THE YEAR I was born, Paul Keating dropped Australia’s corporate tax rate by ten percentage points. As I started primary school, it dropped six more. When John Howard received his ‘mandate for the GST’, I was busy calling my friends on three-way chat. That same year, the corporate tax rate took another hit.

This was the backdrop to my childhood and adolescence. Enormous wealth generated by the resources boom and landmark social and environmental reforms, which combined to disguise an era of asymmetrical progress. The political left was fierce and proactive on issues of social and environmental justice. Meanwhile, it was ad-hoc, muted or, at worst, complicit in working against progressive economic reforms. This is how we millennials have found ourselves confronted with a series of intense, unprecedented economic factors that are working to stack the odds against us.