The era of Baby Boomers as the dominant voting force in Australian politics is at an end and the impact will play out at the next federal election, due by May.
If you listen carefully, you can already hear that politicians know the power and numbers have shifted to younger people.
We are already seeing political parties shift demographic focus and it’s something that will differentiate this next election to others in recent times, with a noticeable focus on young people.
The 2025 federal election will be the first election where Gen Z and Millennials will outnumber boomers in every state and territory, dramatically changing the way political parties campaign and target voters. This is no small thing. Policy and political announcements designed around the perceived needs of boomers have been at the heart of Australian politics. Changing voter demographics will introduce a seismic shift.
Think about the 2019 campaign that former Labor leader Bill Shorten unexpectedly lost. The anger of boomers about plans for key taxation shifts — from negative gearing to franking credits — that they believed would punish them was partly responsible for the re-election of the Coalition.
Fast-forward two electoral terms and those same ideas — particularly when it comes to housing — have different electoral resonance.
Gen Z and Millennials now make up 47 per cent of the electorate. Boomers are about 33 per cent. The Gen Z and Millennial demographic number will be closer to 50 per cent by the time we get to May.
The shift in the demographics of voters is already challenging political parties that need to pivot political campaigns to address the issues that matter to younger voters.
Influencers not advertisers
Political analysts say Millennials and Gen Z are two demographic groups that do not consume free-to-air media and traditional media platforms like boomers do. The younger demographic is also the most sceptical about political advertising.
Some believe political parties in Australia have not yet adjusted to this new environment the way the Trump campaign did successfully in the United States. Trump’s campaign spent less money than the Harris campaign but targeted younger people on social media platforms and on the podcasts they consumed.
The new political advertising needs to be about influencers, not advertisers.
We are already seeing it with HECS HELP relief changes and the new political focus on housing affordability.
That’s all a sign of the growing political power of Millennials and Gen Z.
Pollsters are watching for volatile voters
And with some signs that younger men are trending towards more conservative political views, the way to capture their votes is under active discussion in Canberra.
In inner-urban and middle-urban areas, Gen Z and Millennials may vote more for progressive and left-leaning polities but this group is a massive disruptor in the outer-urban areas and in the regions.
In these areas, Gen Z and Millenials harbour no party loyalty and provide a level of political volatility that is testing the major parties.
Pollsters believe the biggest disruptors will be young people without a university degree, who are viewed as significantly volatile voters in the outer suburbs and regions.
This group, pollsters believe, is the most likely to be attracted to anything they may perceive as the system having failed them, and then vote to bring that system down.
Think about what happened in the once-safe Labor seat of Fowler at the last election when the electorate swung behind independent Dai Le and rejected the sitting Labor candidate, former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally. Labor had held the seat since 1984.
Respected pollster and former Labor strategist Kos Samaras who runs the Redbridge polling firm has warned the generational shift will be a game changer at this election and the major parties are slow to engage with that change.
“All the major political parties are preparing to run campaigns heavily reliant on traditional media and communication platforms that are increasingly obsolete when it comes to engaging an emerging generation of voters,” he told this column.
All parties should slash their free-to-air TV advertising budgets and focus on fully capturing digital first platforms, he believes.
“Younger voters, particularly Gen Z and Millennials, consume media in vastly different ways compared to previous generations,” he said. “They are more likely to rely on digital-first platforms like social media, podcasts and streaming services, while shunning legacy media such as television and radio.”
Truth bombs and political time bombs
We’ve already seen policy pivots from both sides of politics that are designed to capture the younger cohorts of voters who will have the ultimate sway over the election. However, there were some truth bombs about this demographic political time bomb delivered by former Labor leader and now services minister Shorten in his final speech to parliament.
Shorten said young Australians carried “a disproportionate share of the tax burden” under current legislation and reflected on what he believed needed to change.
He warned young Australians faced increasing economic and housing inequality unless political leaders reached a bipartisan position on reforming the tax system.
