Any Australian child born after the turn of the millennium has a good chance of living into the next century, which gives them a time horizon about 25 times as long as that of most politicians.
This gives them an incentive to take the long view, and a corresponding distaste for business as usual.
The school students of Australia foamed around the parliaments of Australia last month as they called for action on climate change, completely ignoring the faded parliamentarians grumbling: "The only time I was let out of class was to go and watch the Queen drive by, and it made me the man I am today."
The children were calling time on 20 years of unmitigated policy failure, and that was about the only thing that could have raised my spirits on that Friday, just hours before the sickening sadness that enveloped Christchurch and then the world.
What, after all, could the students have learned in the classroom that could compare with the lessons they were taking in on the streets — the lived experience of the power of protest?
It all started with Greta Thunberg in Sweden, a year 9 student, herself inspired by the anti-gun protests of the Parkland students in Florida.
Greta had reacted to wildfires inside the Arctic circle by calling a new political generation into being, to redress the failures of their parents.
As one sign said at the protests in my area: "Children wouldn't have to act like politicians if politicians didn't act like children."
Any politician of any stamp who wants to postpone their inevitable rendezvous with the dustbin of history should hesitate before dismissing the voice of young people.
Any politician of any stamp who wants to postpone their inevitable rendezvous with the dustbin of history should hesitate before dismissing the voice of young people.
It's remarkable, looking back, how often the marchers in the street have tended to be vindicated.
We marched against the Vietnam War, and today the president of the US holds up communist Vietnam to the North Koreans as a shining example of commercial enterprise.
We marched unavailingly against the Iraq War, and even prominent liberal statesmen are sometimes now heard to concede that with the wisdom of hindsight those half-a-million Iraqi dead may have been an overreaction.
Before the Mardi Gras march was a tourist attraction, it was people being beaten up in Darlinghurst police station.
Australia's historic heritage has survived to be expensively gentrified because unionists wielding black bans fought the developers' bulldozers.
We marched (some of us) for reconciliation. (OK, that one's a work in progress.)
Where we went wrong as a society, too, was in those parts where we didn't protest, where we assumed our elders and betters knew best and didn't rock the boat.
The removal of the White Australia policy was forced on us from outside, not by protestors blocking the streets.
There were virtually no public demonstrations against child abuse in the churches until the Royal Commission blew away all rationalisations and excuses.
We need to remember our agitators, to give perspective to the struggles of today and to remind the young that a place in a law degree isn't everything in life.
Our Community, the social enterprise I head, is just moving into a new building which we'll share with other community groups, and I've taken the opportunity to name our meeting rooms after people who threw their lives into a cause.
Stella Young, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Anne McDonald, Zelda D'Aprano, Glen Tomasetti, Joan Kirner, Vida Goldstein — women who looked around them and said: "No, it doesn't have to be this way."
If that's what the law says, then change the law.
If that's what the constitution says, change the constitution.
If that's what society believes, change society.
Somebody has to be first. A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step over the line.
That's why the students who are striking for a better world and a better community deserve our gratitude and respect.
Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise helping the country's 600,000 not-for-profits.
