While there are many challenges facing young people today that we may wish to emphasise, two – housing affordability and job security – are of paramount importance.

With the median house price in Sydney now well in excess of $1 million, it is very difficult for young people to accumulate the necessary deposit. Indeed, we are now facing the reality that, because of decades of policy neglect by governments of both persuasions, both State and Federal, a whole generation, of our young people will be denied an opportunity to buy a house.

This is made even more difficult by increasing job insecurity. Disturbingly, the unemployment rate among our youth is now 13.5 percent, even after some 25 years of sustained economic growth, and the underemployment rate – those having some work but wanting more hours – is now 18 percent, the highest in 40 years.

In total, 659,000 young people are unemployed or underemployed: 282,000 unemployed and 377,000 underemployed.

In the 80s and 90s unemployment was the more significant problem, but since 2003 it has been underemployment, and it has remained stubbornly high since the global financial crisis in 2008. Indeed, before the GFC the unemployment and underemployment rates were below 10 percent and 11 percent, respectively.

Moreover, young people are now much more likely to be employed casually or part-time, and the additional hours desired have grown significantly relative to hours worked.

A report released this week by the Brotherhood of St Lawrence concluded that: “Young Australians face a more brutish job scenario than their parents or grandparents ever did. Precarious employment is hindering the capacity of many young people, especially those without qualifications and skills, to build satisfactory and productive adult lives as the pathways that were open to their parents appear to have stalled.”

It is, of course, hard for many to accept that this has occurred. How can it be in a country as wealthy as ours?

The answer is policy neglect and drift by successive governments. These housing and employment crises for our youth have been years, even decades, in the making,

In simple terms, our governments haven’t been governing but instead have been obsessed by their own internal party issues, and in playing a very negative, populist game of point scoring against their oppositions.

In the case of both hosing affordability and job security they have ignored the mounting evidence over many years, with the result that we now face significant crises, but with little or no capacity to solve these problems in the near term.

There are no silver bullets. Any solutions now must be multi-faceted and implemented over a significant period of time. Neither of the major parties has yet even begun to suggest, let alone implement, an effective response to either crisis.

But, be sure they will try to spin their way out of the issues, probably with more useless slogans such as “Jobs and Growth”, or “Education and Training”.

Moreover, they are really constrained to focus on the urgent challenge of ‘budget repair’, which severely limits their capacity to spend much more money in either area.