Shorten nominated tax reform, climate change, housing, defence and foreign policy, constitutional recognition for Indigenous Australians and gender equality as “unfinished business” for federal politicians.
But one of the policies that voters previously rejected was reforming negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount used by property investors to help homebuyers.
While Shorten acknowledged the government this year had created fairer income tax cuts, he argued property was still taxed preferentially and lightly, while income was still taxed too heavily.
“As a result, young Australians carry a disproportionate share of the burden,” he said.
“Not only do they pay more tax than a generation ago. They pay more for their education than ever before … and it is harder than ever for young Australians to save for a first home.
“We must not become a society where the best predictor of owning a home in the future is the bank balance of your parents now.”
Leaving parliament is freeing for politicians who no longer have to toe the political line.
Shorten’s final intervention throws a giant log on the fire to reignite passion in his own ranks about who and what his party should be fighting for.
Tax and education are key battlegrounds
Sydney MP Allegra Spender, a key crossbench figure, danced to the same tune last week, vowing to use a hung parliament after the next election to drive tax reform, arguing the system was hurting young people to the point they were giving up on having families and were unable to buy a home.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers has admitted young Australians have faced the brunt of the challenges of the past few years.
Spender argues the tax system, and concessions such as negative gearing, are partly to blame for the collapse in birth rate and the dramatic fall in home ownership among those in their 20s and 30s.
Education and training are also new battlegrounds.
Nearly 3 million Australians have HECS-HELP loans that have risen in dramatic ways in recent years.
Earlier this month the Albanese government announced a series of reforms to higher education which include wiping 20 per cent off all student loan debts by 1 June 2025, if his government is re-elected. This is all with the generational prize of votes in mind.
Labor also plans to raise the income threshold necessary before students start paying back their degrees, with the country’s total Higher Education Loan Program (HELP) debt sitting at $81 billion at the end of 2023-24.
As MPs head into their final sitting week for the year, the government hopes to extend fee-free TAFE places to 100,000 people each year from 2027.
David Talbot, the director of Talbot Mills Research, said there were early signs the Labor government’s plan to reduce graduates HECS/HELP debt by 20 per cent had been well received by younger voters.
“18-30-year-olds back the idea with 77 per cent support,” he said.
An impressive 74 per cent of Millennials in the 30-44-year-old cohort said they too support the government’s proposal,” Talbot told this column.
Even among Coalition voters, the policy has nearly 60 per cent support.
Talbot said student debt was a potent issue: “It’s one of the few policy initiatives to have real cut through in recent months.”
A tipping point has been reached
It’s easy to see how these policies are framed around an election message that will be squarely focused on younger voters.
The shadow assistant minister for home ownership, New South Wales Liberal frontbench senator Andrew Bragg, spoke to this column and said policies around housing were the main focus to address the intergenerational housing inequity.
“We know that too many Millennials and Gen Zs are on a trajectory to never own a home,” he said. “That’s why we are opening up super for first home buyers and looking at lending rules for this group. We have to find practical ways to tilt the scales for first home buyers.”
Bragg said Labor has spent billions on failed bureaucracy. “Our housing policies will be practical,” he said.
And if you analyse what the research suggests, this is no surprise.
According to the 2024 Australian Youth Barometer, which surveyed more than 600 Australians aged 18-24 and interviewed 30 more, anxiety, pessimism and insecurity are common feelings among young people at the moment. Their top three concerns are housing affordability, employment and climate change.
And disturbingly only half of those surveyed think it is likely they will achieve financial security in the future and 62 per cent think they will be financially worse off than their parents.
The old adage “it’s the economy, stupid” used to explain voter behaviour could now also include, “it’s demography, stupid”.
The intergenerational divide has long been known and established. Now we’ve reached an electoral tipping point.
