With its tightening of the Youth Allowance and funding cuts to universities, the Abbott government seems intent on making life a lot harder for young people.
As we prepare to bid farewell 12 Senators from the upper house on June 30, we thought we’d take a quick demographic snapshot of the Australian Parliament to find out who exactly is running the country. This shows the current House of Representatives and the outgoing Senate.
And for those who are wondering, the LNP’s Wyatt Roy, at 24, is the youngest in the House of Representatives by seven years — and he would have to sit in Parliament for another 38 years until he has been a member for as long as Coalition colleague Philip Ruddock has.
Interested in some of the finer details of what makes up our Parliament? Have a look at our Crikey series with Bond University, “Order in the House“.
Perhaps the aging of members can explain why ‘youth’ is now defined as anyone under 30 years old.
And your point is…?
Barry,
my point is that 30 isn’t ‘youth’. 30 is well and truly adult, as are 29, 28, 27, 26,….
Where the cutoff is for treating people as (expected to be) financially dependent on family may be debatable, but 30 is ludicrous.
So what? These people bring (or should) maturity and experience. Sadly, this might not always be the case. Regardless, what we need is balance.
When Tony Abbott was scraping the bottom of the rusty barrel to form his cabinet he took with him more than one old man from John Howard’s prime ministership. Was this because Abbott was basically unsure of himself and needed friendly people to lean on; or was it because they were coreligionists? Perhaps their half- wittedness appealed to Abbott who is no intellectual giant himself?
In short, it wouldn’t be surprising if any of these old men
failed to realise the paucity of youth in their ranks.