As if everything wasn’t shit enough already, “Avocado on toast” discourse is back

Growing up as a Gen Z boy, I cringed at “Millennial Optimism”, enjoyed Glee and rolled my eyes at the claim avocado toast was the real issue with housing. Recently though, with the delightful reboot of Millennial Optimism, and the concerning notion of a Glee reboot, I should have known an infuriating reboot of avocado toast discourse was coming.

What I would never have been able to see coming was just how bizarre and unhinged former Senator Amanda Vanstone’s Canberra Times article rebooting the avocado toast discourse would be.

The smug piece starts, as is the formula, with a condemnation of young people who, Vanstone says, just “Complain, complain, complain”. Anyone who has ever heard a wealthy boomer call poorer younger people “whingers” will understand that this is always the set-up to a long session of whinging.

She begins with a swipe at homeowners concerned about the interest rate rise, because apparently it being “predictable” means it’s fine that people are struggling to keep a roof over their head. She then dedicates one whole paragraph to the idea that the government has an impact on the housing crisis, briefly acknowledging “number, location and style” of houses being built and “mass migration” – something actual experts insist is not the real issue.

We then get to the main course: lecturing imaginary young people Vanstone completely made up inside her head.

Starting with the claim that young people simply set their expectations “too high” for the places they want to live, she smugly suggests we try looking for places that don’t have a pool.

Vanstone does acknowledge that across the board housing takes up a larger chunk of salaries than in the past, but she also blames that on everyone wanting to live in houses with multiple rooms. Hey Amanda, the reason young people do that is because we need roomates to afford to fucking live anywhere. 

She goes on to make claims about the lifestyles of the normal, average young person. She tells tales of yore, of her generation spending their weekends doing interstate travel, irresponsibly replaced today, apparently, with regular Millenial-Gen Z international weekends away.

I will likely never afford a house, but fuck me I wish I was earning “constant international travel” money. Fuck, I would even take “constant interestate travel” money.

Vanstone paints the picture that young people are all fashion and tech obsessed people constantly blowing all our money on the latest tech and expensive clothes. The exact bullshit that the generation before us faced, but with the added claim that we all own pervert glasses.

I’m surprised she isn’t blaming rock and roll music for why I was so entitled as to ask for a bathroom door that closed at my previous rental.

For good measure, Vanstone throws in some “back in my days” alongside her “old woman yells at cloud,” including stories about having cordial as a treat and reusing shopping bags. Stuff my entitled zoomer brain simply cannot comprehend.

Especially coming from someone who served on the board of Lockheed Martin Australia for three years. 

Vanstone was then kind enough to start suggesting ways us young people can save for a house, because apparently the goal posts have shifted from dreaming about living comfortably in a house you own, to living joylessly in a room that you are paying off for the rest of your life.

Her suggestions mainly focus on unnecessary spending, using figures that she of course just made up. Apparently the average young couple spends $35 a day eating breakfast out Monday to Friday. But don’t be too alarmed: she clarifies that her totally made up figure excludes the outlying “big-spending, avo-on-toast couple”.

“Big-spending, avo-on-toast couple.” Fuck me. 

The economy is so fucked up by oligarchs that the made up young people that ruling class boomers get mad at can’t even afford their made up avo-on-toast anymore!

Vanstone goes on to make up figures for how much takeaway food young people “buy” each week and how many meals we eat at restaurants every week. Both of which are $140 a week, apparently. Running into the problem that her bullshit numbers don’t sound bad enough per year, she then adds an extra three grand to every expense for “taxes.” 

But I ask why stop there, Amanda? If your made up numbers aren’t big enough, why not just go even bigger? Fuck it, say we spend at least $10,000 a week on food, ranging between $520,000 to $20 million a year. It’s just as ridiculous as your other bullshit numbers.

Maybe us young people should just be more like career politician, Amanda Vanstone? Why stop at these small savings on hypothetical food when we could do what she did and save $30,000 on Mandarin lessons by charging the taxpayers instead? The kind of savvy spending without relying on others that she preaches.

Vanstone finished this section with a damning summation of young people more generally:

“They simply are too weak to make the decision to cut unnecessary indulgences out. Because they’re either entitled or stupid.”

Bit rich of someone kicking off avocado toast discourse in 2026 to be calling anyone else stupid.

The streets of Paris are filled with revolutionary sentiment, the climate’s cooked, people’s rights are being taken away, no one can afford anything because like three people have all the money, and you’re out here, avocado toasting all over again, calling everyone else dumb? Fuck off.

The last third of her article is a lightning round of random disjointed, unrelated conservative talking points. As a stroke survivor, this section had my brain feeling a confused numbness that had me concerned I should go back to hospital.

She moves on to the “broader problem” of young people being too entitled to be engaged with politics, throwing in the word “extremists” as a boogieman. For evidence, she cites an article she wrote previously which just cited a vibe based on the amount young people tweet about Trump and Netanyahu instead of their local members. I wish I was making this up.

It’s almost like the President of the United States teaming up with the Prime Minister of Israel to start a war that fucked the world economy, while also committing a genocide, is a major political thing impacting the lives of many.

According to the Australian Institute of Family Studies, young people are very actively engaged in politics, and this is usually expressed through social media, petitions and protests. Just not through political party membership anymore.

Then the piece somehow turns into a rant about protecting the federal government’s funding of private schools. Amanda, if the quality of the arguments contained within your piece are anything to go by, maybe private schools are a waste of all our money.

I skipped over a lot of stuff, too, both for time and your own mental well-being. You’re welcome, and fuck you to my editor for asking me to do this piece. (Ed’s note: fair, valid, totally understandable sentiment.)

Vanstone’s ramblings may have answered the question, “What if Dave Hughes was even more smug?”, but they also self-report the problem with the political and media class.

Their view of political engagement is focused on internal party politics. Their experience of a “normal young person” is someone who always buys new clothes, flies internationally semi-regularly and never buys groceries as they are always eating out.

Those of us who do not fit into their privileged, narrow worldview, are apparently just too “stupid” to ever deserve the pipedream of owning a house and being able to have a coffee with some fucking toast.