Recently I was talking to my boss about the passing of Bob Hawke. He was reminiscing about a time when he trusted politicians and genuinely believed what they were saying, and how he really wanted to go along for the ride with them.
I’m 23 years old. I was born a couple of months before John Howard took office for the first time in 1996, and I was 11 years old when Kevin Rudd took over in 2007. I vividly remember my primary school self having a bit of an existential crisis at the thought of a Prime Minister that wasn’t John Howard – was it even legal? How would that possibly work? Surely we can’t just change our Prime Minister so easily? The foreshadowing of that last thought obviously wasn’t clear to me at the time.
My point is, I am a grown woman with bills, a university degree, and a full time job, and this is what I looked like the last time a Prime Minister left office after having served a full term:
Me
I cut off my super on-trend hair wrap just before school photo day, ok? We’ve all been there.
People my age and younger hardly remember a Prime Minister that didn’t get knifed halfway through a term, let alone one that we want to rally behind. We get told stories about Prime Ministers like Sir Robert Menzies, Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, or Paul Keating as if we were there, but we weren’t. After Bob Hawke died, we heard all about his 75% approval rating and how much the country loved him, but that wasn’t something that happened in our lifetime.
So what do we have in our lifetime? Record levels of voter disillusionment brought on by the revolving door to the Prime Minister’s office and perceived dishonesty of politicians across the board, that’s what.
In 2018, the Lowy Institute released poll data showing that less than half of Australian adults under the age of 45 actually thought that democracy was the best way to govern. One in five adults between 18 and 29 had just thrown their hands in the air and said that it really doesn’t matter what sort of government we have, be that democracy or otherwise. Even the Lowy Institute themselves described trends of young people consistently displaying a “surprising ambivalence about democracy”.
Lord knows it’s super easy for everyone to blame young people for not trusting politicians, but somehow I don’t think we’re the problem here. The problem is that our fearless leaders are trying to appeal to us not with actual policies or rousing speeches, but by pretending to care about footy and celebrities, chugging beers, and munching down on onions. Climate change is roasting the planet, Newstart hasn’t been raised in over two decades, and we’re running out of water, but sure. I’d love to hear what a member of parliament thinks of the latest season of Bachelor In Paradise.
I’d love to say the outlook is bright, but our next election is probably going to be fought between two middle aged white dudes that go by Albo and ScoMo – assuming of course neither of them gets axed in the next three years. Not that a change in leadership would be shocking, of course. After all, it’s all that our generation has ever known.