2016-03-31
Laura Hedge
The gap between the age of 16 and the time you become a legal adult at 18 is a jumble of child-like activities and adult responsibilities. While taking a swig of an alcoholic drink is out of the question, you are considered able to join the army, get a gun license, get a part or full-time job and pay tax, drive a car, move out of home and even fly an aeroplane. Despite this, you are still not considered mature or adult enough to participate in an election.
The Greens have long called out this inconsistency and aim to make voluntary voting possible for people aged 16 and 17. Last year Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten also said the voting age restriction should be lowered. This would allow 600,000 or so extra people to express their opinion on the issues that affect them, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Australia would join an array of countries that have already lowered the voting age including Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Norway, the Philippines and Indonesia.
Taking civic responsibility seriously
Detractors still take issue with having young people in politics. Vanamali Hermans, the 17-year-old co-campaigns co-ordinator for the Australian Young Greens said this is in part due to the baseless perspective that someone who is still technically a child will be too immature to take voting seriously, too easily swayed in their opinion or unlikely to care about who runs the country. This argument, she said, “quickly becomes redundant” because “a great deal of people who are adults don't have a specific engagement in politics.”
“I joined [the Greens] when I was 15 and I've held secretary and other roles but despite all the community work that I'm doing I don't have a say when it comes to voting,” Vanamali said. “You get to volunteer and have an input at the ages of 15 and 16… You start to have a say and yet really you don't have a say…at 16 we aren't able to vote on issues which relate to us - like university fee deregulation.”
Engaging in the debate
The idea that young people are uninterested in politics has been disproven across the world. While the number of young people becoming members of a party may not be increasing, social media has provided platforms for young people to debate and argue policies. Demonstrations from the anti-war protests in Japan, Australian student action against the Abbott government's higher education policies and the Occupy Movement have shown that young people are not as narcissistic and disinterested in politics as often claimed.
Vanamali stated that there is also a parliamentary reason behind resisting the lowering of the voting age. “They [politicians] would have to appeal to young people on issues, for example on fee deregulation…. It would have been far more interesting if they had to appeal to people affected by policies…Instead we had 50 year olds deciding on an issue affecting young people.”
16 year old Evan Turner agreed with Vanamali saying conservatives resist lowering the voting age because of “the terrifying idea that politically enlightened and well educated youth might be able to swing the vote against Tory MPs with small margins.” And indeed when Mr Shorten began discussing lowering the voting age, the Opposition of the day called it a move to increase the number of people voting for the Greens and Labor. Younger people, they said, were more likely to be 'left-leaning', despite no extensive study confirming this.
Like Vanamali, Simon Burnett was motivated to join political debates at sixteen. He joined the Australian Labor Party to steer eligible voters “to vote the right way on my behalf.” He then got involved with the Greens at the age of 22. “Young people, I would argue, are even more politically engaged than previous generations and certainly more politically informed,” he said.
“The world is a very different place now to when the voting age was first set, and improved education and access to the internet and social media has given, I would argue, young people of the next generation a much better nose for bullshit.”
Sophia Davidson, an erudite 11 year old who has already been participating in Greens party activities for a year, provides an example of how young people can become interested in politics at a young age. She has attended meetings and contributed to the Greens policy against greyhound racing practices.
Sophia acknowledged that she's too young to vote, saying “if I…was given the choice [to vote] I may not because I may find it difficult. There's still a lot of things about politics I don't understand or that adults know better than me.
“But,” she added, “a lot of people would be very good and responsible at voting and people deserve to vote at sixteen. If you have an opinion you should be able to express your opinion especially with politics and voting.”
Should it be compulsory?
How best to introduce a lower voting age appears to still be a point of contention among the young people who are in favour of it. For example Simon, Evan and Sophia are in favour of voluntary voting for sixteen and seventeen year olds. “[It] helps ease younger voters into it instead of risking landing young people with a fine for not doing something they were perhaps unaware of their obligation to do,” said Simon. “There could be a move to compulsory voting for 16 year olds after a few election cycles.”
Vanamali, however, said “I'm not comfortable with voluntary voting because it makes two different classes of voters – people under 18 who vote and those who don't. Grassroots democracy relies on compulsory voting.”
However, how lowering the voting age may come about is a question for the future. Currently, we are still stuck on whether it should happen at all. And when young people are already participating in their communities as students and as workers and engaging in policy making on subjects as diverse as fee deregulation and animals rights, this is what appears strange.
Laura Hedge is a Sydney writer and Digital Content Coordinator for Fast Cover, a travel insurance company. She writes about gender, mental health, refugees and racism.