Young Australians feel neglected – hosing affordability is one main reason

The UN’s Australian youth representative Paige Burton has found young people between 12 and 25 are most concerned about gender equality, climate change, housing affordability and health care.

The 23-year-old spent the last year travelling to every electorate in the country and spoke to 45,000 young people about what they care about.

“It’s really upsetting, less than 20 per cent of young people feel like their voices are being represented in current policy, but on the other side 85 per cent of young people are interested in learning about current events in their schools and outside of the classroom as well,” Paige told Hack.

It may sound obvious, but young people in regional areas had very different concerns to those in the big cities.

“People in regional areas were more likely to talk about infrastructure, education funding, drug and alcohol use, public transport and climate change was a big issue because of the work that their parents do,” Paige said.

“Whereas cities were more likely to care about human rights issues like marriage equality and people seeking asylum.”