Why are young men backing Trump and Hanson and what does Australia’s NDIS blowout have to do with this?
The number of 25 to 34-year-olds who say they’re “permanently unable” to work has increased fivefold in the past 20 years, tracking with the global rise of young men “drifting around” and not in school, work, or training, in what one expert says is “one of the most severe social issues we’re facing”.
Here are the key facts:
- For the first time, the number of 25 to 34-year-old men who say they are “permanently unable” to work now exceeds the number of 35 to 44-year-old men who say the same.
- The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is being blamed because of mental health diagnoses.
- In 2000, the number was 0.3% of the workforce. Now it’s 2%.
- For women aged 25–34, the number has gone from 0.2% to 1.3%.
- The Australian reports: “Since mid-2025, more 25 to 34-year-old men than 35 to 44-year-old men reported they were ‘permanently unable’ to work in a majority of the monthly ABS surveys.”
- In February 2026, 15% of men aged under 65 who said they were permanently unable to work were aged between 25 and 34. And 12.4% were aged between 35 and 44.
Robert Breunig, Australian National University public policy economist, says these young people are called NEETs — not in education, employment or training: “What are they doing? They’re hanging out at their parents’ house playing computer games – that’s one story that we hear. Or they’re kind of drifting around and not really finding their place in life,” Breunig told The Australian.
It comes as the projected cost of the NDIS program will go from $52.3 billion in 2025–26 to $63.4 billion in 2028–29 and is expected to demand more funding than Medicare.
The likes of the Grattan Institute and the ABC have reported that the blowout can be explained by “rorting, bureaucracy and a lack of clear boundaries around eligibility.”
This is a classic case of where a good idea like the NDIS has been mishandled by governments, their public servants and politicians, who think it’s a vote winner. The irony of this thinking was underlined by The Australian’s Noah Yim, who reported that Professor Breunig may have inadvertently helped to explain the rising popularity of One Nation in local politics.
Yim says Breunig thinks the rise of the NEET was connected to a sense of political and socio-economic disenfranchisement: “These young boys are voting for the right,” he revealed. “This age group in the US, 18 to 30-year-old white boys, vote a higher proportion for Trump than any other age group.”
Peter,
The Academics who explain everything through the lense of race that is negative to left wing ideology have run out of excuses, plain and simple. The fact of the matter is most if not all left wing governments in power today and particularly ours in Australia are anti western values, and basically incompetent governments.
regardless whether you like or dislike trump and hanson what they have in common is they speak a language thats easy to understand ,they offer solutions rather than ideals and when asked a question most times they actually answer it.
People are fed up with idealistic inner city elites that cannot read the room,and that falls squarely on our present federal government,and a number of state ones.
People of all demographics are turning to Pauline Hanson, is because she is offering common sense solutions to the problems crated by the major parties. Conservatives are not stupid or blind. They have woken up to the fact that both the Liberal and Labor parties keep singing from the same song book. The Greens are either stoned or have their heads buried in the dirt. The major parties insist on subscribing to overseas interests like WHO, WEF and the like, who do not represent the interests of Australians. The Climate Change Fraud has been exposed as a massive money spinner for elite oligarchs. Nett Zero is unachievable and a massive drain on tax payer’s money. That money is better spent rebuilding our traditional energy producing infrastructure, so we can produce cheap, consistent, reliable energy, using our vast natural resources. We should not be sending these resources overseas for a pittance. Put Australia first. Reduced energy costs mean affordable living and cheaper manufacturing costs. That puts us back in a competitive position on the global market. Liberal and Labor do not have our future interests in their plans. Pauline Hanson does. All Australians who genuinely care about our future should get behind her.
Trump and Pauline are the only ones standing up to the woke academia like Breunig.
The only positive outcomes future for these young men is fearless leadership from Trump and Pauline.
The Lefty, , Woke, Labor are simply using their temporary power to block opportunity for young men.
Once they rise up it will be over for the socialists.
I think the growing popularity of ‘leaders’ like Trump and Hanson is that they offer easy, rapid and absolute-sounding answers to complex problems that, in fact, require much thought and informed debate, something our seemingly disenfranchised cohort of 25-34 year-olds in particular are mostly sadly not capable of. They often also lack the education and lifetime smarts. That said, it also true that our ideals-driven post WW2 world order has also been enfranchising ever more minorities and those at the fringes (pandering to the ‘woke’) and this has made the process of informed and forward-moving decision-making in government much more fraught and the decision-makers increasingly impotent in a rapidly changing world they too are ill-equipped to control and understand. And then there are the pernicious influencers and the moneyed folk with barrows of their own to push that often put additional spanners in the works, so to speak. We do need the thinkers and those who hold ideals sacred. But we also need practical solutions, quicker decision-making processes and a greater acceptance by all of the reasonable views of others. In the end, it’s all a balancing game, as it always has been throughout human history. This dichotomy of push and pull is somehow endemic to the human condition.
Put another way, we will always need people like Trump and Hanson to remind us of why we really don’t want, and can’t afford to have, people like them lead us. We learn through experience, and it’s the all too painful failures that are often the more telling lessons. I wish it were otherwise.
Pauline is saying what most Australians are angry about and the so called major two parties have turned off listening to the people, years ago, before long, the people hurt, struggle to live and see the way off life deteriorate before there eyes, particularly under this perfetic Albanese Government. As for the current President, absolutely not a lying, spinning politician, a patriot, cares for his people and the safety of his country and the general western world and allies. He has achieved more in his second term than any president before him could have even dreamed. Off course the elite don’t like him, he’s not woke enough for them, in fact the opposite is true, just listen to his critics, complain about everything he does, does the media say anything about people like Albanese and Wong who supported a Palestinian State, actually supported something the very people he thinks he was supporting wanted a recognised State, no they want the State of Isreal obliterated. The world will be hard pushed to see strength displayed like President Trump, countries have destroyed their sovereignty from within and still pretend there way is the right way, fools.