Why would young people in the Y generation the 18 to 24 bracket be interested in Local Government, ‘Your Council’, never mind be interested enough, to make an effect to change it, so that its direction benefits the younger generation?

‘Boring,’ most would say, doesn’t effect me, that’s for the old folk, they pay rates and are concerned about the storm drains, ‘I’m not’. “I’m only interested in friends and my generation”. When the Y generation thinks, which they might say is painful, (flash backs from school,) they do not consider what causes those lonely hours, when there are no friends, when there is nothing riveting on the ‘Y tube’ or the telly and the night clubs noise is not screaming that loud, that the pain takes the loneliness away. They do not consider that there lack of involvement in the world they live, in causes the lack of response to their needs. Previous Y generations, they might seem remote like a different alphabet, but the Y generations of other centuries did not suffer from this mind numbing disinterest, they demanded change and got it. At some sacrifice, for when the Y generations came back from the first and second World War, Korea, or Vietnam they had grown up quicker, they had spent two to six years, many leaving home when they were sixteen and were enslaved fighting for their country.

When they returned, home that generation were sickened by the mistakes of the previous generations so at an early age, they made demands, they stood for parliament. Some won and some lost but it made huge changes which have benefited our society today. Where are the Alexander the Greats, the Hannibals, the Octavian Caesar’s who were 18 years old when they went out to conquer the known world, today? They have a mobile or an I-pod jammed in their ear and collect the shopping trolleys at Coles. Yet in the 21st Century they do not have to sacrifice their lives and limbs, they can vote at 18, it is irrelevant to them that previous generations have sacrificed everything, even life itself for the benefits that they take for granted as an inconvenience and never even consider it as a benefit or a right.

 Just an Inconvenience 

They have a right to vote, and a right to stand for Council, to be a Councillors or a Mayor or a Local member of parliament. For most, that is all too hard to contemplate, that would take an enormous effort and there is no certainty of success, in fact early success would be miraculous but much more easier in the provinces rather than in the city. As today’s Y generation has popular music on tap, coffee at Mc Donald, a car and a mobile phone why should they bother to get involved?

Well, where are the friends, that our Y generation value so much? Many are living away from home in rented accommodation. Forced to the big cites for University education or jobs or just for the reasons that they miss their tribal friends. At their age they have to be hip, cool and independent, they have to follow them to the cities, or suffer country loneliness, feeling friendless within the community that bred them. The community expects them to leave, so rejected by their own community, the community that knows them ,the community that loves them and needs them the most, they join up, and are swallowed in the anonyminity of the big smoke. A city that does not need them, does not know them, and really only wants to exploit them. We can only suppose to forfill the same instincts, that drove schoolboys to run away from home and join the Army together in 1914.
Instead of wanting to change there home town by demanding what they want, tertiary education, good jobs, and recreation with there own generation, they flee. It is our tragic loss, as well as theirs, we the parents wait for them, with almost the same despair in our hearts as the previous generations, pre mourned their enlisted children.

Our Local Government spends in a combined way nearly a million dollars a year to attract the Y generation, (Back Packers) to visit our area, to use our $500,000.00 toilet block at Rainbow Beach and to soak up our resident funded facilities. We spend $200,000. on putting out a quarterly magazine for youth called the ‘Noise’ and a Youth Officer to organise recreational events for youth. Council supports many youth, sporting and recreational groups, but none of its efforts, go to remedy the almost world wide Exodus of our Youth to big cities.

They are not like Dick Whittington, they do not follow this Exodus in the belief that the big cities have pavements lined with gold, they go like lemmings the same as timeless previous generations ran to the Recruiting Sergeant’s drum. They go for the same reasons, because their tribal group, their peers are perceived to be either there already or working hard to make the move, possible. Previous generations queued for hours to get into the meat mincing machines of World Wars. Wars that were always going to be over by Christmas and they did not want to miss out. Our Y generation realise that away from home, they may have to work two low paying jobs, just to be able to pay the obscene rent, many go with the object of acquiring a University Education, other go to learn career possibilities that are hard or impossible to obtain in the provinces. Once the trend is set, the majority then feel they would not be accepted by the group if they did not obtain the same status, and to be fair, as the trend is set business steps in and provides the Fun Club scene which the Y generation media tells them is essential for there status, within their tribal group. They have the same ideals and morals of those who designed the First World War recruiting posters, knowing they were sending millions to their deaths, creating the light to attract the short lived moths of youth.

If our children survive the drug scene, crime, sex exploitation and every other type of exploitation from the rent to the local street gang and obtain an education or career futures, the Y Generation still has immense financial and status problems. In comparison with their parents who married and bought their first house at 23 to 25 years old, at that time the house and land cost 4 to 5 times their fathers salary, now even with 2 degrees (including honours) the exact same house is 16 times their Y generations annual salary. The top ten percent of the successful Y Generation will have to work twice as hard to acquire half the assets that their parents achieved with ease.

So what do we do to change the future for our children, how do we begin to change the perspective of our youth from viewing our country community as a prison. Do we change our place or change the youth? Some of our Church groups trying to communicate with the Y Generation dropping the standards, introduce popular music and imitate Y clothing and sport body piercing rings, and wonder why its not working. Most people research Generation Y because they want to sell them something. We perceive that they are the smart generation, they have been brought up with electronics at 24 hours beck and call, they can change the time on our electronic watch and send messages with their phones, but they look at you like stunned mullet when you query there mental arithmetic at a cash register and spasmodically clutch for the calculator. They say they are the of the information age but have done less reading than Captain Cook, or George Washington. They spend a large part of their life ogling a video screen but ask them, how to make one, or how to make any of the consumer goods and if you are really lucky you might find one that can vaguely comprehend how it works. Heaven help the Western civilisation, if we ever have to start again manufacturing our own consumer goods, we would be lucky to find anyone who could manufacture knives and forks, there could be a large chance that we would return to the stone age. The ageless generation gap gives them the impression that there peers and disk jockeys know more, than parents so we can only ever advise them to be careful and know they will never listen. We cannot change their views, of their generation, to them, they know what is really important. For example one said, “Well the Simpsons covers history and those other cobwebby subjects, don’t they?

All we can do is to make openings available for education and technical career advancement in our communities, try and provide affordable housing and an economy that will encourage them, to return. When they realise that there home environment is safer and more secure than large cities, that they can claim a better future for their impending families. When they realise that Local Government in their hometown is less remote, easier to access, more able and keen, ready to respond to their recreational and housing needs. Only when we succeed in inspiring their involvement in our Local Government will we have a chance of knowing what their potential is. It is our job to turn the light on, so they can find their way home. Once they are home they will show us the way to the future.

If we fail our disillusioned youth we will have a dark future ahead, when the disco music fades into the grim gray light of their single room flat in a concrete jungle, in histories future bright glare we will be held responsible for their loneliness as well as our own.