Alex Antic (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, it wasn't very funny. Anyway, what I am here to talk about though are the questions and the answers given to them. I listened to the debate earlier about a range of issues, including the Housing Australia Future Fund, the $10 billion fund which we know now is yet to build, I think, fewer than 17 houses—or 17 houses; certainly not many. We're not going to house the 1.5 million new people that have entered this country over the last three-and-a-bit years with that kind of number. Fine. But we also heard a little bit about the position on fuel tax credits. We're now seeing the government unable to rule out cuts to diesel fuel rebates, which were relied on by all of the people that drive this country—truckies, farmers, miners—and this is all in the name of emissions.

The pressure on everyday Australians and everyday Australia is absolutely real, and it got me thinking about a scenario. We're always in here talking about—and I note, by the way, that it's alright for female senators and MPs in this place to talk about the manner in which things affect female Australians, but we never hear the flip side, on what's happening to young men in this country. These are the sorts of policy positions which are putting, as I am now witnessing out in community, the most enormous strain on young Australian males that I have ever seen. If anyone's not seeing it, then they're not talking to enough young men out there. Whenever I talk to a young bloke in this country, he tells me that, no matter how much he works, no matter how hard he works and no matter how diligent he is with his savings, he simply can't afford the life that his parents did, the life that his father did, the life that his grandfather did, and the anxiety out there because of the pressure on young men is a real and present problem in this country that is not being addressed properly.

The young men that I speak to talk in this country about the simple things in life, like being too scared to ask a woman out, to ask a girl out, simply for a cup of coffee, because they're not sure they can afford it anymore, thanks to the policy settings we're seeing from the government across the chamber. There are a range of other issues affecting young men today. The Me Too movement has made them almost frightened to approach young women for fear of being called names, I might say. But that's a different issue; we're talking about the economic side of it. The changes to the manner in which we treat young men now, I think, are extraordinary. We hear them talking about their careers and the manner in which they feel that, even if they do a good job in their workplace, they may well get stepped over the top of because of some DEI target. We talk about them listening to commentators and politicians in this place effectively accusing them of being offenders in waiting. We find that we're now living in a world where this situation is causing angst and unrest, it is causing problems at home and it is not being addressed, and it is something that I think is going to ultimately become a serious problem. It has never, ever been more expensive for young people in this country than it is at the moment, and that is placing a huge amount of pressure on the next generation. People are reluctant now—young men are reluctant now—to go about the process of starting a family and owning a home. They feel they can never, ever, ever be in a position where they're going to get onto the front foot.

So we can talk about all of the problems facing the economy, we can talk about the gender pay gap in this place, and we can talk about the 'Gen Z boss and a mini' and all of this sort of stuff that we see floating around out here, but the question that is being left is this: what are we going to do with the generation of young men in this country who feel totally and utterly let down by the system, totally and utterly left behind by an Australia that doesn't want to talk about them in anything other than pejorative terms? For the longest time, I have been talking about this. It is often accused of being toxic in itself. But the reality is that this is a growing issue in this country. It is one that politics is not addressing, and it needs to.

Question agreed to.