An emerging Australian political party is writing serious checks, demanding free university, no income tax for people under 25 years old, net zero and nuclear power, and drug decriminalization.
And it’s hoping to get it done with an army of political social media influencers.
The Gen Z Party emerged from the ether this week in a boomer-bashing squall.
“The Boomers in government have failed us,” its promotional material declares.
“The fossils in government must go.”
There are around 4.6 million Zoomers (ages 11 to 26) in Australia at last count, close to one-fifth of Australia’s population, and it’s the voters and political aspirants among that demographic that 19-year-old Melbournian Thomas Dolan wants to mobilize.
It’s not Dolan’s first foray into the political arena. At just 18 in 2022, he ran for the critical Victorian seat of Bayswater in the state election but fell far short, securing just 2.2 percent of the votes.
That tilt was under the banner of the Democratic Labor Party, a party known for its anti-communist, predominantly Christian, socially conservative views, which fractured from the Australian Labor Party in 1955.
However, the political angles Dolan now pursues suggest a radical shift in values.
Dolan told news.com.au that he believed his generation was far more politically engaged than they are often chalked up to be.
“There’s 4.6 million Gen Zs in Australia with more turning 18 every year, and we all have to vote, but it’s like “who do we vote for?” he said.
“Yeah, we have Labor and the Greens, but there’s no total alignment.”
“Why are we voting for a bunch of lawyers to speak about our common experience and to represent us in parliament?”
“Yeah, we have Labor and the Greens, but there’s no total alignment.”
If the self-proclaimed “socially progressive” party’s policy reforms are at all a reflection of the generation, it offers some interesting insights.
The policy initiatives, Dolan said, are inspired by government-run youth summits that largely steer clear from social reform but share radical ideas for an economic and environmental overhaul.
The party’s environmental plan involves joining forces with The Greens in their push for Net Zero while ensuring all Australians become “fair and equal shareholders” of Australia’s natural wealth, first through taxing profits of “dirty exports” and by restoring resource mines to the National Trust.
The Zoomers want to see “burdensome tax penalties” on transnational companies operating in Australia that create or use single-use plastic items.
Gen Z party states it also wants any profit from exported coal redirected to provide Australians with free electricity and fund the transition to clean energy.
As for clean energy, the party surprisingly states it’s willing to embrace Australia’s energy boogeyman – nuclear power – citing its effectiveness in China, the United States, India and France.
Its social reform includes working towards a “more rational, tolerant, non-judgmental, humanitarian and understanding approach to drug use” and supporting a form of recognition of “the trauma that previous Australian governments have inflicted on the First Nations people.”