iscover
With “intergenerational equity” firmly on the government and opposition’s agenda, young Australians have, arguably, never had more power and influence, but there is still A LOT of work to do if we’re going to get them onboard with the requirements of our national security.
It is no secret that for many young Australians, beginning with the Millennials and down through successive generations, the “Australian Dream” and promise of a better life than their parents is so far leaving a bit to be desired.
Repeatedly told to follow the tried and true and, more importantly, widely agreed upon path towards a better life: work hard at school, go to university, get a good job, more hard work, settle down, buy a house and have a family, then retire.
Lather, rinse, repeat, seems pretty reasonable, right? Except ask any young Australian and they can tell you from lived experience that it is far from easy and far from reasonable in contemporary Australia.
Conversely, older generations, particularly Australia’s Baby Boomers, who, like their counterparts across the Western World, enjoyed the fruits of the golden age post-Second World War, have amassed immense wealth while concurrently presiding over the collapse of the industrialised economies across the Western world.
This confluence of economic, political and strategic realities and policies effectively laid the foundation for the levels of social disconnection, atomisation and mounting economic and political pressures rapidly reshaping the dynamics of contemporary Australian life.
Overlaid on top of this combination of factors is the rapid evolution and deterioration of the post-Second World War order in the global commons, adding further, more alien concepts for young Australians to grapple with, particularly the very real national security implications of the rise of the multipolar world.
Highlighting this is Francesca Ciuffetelli, writing for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) in a piece titled Australia’s national security debate needs younger voices, in which she argued: “In today’s national security environment, experience alone is no longer enough. As technology, industry and strategic competition evolve at speed, Australia needs to do more than rely on established voices.
“It needs to actively amplify younger perspectives that can challenge long-held assumptions, identify practical gaps and bring frontline understanding of emerging change into national security debates.”
Now for many older Australians, the idea that younger people might be ungrateful about their lives and want a greater say in their future and the future of their country, weirdly enough, comes across as quite jarring, quite ironic for the hippie generation. Nevertheless, it is an inescapable reality that the political and economic centre of gravity is shifting to younger Australians.
So how do we bridge the gap?
The children are our future woh, woh, woh
Yes, I stole a line from a song from the Simpsons, perhaps revealing my own personal generational bias, but it is true, and if Australia is to truly respond to the myriad of economic, political and strategic challenges we face at home and abroad, engaging younger Australians will prove critical to our success.
Ciuffetelli cited the recent success of ASPI’s 2026 Darwin Dialogue and a specific session focused on engaging younger Australians in the discourse around the nation’s economic, political and strategic future in the era of great power competition and multipolarity.
She stated: “The session was designed to bring early-career professionals into a traditionally senior forum and test whether different perspectives would change the nature of the conversation. They did.”
Now it is worth noting that the session had a particular focus on Australia’s efforts to move up the critical minerals supply chain scale, but it serves as an invaluable lesson and insight into the necessity of bringing in young people into the discussions that will invariably impact their futures, far more and for far longer than it will established voices.
Ciuffetelli explained the benefits, saying, “Early-career professionals are often working closest to these pressures long before they reach senior decision makers. Analysts, operators, technologists and industry professionals can identify where policy assumptions no longer reflect the operating environment before those problems appear in formal assessments.”
Importantly, other partners have sought to acknowledge and leverage the voices of young stakeholders, with NATO in particular playing a leading role in this generational policy shift.
"NATO understood this in 2020 when it established the NATO 2030 Young Leaders Group to provide recommendations directly to secretary general Jens Stoltenberg on resilience, emerging technologies and future threats. Several priorities raised through the process, including resilience, technology competition and Indo-Pacific engagement, later became more prominent within NATO’s broader 2030 agenda and strategic concept discussions,” Ciuffetelli said.
However, it is important to acknowledge that this does have its limits, with the old tropes of there being no substitute for experience and, critically, skin in the game, both concepts frequently weaponised against young Australians when they raise their voices.
Ciuffetelli highlighted this reality, saying, “Young people aren’t always right, but they increase the likelihood that uncomfortable questions are raised early enough to matter. National security debates are increasingly defined by delivery. Institutions that only recognise problems once they reach senior decision makers are often already behind those problems.”
Critically, this is a double-edged sword, which cuts both ways.
