Intergenerational inequity? The young have never had it so good

Nurturing all this has been the expansion of the welfare state to which the young, and others, can now access in so many new ways.

Australia's once taut welfare net that was targeted, means-tested and capped, has become bigger, universal and stretched to meet the latest "need" whose definition is never static.

And young people have benefited from the technological developments, which given their complexity and newness, have put them ahead of the game at work and at home.

Moreover, their access to networking means they can operate very much in their world and know how best to exploit the latest developments.

Going overseas, once only for the very few, has in the past few decades with cheaper and faster international air travel opened the door to more young people as well as the destinations they can choose.

Australia's lack of direct involvement in large-scale wars has thankfully meant the young have avoided the wounds of battle and the intrusions of conscription.

While the concerns by previous "Cold War" generations of nuclear annihilation have dissipated, it is nevertheless true that young people are not without their own terrors such as climate change.

The Albanese government's catchcry of "intergenerational equity" should be rejected. It should be seen for what it really is – an attempt to identify another societal victim that government, or more specifically, the Labor Party, can "rescue" to gain votes through increased public spending, special programs and policy distortions.

Indeed, "intergenerational equity" is just another distraction from needed reform.

It will result in more public debt, which ironically the young will ultimately inherit, and more waste as the policies will have little lasting impact in ameliorating the underlying causes of the real problems facing the young today.

While Macmillan was right that people had "never had it so good", he also warned it was "too good to be true" and "too good to last" as Britain's economic prosperity was thinly based on Keynesian pump priming, and was threatened by inflation.

This realisation has not yet dawned on either the Albanese government or the opposition, which have both failed to articulate the needed policies of reform for the whole nation.