Patricia Karvelas is the presenter of RN Breakfast and co-host of the Party Room podcast. She also hosts Q+A on ABC TV Mondays at 9:35pm.
Baby Boomers lose power to Millennials yet economic incentives remain
Millennials have finally overtaken Baby Boomers in one area – yet they’re still being ignored over one very important issue.
In the almost 80 years since the Baby Boomer generation began in 1946, Australia has seen the rise – and now decline – of their power.
In 1982, the Baby Boomer demographic hit its peak proportion of the voting age population, endowing it with a great deal of political influence, as politicians sought to woo the single largest voting bloc with policies that reflected their interests.
The decline
In 2014, another demographic, in this case Gen Y – also known as Millennials – eclipsed Boomer’s as the largest generational voting bloc.
However, it’s worth noting that by the 2010 election that Gen X and Gen Y represented a larger combined proportion of the voting age public than Boomers and the generations that came prior.
Since then the political influence wielded at the ballot box by Baby Boomer and older demographics has continued to fall significantly. At the 2010 election, the aforementioned demographics represented roughly half the electorate. As of the latest data which covers up to 2022, that proportion had fallen to 32.2 per cent.
Yet despite the peak days of Baby Boomer political influence slowly riding off into the sunset, Australia arguably hasn’t seen a shift by politicians to focus on the interests of the largest generational voting blocs in anything like the way they did in decades long passed.
Australia arguably hasn’t seen a shift by politicians to focus on the interests of the largest generational voting blocs in anything like the way they did in decades long passed.
The Only Game In Town
Historically, the 18 to 49 and 25 to 54 age demographics have been heavily focused on by advertisers due to these age groups having the most disposable income to spend and the least degree of brand loyalty.
But in the years following the global financial crisis, this has changed significantly. Up until 2007, all age demographics over the age of 25 experienced relatively similar per capita growth in inflation adjusted household consumption. But over the next decade the 65+ and 55 to 64 age demographics streaked ahead, experiencing by far the strongest consumption growth.
Meanwhile, as of 2018 the 15 to 24 and 25 to 34 age demographics were spending roughly what they were in 2009 and 2006 respectively.
In more recent years, as high inflation and rising interest rates have hit the household budgets of younger demographics, the spending growth of households over the age of 55 has continued to streak ahead, rising at a rate above headline inflation until relatively recently.
At the other end of the spectrum, data from the Commonwealth Bank has shown that household spending for under 35s has fallen. Considering headline inflation is running at 5.4 per cent, this indicates a significant reduction in inflation adjusted consumption for this age demographics.
Realpolitik
Historically the interests of Baby Boomers were catered to due to simple demographic realities – to win elections it was often necessary to win over the Boomer demographic. But over the past 15 years the influence wielded by the Baby Boomer and older demographics at the ballot box has decreased significantly.
In 2008, the Baby Boomer and older demographics represented 51.75 per cent of the voting age population. In 2022, these demographics represented 32.2 per cent voting age population. To put this into perspective Gen Y and Gen Z now represent 42.5 per cent of the voting age population, almost one third more than the Baby Boomer and older demographics.
Yet despite Gen Y and Gen Z wielding a huge amount of political influence on paper, government policy arguably continues to favour the interests of older demographics. At this point, the influence of Boomer interests has shifted from the political to the economic.
With the expansion in household consumption of older demographics, the only remaining growth driver of the consumer economy in inflation adjusted per capita terms over the past 21 months, shifting policies toward favouring the interests of younger demographics at the expense of older demographics has significant risks.
Ultimately, this is not about righteousness, fairness or one’s own viewpoint on this issue, but the reality of an economy that has at least temporarily exhausted its traditional household consumption growth drivers.
As the challenging circumstances being experienced by most households, particularly younger demographics continues to bite, this may begin to change. But for now at least, it appears that the continued economic incentives for ongoing government support for the economic interests of older demographics remains.
Tarric Brooker is a freelance journalist and social commentator | @AvidCommentator
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