In a political age defined by opinion polling and a 24-hour news cycles, one strategy is remarkably consistent: the word ‘free’ buys votes.

On the weekend, Australians will vote in the 2025 federal election, an election where both major parties are leaning into this enduring reality – offering short-term handouts with minimal attention to long-term consequences.

This is not a uniquely Australian phenomenon. Across the democratic world, political leaders often traffic in giveaways, not good governance, nor sound policy. But Australia’s case is alarming because it highlights the compounding dangers of two converging trends: the rise of populist promises and the steady erosion of economic and civic literacy. When these forces combine, democracy ceases to be a deliberative exercise and becomes a transactional one where voters are courted not with ideas, but with hip pocket incentives. Younger voters are particularly susceptible to such fiscal recklessness.

The current federal election campaign showcases this. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has doubled down on his government’s failing $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, as well as billions extra for childcare, expanded bulk-billing, and energy rebates in an attempt to mask the effects of Net Zero. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has offered his own sugar hits: halving the fuel excise, a $1,200 tax rebate, 20 Medicare-funded mental health sessions, and a $5 billion Housing Infrastructure Program. And then there’s the Greens’ demands should we face a hung parliament!

Our political leaders frame these policies around generosity, fairness, and relief. Yet all conspicuously avoid the harder truths: how will it be paid for and what effect will it really have on the economy and economic wellbeing of taxpaying Australians?

Unsurprisingly, at this election (and just as surely at the next) such questions are left unanswered because the promise of ‘free’ is politically irresistible. This isn’t economic planning – it’s electoral bribery. And it works.

This strategy works not just because of the proven effectiveness of political opportunism, but because of the failure of our education system. We are cultivating a generation of voters increasingly divorced from the economic and civic realities that underpin our democratic system.

Recent studies indicate a significant shift in the economic preferences of young Australians. According to a 2024 YouGov poll, 53 per cent of 18–24-year-olds believe Australia should be more socialist. Research by the Institute of Public Affairs reveals that 53 per cent of Australians aged 18-34 consider socialism the ideal economic system. More troubling still, Lowy Institute’s 2024 poll showed 65 per cent of Australians aged 18-44, compared to 79 per cent of those aged over 45, believe democracy is preferable to any other kind of government. This 14-point gap highlights a generational divide in perceptions of democratic governance. This statistic is not merely shocking – it is a damning indictment of an education system that has failed to equip young people with a basic understanding of democratic freedoms, responsibilities, and the trade-offs that sustain them.

The vulnerability of younger voters to populist rhetoric is not an accident. It is the predictable result of an education system that prioritises ideology over knowledge. In most Australian schools, civic education is cursory at best. Students may learn the names of prime ministers and how a bill is passed through Parliament, but few are taught what freedom of speech entails, why democratic institutions matter, or how the rule of law protects our rights. Even fewer are introduced to economic fundamentals like taxation, budgeting, or the dangers of deficit spending.

We are not preparing literate citizens. We are producing half-educated idealists and activists, ill-equipped to assess the feasibility or consequences of the policies being offered to them.

It is not wrong to desire a fairer, more compassionate society. But it is dangerously naïve to assume fairness can be legislated into existence without cost and consequence.

Australia’s rapidly expanding welfare state comes without the political honesty to support it. No major party has addressed the fundamental problem of a working-age population that is shrinking as a proportion of the total, yet we continue to fund new entitlements with borrowed money, hoping tomorrow’s taxpayers will foot the bill.

This is not sustainable.

Populism does not flourish in a well-educated democracy. It thrives in environments where slogans substitute for substance, where emotional beats empirical. This is especially true among young voters who have never been properly introduced to the mechanisms of the very system they are being asked to participate in.

The absence of robust civics and economics education has made young voters the most susceptible to the seductions of ‘free’. Without being taught what rights and, most importantly, responsibilities entail, they become easy targets for politicians promising utopia. And worse, they lack the tools to critically interrogate those promises.

As former High Court Justice Michael Kirby once observed, ‘You cannot expect people to value a system they do not understand.’ Yet that is exactly what we do. We, rightly, hand young adults the vote without first equipping them to use it wisely.

The great risk Australia now faces is not that a new socialism may supplant capitalism; the real threat is that democracy itself will erode – not with a bang, but with a series of quiet transactions, each more populist than the last.

When voters do not understand debt, taxation, or the long-term consequences of policy, elections cease to be contests of vision or competence. They become auctions. The highest bidder wins, and the invoice is sent to the next generation.

We are normalising a political culture in which government is not a steward of shared prosperity, but an endless ATM doling out unfunded solutions to ever-increasing demands.

Australia stands at a crossroads. If we continue down this path, we will raise generations of voters who demand everything and understand nothing, and politicians more than willing to indulge them.

There is still time to course-correct. We must demand more from our leaders – and more from our education system. This starts in our classrooms, where civics and economics should be taught not as abstract theory, but as essential tools for citizenship. Students should leave school understanding how their vote shapes their nation and the value and the consequences of the selections they make.

Democracy cannot survive on freebies and fantasies. It depends on informed citizens – people who can question, calculate, and contribute. If we fail to teach the next generation how democracy works we may wake to find we no longer live in one.

Colleen Harkin is the Director of the Institute of Public Affairs’ Schools Program