Scott Morrison’s budget doesn’t care about young people

Scott Morrison was splashing cash around to millions of Aussies in his last ditch attempt to be re-elected. But forgot one key group.

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If you were still waiting for a sign that Scott Morrison’s government doesn’t care about young Australians, yesterday’s budget announcement was it.

Young people in this country are facing an unprecedented struggle with fast rising cost of living with wages that aren’t increasing at anywhere near the same rate. That’s not an opinion, that’s a well-documented fact.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, wages increased by 2.3 per cent in the last 12 months, compared to cost of living which went up by 3.5 per cent in the same time frame.

But it’s private schools and high-income earners that are set to gain even more from this budget.

‘The prime minister clearly … doing little to address the major concerns of young people,’ says economist Richard Dennis. Picture: Luke Bowden

The Australia Institute’s chief economist told Junkee Richard Denniss: “The prime minister clearly thinks that the federal election in May will be decided by voters who are older than average, richer than average, and more likely to live in regional Australia than average.

“As a result of that cynical calculus, he has aimed an enormous amount of our money at his target voters, while doing little to address the major concerns of young people.”

To be fair there are some good things, like more money going into a women’s health package, more money for apprentice tradies, billions for flood-affected areas and more money going towards mental health.

While the past few years have been tough for everyone, stats from Finder show that Covid just made an already bad situation worse for young people.

Almost two in five Gen Z and a huge 41 per cent of Gen Y say they struggle to pay their rent or home loan repayments. That’s compared to 23 per cent of Baby Boomers feeling the same way.

In February, the amount that Gen Z were able to save went down by 30 per cent since the same time last year. For Gen Y, their average savings went down from $1089 to just $592 in the same time period. That's a decrease of 46 per cent.

It’s a situation that isn’t about to get any better for those if you’re starting out in your career (and you’re not in a trade), if you’re dreaming of one day buying a home, if you care about the environment, or heaven forbid, if you find yourself unemployed or in need of welfare.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison with Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

Low-income earners

Basically, you don’t get much. While there are a couple of single payments — like a one-off tax cut of up to $1500 for people who earn less than $126,000 a year, and a $250 payment to welfare recipients — there are no immediate plans to increase minimum wages. Which is the key point in cost of living struggles faced by young Aussies.

If you’re unemployed and in need of welfare payments, there has also been no change to Jobseeker payments despite inflation of everything else. So yes, it’ll get harder to buy necessities.

Meanwhile, people earning over $200,000 a year will soon receive ongoing tax cuts of $9000 or more.

Education

While there was in fact a record funding for schools in the new budget, the majority is going to private schools.

The government will provide $180 billion for education over the next for years, but $167.3 million of that will be going to private schools, due to “increased student enrolments”.

First home buyers

Yes, there are double the amount of places for the Home Guarantee Scheme, which helps first home buyers by allowing them to purchase a home with a smaller deposit.

However, nothing has actually been done about skyrocketing house prices, so it’s still unlikely that young people will be able to pay off the rest.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has given up on young voters. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

The environment

Scott Morrison has already faced plenty of criticism about climate change after Australia’s unbelievably poor performance at COP26 (if you need a reminder, find it here).

There is increased funding for the Great Barrier Reef, koalas and recycling — which are all good things. But also ultimately useless while they also refuse to invest in genuinely green energy. Instead, they’ll put money into outdated technology, the effectiveness of which is very much questioned by the wider scientific community.

On that note, despite rising petrol prices reigniting the conversation about electric cars, they weren’t mentioned at all in the budget. They have halved taxes on fuel to lower petrol prices, but that’ll only last for six months. So basically the planet and your wallet lose.

Morrison has clearly decided that young people either don’t care, or don’t matter in this upcoming election.

Originally published as Scott Morrison’s budget doesn’t care about young people