About time! Young people are being shafted. Don’t worry about Hanson. Focus on jobs, the inequity of intergeneration transfers of money and capital and the rapacious nature of the economy. Having trouble finding somewhere to live? Start with Airbnb’s. This story is from the ABC’s Audrey Courty.
Many are too young to vote, but students around the world are changing the political landscape.
In France, protests over underfunded public schools spiralled into weeks of violent unrest, igniting a wider wave of youth-led demonstrations across Europe.
In Serbia, students cycled around the continent and ran ultramarathons to draw attention to a campaign that ended the 14-year ruleof the government.
And in Brazil, millions of young people mobilised online, helping thwart the far-right’s return to power in a fiercely contested election.
Now, Australian students are taking their frustrations to the streets, amid what researchers describe as a “resurgence” of activism among gen Z — those currently aged 14 to 29.
On Thursday afternoon, students across several Australian cities are expected to walk out of classrooms to protest Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party and its policies.
For 18-year-old Victorian student Odessa Bishop-McMurray, the action is about pushing back against what she sees as the “normalisation” of far-right politics in Australia.
“Pauline Hanson is coming for the rights of immigrants, women and trans people … high schoolers have a responsibility to take this task upon ourselves,” she says.
Odessa is a member of the High School Anti-Capitalists, one of the groups organising the walkouts.
She says housing unaffordability, insecure work, climate change, the cost of living and the conflict in Gaza are also among the issues driving students to mobilise.
“As a young person, it is not difficult to see that the future we’re facing is incredibly dire.
“Meanwhile, politicians are putting fossil fuel companies and profits over the live-ability of the planet.”
The November action follows similar student walkouts in August, which Odessa estimates attracted 15,000 participants around Australia.
Organisers are hoping to build on the momentum of student movements overseas, with footage of protests in France and Serbia circulating on social media feeds.
For 16-year-old David Ye, another student involved in organising the walkouts, student-led campaigns overseas have been a source of inspiration.
“Every time the French protests come on the news, it sends shock waves of hope throughout our group that we can grow and we can win,” he says.
David says students are also drawing connections between demands for better learning conditions and wider inequalities, such as racism and sexism.
“It’s great that students are recognising the interconnectedness between all of these issues and taking up those fights themselves,” he says.
“Young people are totally capable of thinking critically, participating in politics, and fighting for the future because, after all, it is our future.”
Across countries with very different political systems, young protesters are voicing some remarkably similar frustrations.
In Paris, student protester Hippolyte Barbry sees a generation increasingly disillusioned with the political status quo.
“We do see similar issues at play, notably the defence of democracy and the sovereignty of the people in the face of either authoritarianism or the insularity of a ruling elite,” he says.
“There is a growing sense of frustration with the current system … sometimes I even wonder whether this might spread to even more countries.”
Harvard-affiliated researchers Erica Chenoweth and Matthew Cebul have noticed a similar pattern in youth-led movements around the world.
“Gen Z may be experiencing a global political awakening,” they wrote in a recent essay.
They identify economic precarity, high youth unemployment, and the exclusion of younger generations from political power as behind the recent wave of gen Z-led protests.
But they argue corruption and greed are deeper grievances.
“Young people are furious with political elites, who shamelessly reap the spoils of opulent privilege while their countries suffer,” they write.
The scale of youth-led activism is reflected in data from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which recorded 17 significant anti-government protests led by young people in 2024 and another 12 in 2025.
In Australia, recent research from the Institute of Family Studies found that 41 per cent of young people surveyed had expressed views about government actions in the previous five years. Among this group, 31 per cent said they had taken part in a protest or demonstration.
Eve Mayes, a sociologist of youth and education at Deakin University, says the current “resurgence” builds on a longer history of youth activism, including the global school strikes for climate in 2018 and 2019.
But she says one feature of more recent activism is the way young people are connecting struggles that might once have been treated separately.
“They’re expressing themselves in collective ways and online, through digital networks of influence to connect up issues.”
After learning about Australia’s planned walkouts, Hippolyte says he sees parallels with the movement in France.
“Clearly, young people in Australia categorically refuse to have a party in power that would promote discrimination,” he says. “And for that alone, well done to them.”
But she says young activists are also becoming more alert to the power of technology companies to shape what they see and how they understand the world.
There is, she says, “a bit more of a scepticism and a critical attention to the role of big tech”.
More on generational wealth transfers below:
Malcolm King: intergenerational wealth transfers are widening Australia’s economic divide by rewarding inherited capital over earned wages. Experts debate whether an inheritance or death tax could help — and some advocate for a land tax instead.