ALP desperately needs Gen Z voters. Too bad Albanese just drove us further away

Whatever the outcome of next year’s federal election, the prime minister will undoubtedly spend much of his time on the campaign trail arguing that his government has served young Australians well.

To an extent, this is true. Labor has delivered a suite of policies targeted at Gen Z voters: introducing a 15 per cent increase in rent assistance in 2023 (the first real rise in more than three decades) and a further 10 per cent increase in September; enacting the help to buy scheme for first-home owners; wiping $3 billion from HECS debt; and committing a further $588 million to mental health services.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

If this were the whole picture, Anthony Albanese would be right to expect favour from young voters at the next election, the first in which Gen Z and Millennials will outnumber Baby Boomers (about 50 per cent of voters heading to the ballot box in 2025 will be between the ages of 18 and 45, compared with 33 per cent of voters who are Boomers).

But last week there was an about-face that will seriously jeopardise Labor’s standing with young voters, and surely bring the question of youth support to the top of the PM’s list of worries.

In 2022, one of Labor’s central election promises was to address Australia’s inadequate environment laws. This commitment was key to Gen Z voters’ tacit understanding at the time that Labor ranks better on the issue of climate than the Coalition.

But last week, despite Environment and Water Minister Tanya Plibersek having reached a deal with the Greens to introduce a number of promised environmental protection changes, the government chose to shelve the bills. Labor’s promised response to Graeme Samuel’s damning review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act was deferred. The hope of an environmental protection agency was also kicked down the road.

Labor knows that to avoid minority government, it must win seats in Western Australia and Queensland – both strong mining states.

Sacrificing these environment bills might work in those electorates. But reneging on environmental protections during the hottest year on record will lose Labor crucial votes elsewhere.

Climate change remains one of the top three issues that young Australians see as needing immediate action. According to polling from Monash University, 74 per cent of Australians aged between 13 and 24 believe the government should do more to address the problem. Two-thirds feel that legislators should pay more attention to our views on this topic. So, yes, HECS and rent assistance packages have been welcome moves, but withdrawing from climate action undoes any notion of the government being seriously committed to my generation. How else are we supposed to view Albanese’s retreat on this issue than a political move that deprioritises the long-term wellbeing of Australians for potential short-term party gains?

The ascendancy of the Greens, with their credo “no new coal and gas”, proves this. Capitalising on the popular understanding that major parties have failed young Australians, the Greens won four of the five youngest seats in the country at the 2022 election. Were the current electorate made up only of Gen Z and young Millennials, the Coalition would be replaced by the Greens as Labor’s main challenger. The leader of the opposition would go by the name of Adam Bandt, not Peter Dutton.

Speaking to the ABC, Redbridge polling director Kos Samaras said Gen Z was “disproportionately represented in the 5.2 million Australians that voted for something else” – that is, independents and minor parties – in 2022. We made up a significant chunk of what the Australian Election Study named “a large-scale abandonment of major party voting”.

The only way to rectify this slide is to act meaningfully on the issues that matter most to young people. To think we will look past Labor’s environmental failings and focus on wins in other areas is seriously misguided.

Yet, Albanese clearly doesn’t think so. On Instagram, he announced: “A re-elected Labor government will wipe another 20 per cent of everyone’s HECS debt.” And speaking at a recent rally, he assured the crowd that a second Labor term would also enact permanent fee-free TAFE places. Climate, it seems, has been left out of the equation. That might have worked 20 years ago, but it won’t pass muster now. And attempts to use Gen Z slang – such as calling Dutton “an NPC” (a video game term relating to non-playable characters) – does nothing but make for awkward viewing.

In his valedictory speech to the House of Representatives, Bill Shorten accurately pontificated on how the next parliament should work in order to best serve the next generation of Australians. According to the former Labor leader, this task “begins with unfinished business for the nation – climate”.

In 2019, Shorten’s chances at the prime ministership were vetoed by a Boomer-heavy electorate. Now entering the early twilight of their influence, their voting mantle is poised to be taken up by the most progressive, climate-conscious generation yet.

It would be a dull irony if this cohort, so far-removed from its elders, also acted decisively to deny Labor its chance at government. But that might just happen.

Daniel Cash is a law student at the Australian National University.