Lessons for all generations
While older Australians frequently like to remind younger generations that they don’t have the gift of wisdom and experience garnered from age, equally, their frame of reference and their experiences, particularly through the later stages of the 20th century and into this century, are out of date.
Also it is worth noting that older Australians have a far greater stake and investment in the nation and have benefited from the fiscal, taxation and investment policies and structures that are now being unwound to the detriment of younger Australians.
And once again, as we are often reminded, if you don’t earn something, you don’t value it. The same is true if you have no stake of ownership in something and are actively locked out of it by successive generations of policymaking voted for overwhelmingly by the Baby Boomer generation, often our parents or grandparents.
Critically, for younger Australians, there is an element to which being told to work harder is a fair assessment, largely because we should be seeking to prove our naysayers wrong and we should be seeking to leave our children and their children with a far better world and circumstances than the one we were handed.
Meanwhile, for older Australians, it is worth acknowledging and accepting that your position, in large part, did not come about as a result of your own genius or prowess, rather by virtue of the time of your birth and your decisions, no matter how small, have ultimately led the nation and your children and grandchildren to be in the predicament we currently face.
These are important lessons in humility for both demographic blocs and accepting and incorporating them will ultimately prove the difference between merely surviving or our nation, our people and our way of life thriving in this new era of multipolar great power competition.
This is something that Ciuffetelli hinted at, with this conclusion: “Bringing younger voices into Australia’s national security discussions is not about representation or box-ticking. Stronger institutions are built by challenging assumptions before failure forces adaptation.”
Final thoughts
Australians looking back on life half a century ago with a sense that things were better is no longer simply an exercise in nostalgia, For young Australians, it is a reminder of what has been stolen from them. While for older Australians, it represents the glory days where they were the political and economic power and their will was unavoidable.
However, increasingly, it points to a growing anxiety about the future.
When this sentiment intersects with what younger Australians now describe as “nostalgiamaxing”, it reveals something far more serious than cultural romanticism. At its core is a belief that the economic security, upward mobility and national confidence once considered achievable have been systematically placed out of reach.
What stands out is not only the level of frustration but how widespread it has become. Despite the country’s visible political and cultural divisions, younger Australians from across the ideological spectrum are arriving at a remarkably similar conclusion: the system is failing to deliver and national decline is being managed rather than meaningfully reversed.
That convergence is significant. It suggests the problem is not merely political polarisation but a deeper erosion of confidence in the social and economic settlement underpinning modern Australia.
From a national security standpoint, this is where the issue becomes more acute. A generation that feels alienated, unheard and excluded is far less likely to embrace the responsibilities that sustain national resilience, whether through civic engagement, institutional trust or military service.
The contradiction becomes sharper when warnings about a worsening strategic environment are accompanied by appeals for collective sacrifice. For many younger Australians, the question increasingly becomes unavoidable: defend what, precisely, and in whose interests?
Early signs of political radicalisation, while still relatively contained, reinforce this broader trend. The simultaneous rise of protest movements and activist currents across opposing ends of the spectrum, from pro-Palestinian demonstrations to anti-migration rallies and fringe extremist activity, points to a society under mounting pressure, though not yet in outright crisis.
History shows that this “pre-threshold” period is often decisive. It is the stage at which public grievances are either constructively addressed, politically absorbed, or left to accumulate into something far more destabilising. Some would argue that recent waves of mass migration have, at least in part, functioned as an attempt to diffuse or contain these pressures rather than resolve their underlying causes.
The pathway to greater stability is neither especially radical nor conceptually new, but it is politically challenging. It requires older and more economically secure Australians to recognise that these concerns are not exaggerated perception, but responses to tangible material pressures: declining housing affordability, rising living costs, insecure employment and diminishing long-term opportunity.
More fundamentally, it requires a reassessment of who bears the burden of economic and social adjustment.
Without such a shift, the current trajectory is unlikely to stabilise on its own. Social cohesion will continue to weaken, trust in institutions will deteriorate further, and governments may become increasingly reliant on regulatory or coercive measures to preserve order, addressing symptoms while leaving the underlying causes unresolved.
The central strategic question then is not whether Australia can afford to respond, but whether it can afford not to. Once a generation comes to believe it has no meaningful stake in the nation’s future, the foundations of both prosperity and security begin to erode, gradually at first, and then with accelerating speed.
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below or get in touch at
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
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