The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 13

FEATURES 13 THE AGE TUESDAY MAY 9, 2000 Who's afraid of the local government brat pack? Picture: JULIAN KINGMA who have been involved in lodffl government are not going to sound the same because they are dealing directly with communities who have very different needs," he says. One thing Hill, Peters, Athanasopolous and Monash Mayor Matthew Evans, 27, agree on is their poor pay. From "significant" to all four say the $36,000 mayoral salary represented 3 pay cut. Hill and Peters worked jn electorate offices for ALP Athanasopolous was in sales for an engineering firm and Evans works a day a week in public affairs for Hutchison Telecommunication. Unlike the other three, Evans is not affiliated with the ALP (he resigned from the Liberal Party before he ran for council in 1997 and former prime minister Paul Keatitig is not his political hero.

The Reverend Tim Costello is. None of them rules out a parliat mentary career and all acknowledge that local government launched the careers of former South Melbourne mayor and present Deputy Premier John Thwaites and former Footscray mayor and Bracks Government mini ister Lynne Kosky. However, having had a taste of working 60 to 70-hour weeks, these youthful men are mindful of burn-out. "I don't want to be a career politician," says Evans. "I want to experience other things like being in business and having a relatively normal family life." become full-time apparatchiks' he said, "to become involved in great issues, to see the world, the outback or poverty." Victorian Local Governance Association president Mike Hill says of Gray's advice: "It just shows what a young person who is interested in politics has got to contend with.

They are told that, if they do get involved, they have got to get a life, and then when they don't get involved they are told they don't care." The new under-30 model of politician is a child of the electronic media age and, according to Gray, not only lacks individuality but has trouble forming full sentences. "The pressure on politicians to perform for media grabs runs the risk of creating a generation of politicians who not only speak in sound bites but think in thought bites," he said. Always available for a comment or interview, Hill, as close to a media darling as a local government councillor can get, goes some way to realising Gray's fears. In an interview with The Age, he reminds himself he isn't on radio, so he can stop speaking in "snappy and tries to avoid platitudes "they make me- want to vomit" but acknowledges his tendency to slip into mayor mode. "I sometimes wonder if I sound like Mayor Quimby off The Simpsons you know, the worst kind of stereotypical mayor and I think 'God! I am on from the first elections of restructured councils across Victoria, the stereotypical view of mayors in the vein of Seachange's Bob Jelly is being replaced by a new breed of slimmer, younger and slicker performers.

Four mayors, all men, are under 30 the youngest two are 24. The average age of councillors has dropped by almost 20 years as more new graduates look to local government politics. Municipal Association of Victoria president Brad Mathieson says council amalgamations provided a clean slate. "It has shaken out a lot of the older councillors who retired at that time and didn't seek renomi-nation or re-election, which has opened up and lowered the average age of councillors across the state." This trend has sparked suspicion among some that these young guns are using local communities to serve their political apprenticeships until a state or federal seat turns up. The modern professional career politician means to some that the public gets a dedicated full-time representative, but to others it means corporatised performers whose sameness makes it impossible to represent constituents' interests.

Earlier this year the Labor Party's outgoing national secretary, Gary Gray, told the National Press Club young politicians lack an essential quality for the job: life experience. "I do wish that our political aspirants would get a life before they Under 30 and media-sawy, these mayors know the danger of talking like The Simpsons' Mayor Quimby, writes Sally Finlay. AT 25, standing for local government was a late-life conversion for Julian Hill, now Mayor of Port Phillip at 26. In five years of working for a federal Labor MP, Hill used to have his sights set on Parliament House rather than St Kilda Town Hall. "On a bad day, the view from high-level politics is that councillors in local government are good at letter-boxing, photocopying and staying out of the way," says Hill.

Far from hiding his light in local government, Hill is fast becoming the most outspoken mayor in Melbourne some argue he is using his position to speak not to his community but to ALP powerbrokers who can give him the parliamentary career he wants. Hill is not the only councillor to have suffered that accusation. But with council candidates becoming younger with each election, Hill and his contemporaries are being seen as a new generation of career politicians. Post-amalgamations and six years ftp-' ife3 -Mayor Julian Hill and daughter Elly: "There is something insidious saying, 'Aren't you too young to be doing this Anew glass ceilin (jpljjtd QjQAWJQ, LQMX t(hQ, diX. THIS MOTHER'S DAY, THERE'S NO OTHER STORE LIKE DAVID JONES.

