Independent Senator Jacqui Lambie was one of the few politicians on Q+A willing to call out the government’s trillion-dollar debt, which young people will ultimately have to foot the bill for even though it doesn’t do much to help us right now.
When a 17-year-old Canberran high school student asked about the whether enough young people will be employed in future to pay off the government’s massive debt, Lambie was typically blunt.
“Yeah, I’m not gonna be polite about it, you’re gonna be paying off a debt, sweetheart,” Lambie said told the student.
“I don’t expect these people [the government] to turn it around in 10 years like they say they’re going to, I just think that’s really unrealistic.”
“Is it fair to future generations to accrue such a big debt with no real plan for paying it down?” #QandA pic.twitter.com/XPpIsIZsq5
— QandA (@QandA) May 13, 2021
Lambie also pointed to the increasing cost of university and how it’s sabotaging young people’s futures, something she’s brought up plenty of times before. And then there’s our prospects of buying a home.
All of this could’ve been addressed in the Budget 2021-22, but alas, we’re paying to prop up fossil fuels instead.
At the end of the show, Lambie sarcastically painted a grim picture of what it’s like being a young person and bearing the brunt of this debt that does little to invest in future generations.
“I don’t want you kids to worry about paying your trillion dollars,” she said.
“While you’re doing that, you can pay the university off as well. And then if you put yourself into a housing debt, you better pray to God those interest rates don’t go up too much in the next 5 to 10 years. You’ve got it made.”
Let’s hope we keep hearing more of this Jacqui Lambie and less of the Ebola-infected ISIS suicide bomber threat Jacqui Lambie.
