It’s 10am on Saturday morning and Melbourne’s CBD is far from sleepy. Down an alleyway, a small crowd gathers to sip cold brew out of glass bottles while a DJ plays house music.
Amelia Makin has travelled an hour from Sunbury to support her friend’s new cafe. She’s holding a cup of coffee, sitting on a small stool, talking about how only old people watch live news.
This will be Makin’s second election. She’ll vote in Hawke, the safe Labor seat on Melbourne’s western fringe. She doesn’t hold any strong convictions about voting, but there is one policy that has caught her attention.
Tell us about an average week for you
I work three days a week at Patricia, a cafe in the CBD, and am studying psychology full-time. That’s all online, so usually I can go to work and then catch up on the content when I get home.
But it means that my weeks are really full-on. And then on the weekends, it’s a lot of seeing family, they’re pretty spread out.
Are you working as much as you want?
Am I earning enough money? Yes. But it comes as a compromise on my studies. I’m just constantly reaching for time to make sure that I can absorb as much information, as much studying as possible.
If I cut down to two days a week, which would probably work a lot better for me, I would not have enough money. Most of the [other students] I talk to do two days, but they’re struggling.
What do you do outside work?
I used to be a singer. I used to teach singing lessons. That was the original “this is what I want to do with my life”. But I don’t feel like I have enough time.
As an individual, I don’t have a lot of friends. Me and my fiance, Angus, live in Sunbury, which is an hour out. So if someone’s like, ‘Hey, do you want to catch up for a coffee?’ I’m like, ‘No, not really, because I have to travel an hour to see you’.
So it’s just a lot of seeing Angus’s family, and a lot of seeing my family.
What is your housing situation?
We pay $425 a week for an upstairs unit, which was the cheapest place in Sunbury. We’ve lived there for two years. But it went up for sale not long ago, so we have to move out.
The rent in our area has gone down recently, which is good. I feel like last time we had to move house, it was like $500 a week for a tiny space, and now it’s like $500 a week for a house.
But we are worried about getting a new place. When you go to a rental inspection, there’s a line of like 200 people. You’re competing against all those other people to get it.
What are your major stressors right now?
I feel like you’re studying for a really long time to get a good degree, so you can get a really good job, and then, like, spend the rest of your life paying off the debt that you have. And just hoping this new fancy job you have gets you by.
Or you work hospo for ever. Which sounds nice, but I can’t imagine 50-year-old me lifting those coffee bags.
What are your hopes for the future?
I want to get married. We got together in high school when we were 17, but we got engaged in September. I don’t want to have a wedding, I just want to get married, whereas Angus wants a wedding. It’s just, like, really expensive.
I think my hopes would be to live somewhere really, really, comfortable and not worry about having to leave. I know that sounds like just buying a house, but if we could actually rent a place and just stay there, that would be great.
I just hope to be comfortable.
Do you think life was better for your parents?
I wouldn’t say it was better or worse. They had different struggles. There were different societal expectations, especially between men and women.
Financially, we were on like $20 a day growing up. So it’s not like they were doing better financially – they bought a house and then struggled because they had a mortgage.
Where do you get your info about current events? Who do you listen to and who do you trust?
I don’t trust anyone, but I get all my information from Instagram or YouTube.
If there’s something really big happening in the world, it’ll come up in your feed, or there’s that news bar on YouTube that’ll pop up like, “Pope Francis died”. That’s how I knew, because YouTube told me. I don’t watch the news on TV. I feel like no one my age actually watches live TV any more.
What could the federal government do to make your life easier?
They’re talking about cutting down Hecs. I’m really looking forward to seeing if that happens.
Everyone’s probably going to have the same answer, but making it easier for people to buy a house, which I think they’re both advocating for, but in really different ways.
I don’t think either will work. Like, we’ll make it so you only need a 5% deposit, but also you’re still screwed with this really giant mortgage and huge interest for the rest of your life. So like, yeah, OK, thanks.
What informs your vote?
My family growing up was always Liberal. And I would ask: “Why do you vote Liberal?” My parents’ explanation was that if you earn a lot of money, you vote Liberal. And if you don’t earn a lot of money, you vote for Labor.
Their explanation was, if we vote for Labor, then all of our money is going to go the people who don’t earn that much money.
But I’m like, is that not like a fair trade-off? And they’re like, no, I earned that money. That’s my money. And I’m like, sure, yeah, OK, that makes sense.
But also, I still want money, so I tend to vote for Labor – but I’ve only ever voted once, and to be honest, I had no idea how to vote, and was just like, ticking random boxes.
Now, I know a little bit better how to vote. I will probably vote for Labor because of the Hecs thing.