A David Jones gift is like jj no other and a wonderful vN? wav lit- to sav I hank vou to -J jtWiW And to make your present just that little bit more special, gift wrapping is complimentary when you spend $75 or more or use your David Jones card. repeating myself, I have already made that speech this Hill 'was elected to council in March 1999 and a year and 1 1 days later became mayor. A single father, he believes being a parent provides in large part the kind of life experience Gray was talking about. "There is something insidious about saying, 'Aren't you too young to be doing this It is the other end of the scale from saying, 'Oh, you're 60, your brain must be Not as savvy as Hill, but courted by the media after he was elected to council and Mayor of Kingston last month, is 24-year-old Arthur Athanasopoulos. Last week he donned skating garb to launch a skate park in Chelsea.

He says it was a bit of fun and a chance to interact with younger constituents, but he was criticised by Banyule City Mayor Dale Peters. A veteran of the group at 24, having been elected in 1997, Peters believes age is not a policy platform and all councillors should be judged on their merits. "You see him (Athanasopoulos) down there skating and you think, 'Buddy, what are you he says. "He seems to be wanting to have a profile from being young, where I think it doesn't matter." Mike Hill, whose VLGA runs training courses to encourage young people to run for office, says it is only age that all the four mayors have immediately in common. "People Mark Davis argues in his 1997 book Gangland that young voices and opinions are being smothered while older, more conservative ones are becoming more entrenched.

Among the "sacred cows" he talks about are playwright David Williamson, feminist author Helen Garner, commentators Gerard Henderson and Robert Manne and Age cartoonist Michael Leunig. "And I don't necessarily think it's about the baby boomers hanging on, either. It's more that it's a culture hanging on than an age group. It's the culture of the 1 970s, but it's getting more and more conservative." However, Davis thinks the biggest barriers are economic. "The whole idea (of generational handover), I think it's more structurally complex than that.

But at the very moment when it might be expected to happen, I think one of the things that is making it harder for younger people is the whole work environment. There's been a dramatic change in the corporate world, as companies were kind of hollowed out and you had the retrenchment and loss of middle-aged men, but it's important to remember that's destroying the career paths of young people as well because it's really difficult to jump that divide. "Without being too melodramatic, what we are seeing in Australia is a solid cohort of really disenchanted, disenfranchised young people, who don't have any kind of social contract. For so many young people leaving school there is a real chance of them never having a full-time job." The Dusseldorp Skills Forum published an employment snapshot in 1998 Australia's Youth: Reality and Risk which gave an inkling of how structural changes to the economy block young paths to power. It shows, judging by every major economic indicator, that Australia's youth has gone backwards over the past decade and growing numbers of young people have fallen out of education and the labor market into a "black 4 DAVID It's all part of us helping you make Mum's day.

AN INTERNATIONAL MOTHER'S DAY GIFT FROM DAIMARU Daimaru at Melbourne Central is Australia's only international department store, so of course you'll find an exceptional range Solicitor Cynthia Ska at work: "It's traditionally a place for mentoring; that's part I 5 .1 1 1 Af 7 I v-'i mm J1 ft of gifts for your Mum. Like the Christian Dior make-up purse which comes with six products and is free with every Christian Dior fragrance purchase (excluding gift sets) only at Daimaru. MAKE MOTHER'S DAYA MYER ONE. You'll always find that perfect something for your Picture: JOHN WOUDSTRA Youth unemployment has been about 20 per cent for more than a decade. Unemployment among young adults aged 20 to 24 was douhle that of those aged 25 to 55.

The research highlighted a trend towards casualisation of the young workforce, of whom a higher proportion now have low-skilled jobs. Compared with older workers, the Dusseldorp Forum said, the earnings of young adults had fallen by 20 per cent since 1976. Says Stott Despoja: "There are a number of social and economic costs to a nation, not to mention cultural, if you fail to acknowledge and support young people. 1 think that this government, like no other, has presided over and encouraged generational unease Mandatory sentencing, support cuts, work for the dole, the dole bludger's diary: these are policies geared toward young people because the polls say the older generation are wary of young people." Although Stott Despoja has begun to notice welcome changes in altitudes towards young people in Parliament with more younger faces dotting the house she thinkg older people in positions of authority will continue to cling to their place in the establishment. "People rarely relinquish power, and that includes sharing power witb the next generation in the same way that men in business are reluctant to.

share power with women," she says. "We've got more opportunities and chances than ever before for young people. Young people are extraordinarily entrepreneurial and noused, and 1 think that young people being so technologically savvy and media savvy Is impressive and will bode well for younger generations in the future." This Features page and the Opinion page that follows have been edited by young journalists at The Age and written by young' staff members and contributors. of the culture of the law. allowed to grow by osmosis.

