knowing how to save. He told the Federation Chamber that “I bought my first home when I was about 23. It cost me $93,000, I think, at the time, and I was earning about $27,000 a year working full time in retail.”

As Buzzfeed’s Mark DiStefano noted a retail worker can now earn around twice what Howarth did, but the price of a first home at around $440,000 is nearly five times more than Howarth’s first home. I guess that’s just millennials’ fault for being born too late.

There was also no joy for the younger generation on the issue that will affect them the most – climate change.

Once there was a time when Malcolm Turnbull would make a speech to mark the launch of a plan for “zero carbon Australia”. He would argue that “we must move, if we are to effectively combat climate change to a situation where all or almost all of our energy comes from zero or very near zero emissions sources”.

And back in 2010 Turnbull cared deeply about the lives of young people, arguing that “we are asking our own generation to make decisions; to make sacrifices, to make expenditures today so as to safeguard our children, their children and the generations that come after them”.

Now he sits next to a treasurer who brought along a chunk of coal to question time. Now he is a man who uses the climate change denier code of “energy security”, praises coal as vital and decries moves towards greater use of renewable energy as “ideological”.

Let us not say Turnbull is now a climate change denier, let us just say he is impersonating one so well that he has fully inhabited the role.

He told parliament, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the load shedding of electricity in South Australia this week was due to a lack of wind and was a sign the state ALP government’s policy toward renewable energy was “a triumph of ideology over common sense” and had the state akin to “the third world”.

But when asked about load shedding in the rather more coal-dependent, NSW suddenly all was well as he replied, “as long as it is controlled and planned, that can be done without impacting on households”.

It’s a position that does not bode well for those of the generation who, unlike the prime minister’s, will actually have to deal with the consequences of inaction on climate change.

And along with the changes to Newstart it does not suggest a government that particularly cares about the wellbeing, either now or in the future, of that younger generation.