The great Australian malaise: fear, despair and resentment split on generational lines

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton listens to Anthony Albanese during question time. Picture: Martin Ollman/NewsWire

Neither Anthony Albanese nor Peter Dutton appears to have fully grasped yet the new polarisation of Australia’s political landscape.

It is an inimitable change, driven by the post-pandemic economic pain and social disorder.

The traditional generational split has become a multi-generational schism that has been gradually building over the past two years.

There is no single driver but a combination of living pressures and anxieties that have now pitted three generational levels against each other.

Fear, grievance and resentment are at the heart of this phenomenon.

These are the lead findings of a focus group study conducted by an apolitical private sector consultancy recently.

The sample groups were taken from three groups of mixed genders of 18 to 28-year-olds, two groups of split gender middle-aged Australians between 40 and 55 years old, and two older groups of over 75s living at home.

The consultants preferred to stay anonymous but believe their findings have tapped into a change that traditional methods of analysing cost-of-living concerns have not.

The research was not testing political views. It was conducted for different purposes. But the findings are as profound as they are unique to the federal election.

All generations have competing demands. But if there is a common thread today it is a profound sense of disillusionment and perception of failure in political leadership. This appears to go beyond just cost of living in an acute sense and exposes a longer-term problem in response to what appears to be deep structural change in the community.

For younger Australians, it is the end of hope. Many feel they exist in order to keep the “machine running” for others.

Middle aged Australians feel they are slipping down the ladder, or at best spinning their wheels. The lack of vision from both sides of politics is a chief concern. They believe neither has a credible or meaningful plan.

For older Australians, there is a sense of loss and insecurity. Security, financial and personal, is critical. But this is crumbling. There is a consensus that the current political leadership at a federal level lacks the skills to manage a crisis.

“For young Australians, the feeling is sharpest, most visceral, because they are the first generation in modern history to grow up with the expectation that they will be poorer than their parents,” according to a summary of the study’s findings.

“The dream of home ownership, once a basic milestone of adulthood, has become so distant that it is no longer an aspiration.

“They do not talk about when they will buy a home, but how they will afford rent.

“They speak of a record-high HECS debt for degrees that offer no guarantee of stability or a career, let alone prosperity.

“They pay rent to landlords whose mortgages were secured at a fraction of today’s prices.”

The resentment is palpable, the summary states.

Hence the attraction to the Greens, who a significant number of younger voters feel validate their concerns.

According to the research, the key take-out is that younger voters feel they are “paying into a system that they increasingly believe will never pay them back”.

More than 25 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds now vote for the Greens. The risk for the major parties is that there is a significant section of Australia’s youth that will be permanently lost to them.

For middle-aged Australians, it is less a sense of being locked out than being trapped.

“They did everything right. They secured their place. They got the job, took out the mortgage, built the life they were supposed to build. And yet they do not feel comfortable. They do not feel stable. They do not feel like they are moving forward,” the study’s summary of findings states.

“The cost of simply maintaining the life they worked so hard to build has become its own burden. And for those with children, there is a deep sense of betrayal that Australia has not maintained the promise of world class public education. They are running just to stay in place and they know their children may not have the future they want to promise.

“For many working in the service industry they are told the economy is growing, but they do not feel like it is moving for them.”

There are clear and critical messages in all of this for both Labor and the Coalition heading into the election campaign.

Optimism is absent. In its place is a sense of disbelief in the narrative that things are improving.

It is vulnerability that affects older Australians most. They have their homes, their super, their assets, but instead of feeling comfortable, they feel increasingly exposed. “They also see their children struggling and quietly fear that the choice is support the next generation at the cost of dignity in their own old age.

“They want to believe in stability, but they do not believe it the way they once did. They miss a time of bold leadership.”

Navigating these concerns across the age divide is the challenge Labor and the Coalition face in an already unpredictable political environment.

“Australians feel like passengers in their own country, unsure of who is in the driver’s seat,” says the author of the findings.

There is an intuitive correlation between these attitudes and the broader polling of the major political parties, with shows a deep dissatisfaction with both Labor and the Coalition.

While both may believe they are targeting their policy agendas to meet some of these intergenerational demands, neither appears to have a vision that embodies these deeper structural issues that are fracturing civil society.