"It's traditionally a place for mentoring; that's part of the culture of the law." In the past social mobility, and the construction of identity through career employment, meant moving upward, but Dwyer says that for an increasing number of young people the shifts are horizontal across a "multi-dimensional" life spectrum, of being and doing rather than being told. "A lot of their time and energy is devoted to finding a pathway for themselves, trying to create their own journey," he says. Stott Despoja, who turned 30 last year and is now the Democrats' deputy leader, has felt acutely the stigma of youth in the political realm, perhaps the place where young voices most desperately need to be expressed. She recalls a skirmish with Liberal Senator Jocelyn Newman, 62, about income support for young people. "For so many young people leaving school there is a real chance of them never having a full-time job.

99 Stott Despoja had argued passionately about this for a decade, "and yet one of her jibes to me in the chamber was on the basis of being Newman's comment the debate was broadcast over the Internet inspired a flood of calls to the Democrats' office. "They found it offensive that, in what was a serious debate about legislation, she resorted to attacking me on the basis of age," Stott Despoja says. "The climactic moment when I realised this was a very different work environment from most I'd been in was the moment I stepped foot in the chamber (the day she was sworn in). I was acutely conscious of a lack of women and a lack of under-30s There was a visual reminder of a lack of generational diversity in the Parliament." Mum at Myer. It may be as simple as chocolates for her sweet tooth, a home beauty treatment or a bottle of the new fragrance, exclusive to Myer, Jean Paul Gaulticr's Whatever it is that process of generational handover, a sharp contrast with the late '60s and '70s climate when baby boomers first spilled out of university into a wealth of new jobs.

And evidence from a Melbourne University study of people in their 20s suggests some of them might now be colliding with a glass ceiling of their own. Professor Peter Dwyer, from the university's Youth Research Centre, has been collecting their workplace stories. "One of the problems at the generational level is the people who have gone through the previous process in work, when things were a lot more stable and predictable, don't really understand how much pressure is being placed on this emerging generation to develop their own portfolio," Dwyer says. One young woman was employed by a large banking corporation in a fast-track graduate program, which rewarded hard work with a healthy But the junior employees felt so suffocated by the company's senior structure that the woman, not prepared to battle through a culture that seemed to be constantly putting her in her place, quit. Then there was the cabinet maker in his 20s overlooked for a contract.

"If you were 10 years older I'd sign you up," he was told. There is some irony in the fact that the law a profession so steeped in tradition and so valuing wisdom, experience and respect is now crying out for young people. Cynthia Sica, a 24-year-old solicitor who was "wigged and robed" only last week, says many young lawyers are being lured into the more lucrative IT, accounting or consulting fields, or are attracted overseas. "There's the double-degree phenomenon so many young people have combined law and commerce or law and science degrees and the fact that so many want to do the London thing as well, to travel," she says. Sica who speaks three languages, finished her degree overseas and spent a year travelling before beginning her articles last year thinks the law is one field where youth is not stifled but The once-rebellious baby boomers are now the establishment and have made the barriers facing the next generation even bigger.

Chloe Saltau and Melissa Ryan report. The precocious Vietnam generation, which so revitalised our culture in the early 1970s, has ossified into an establishment as hell-bent on preserving its sacred cows as the Menzian old guard it overturned. Tony Moore, documentary maker ON NOVEMBER 30, 1995, Natasha Stott Despoja strode into the parliamentary chamber to be sworn in as an Australian Democrats senator wearing a pair of Doc Martens. Sensible shoes, she reflected months later, were a necessity to traverse the lengthy corridors of power. She was 26.

Stott Despoja knew she would have to "hit the ground running" or "they would have eaten me for breakfast. I think in the end the only grounds they could attack me on were my They did. Stott Despoja has endured countless jibes from the "precocious Vietnam generation" and above. "Give the kid a go" was one of the milder interjections during her first Senate question. Indeed, baby boomers by their sheer numbers about four million in Australia continue to occupy the positions of power and responsibility.

And economic and cultural obstacles bar the way for their heirs in a manner the older generation never experienced. The economic landscape, according to a major employment research centre, is bleak for young people negotiating the thorny you're you're sure to find it this Day at Myer in the City. This is a Melbourne Convention fx looking for Mother's Murkoting Bureau initiative. -I NJUA AI3.