Baby boomers to blame says Human Rights Commissioner
Source: AAP | Published: Monday November 15 1:20:34 PM
Baby boomers are the most selfish generation in Australian history and
responsible for the majority of the nation's social ills, Human Rights
Commissioner Chris Sidoti said today.
Launching a fierce attack on those born into post World War II
prosperity in the 1940s and 1950s, Mr Sidoti labelled baby boomers as
Australia's 'problem generation'.
'I think most of us will be judged by history as perhaps the most
selfish generation that Australia has had,' Mr Sidoti, himself a baby
boomer, told AAP.
Now in their 40s and 50s baby boomers had received a free tertiary
education through the efforts of their parents and grandparents who had
funded it through taxation.
'Yet we are the ones who are imposing enormous debt burdens on those who
come after us and denying aged care when required to those who have gone
before us, simply because of our unwillingness to pay tax,' he said.
Appointed by the federal government Mr Sidoti then entered the political
arena in implicitly criticising the government's tax reforms.
'I don't think there has been a generation like this, that has been so
unwilling to pay a fair share of taxation, to ensure that everyone in
the community has the support that's required and the services that are
needed.'
Earlier the commissioner told a teenage and elderly audience at the
Meeting of the Generations conference in Sydney, that baby boomers were
to blame for under-funded and strained health care and social welfare programs
'If there is a problem generation in Australia today it is the baby
boomers, my generation.
'We are now the people who are in positions of influence with the media,
government, business, most walks of life and if we are to say there are
people in Australia who aren't doing well, I think we have to look at
ourselves as the people who are responsible for that,' said Mr Sidoti.
However, he warned younger people could get their own back by refusing
to fund social services for the rapidly aging baby boomer generation.
The number of Australians over 65 will double to just under five million
in 2011.
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