The federal budget we are soon to see will be dedicated in part to the idea of generational equity, the idea that older Australians own too much at the expense of younger Australians, and that something ought to be done about it.

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It may be an urgent task. Particularly if Pauline Hanson gets her way and we cut immigration, even of white people. Under her policies our population will have declined by about 20 per cent by 2055.

I belong to that wicked generation of Baby Boomers, now becoming the most senior generation, said to have been the greediest generation of all - the ones who have virtually guaranteed that succeeding generations, alive or not yet born, will, on average, be poorer than we have been.

To our general wickedness is also the charge that we were a generation that never faced general war or general depression and prospered from the thrift and sacrifice of our parents' generation which had suffered considerably from both.

I must bear my share of the general condemnation with all the fortitude I can muster, though I do not think it all deserved, or at least deserved by all of us.

The Boomer generation is largely the Whitlam generation, who came to benefit from massive increases in funds devoted to public education, and, for a time, free or much cheaper university fees which saw Boomer Australians (and their descendants) transition into the middle classes.

In our time, Australians got access to free, or much cheaper healthcare. Somewhat under-remarked are the efforts of the 1960s and 1970s to electrify, sewer and water cities and towns and to connect them with bitumen. This had a massive, if probably undercounted effect on the standard of living. Boomers were among those who soon took these initiatives for granted. So do the generations after us.

The social security system was considerably improved to provide public access to welfare benefits, single mothers benefits, childcare, aged care and community care.

There was, for the first time, a major public investment in improving the lives of Indigenous Australians. It was during the period that the Boomer generation was coming into its own that Australia opened itself to the world and to world markets and achieved most of the productivity growth in the period since the end of World War II.

Much to Pauline Hanson's regret, Australia ceased to be a monoculture of complaining and under-educated people eating a diet of chops, three veg, and greasy fish and chips and became a vibrant multicultural community with richer culture, diet and more interesting jobs.

We rode an international wave of social change towards greater tolerance, more outward looking and more liberal thinking that sought to improve the common wealth of Australians and of our neighbours in the Pacific, Asia and Africa. That very improvement in the standard of living prompted political calls for using increasing public wealth to help some of those who had been left out. To the Colombo Plan, a Menzies government innovation that has never been equalled (and which educated much of the next ruling class of Asia) came generous aid and development schemes, a role in the decolonisation of the neighbourhood and practical efforts to be a good citizen of the world.

To the consternation of figures from the previous generation, such as John Howard, Australia became a fierce opponent of apartheid, a force in world public health and a peacemaker and friend in countries, such as Cambodia, Australia had helped to ravage.

Post-Boomer generations faced mean, spiteful governments

Willy-nilly, we also benefited from some critical decisions made by governments, though it is stretching the........

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