Claire Lehmann sits down with Parnell Palme McGuinness—columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies—to unpack her landmark report, Generation Trapped, on the collapsing life satisfaction of Australians aged 18–34.

Parnell identifies six distinct “tribes” among young Australians—from disillusioned Progressive Identitarians to optimistic Strivers—and explains why a sense of control, not income, is the strongest predictor of happiness. The conversation ranges across why women are swinging toward One Nation, the East-West divide still shaping German politics, the missing men in the marriage debate, the manosphere and the collapse of dating culture, and why the government’s new budget may be actively hurting the young people it claims to help.

Transcript

Claire Lehmann: Now, I wanted to jump to your recent column, Parnell, about female voters preferencing One Nation in the polling. What’s going on with that? Because when we look at international trends, we see more women moving to the left. So what’s different about Australia?

Parnell Palme McGuinness: Yeah, that was a really interesting thing we’re seeing in the polling here. As you say, it’s so counterintuitive, because what we’re seeing overseas is women going very much to the left and men going to the right a bit. I think the difference is that we have compulsory voting in Australia. That not only forces everybody to express themselves in a voting sense—whereas in countries without compulsory voting, you tend to hear from the fringes, the people who are going to get out and vote because they’re so motivated.