Push to lower Australia's compulsory voting age to 16 as advocate says youngsters feeling 'disenfranchised'
Push to lower Australia's compulsory voting age to 16 as advocate says youngsters feeling 'disenfranchised'
Sixteen-year-olds can learn to drive, get a job, pay taxes and be on the Organ Donor Register, but they are considered too young to vote. Should they also have a stake in deciding their future?
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Austria, Brazil, Germany, and the UK region of Scotland (for devolved parliament and council elections only) have already enfranchised 16-year-olds. We should too.
There's currently a Parliamentary Inquiry into civics education, engagement, and participation in Australia. Changing the voting age is not in its terms of reference, but a large enough number of submissions calling for that could at least get a broader national conversation started.
(I also plan to put into my submission something about other voting systems and how feeling like your vote actually matters in a way that it largely doesn't in IRV would be a big help for civic engagement.)
Sounds good. I'm interested in why you think your vote doesn't matter in IRV? And what system you'd replace it with
So, it's obviously a relative thing. Your vote matters a shit tonne more in IRV than in FPTP, of course.
But it's also a lot less than proportional systems. At the last federal election, over 12% of Australians wanted a Greens representative. Less than 3% actually got one.
A combined 9% wanted One Nation and United Australia Party. They got 0. Labor got 51% of seats, from less than 33% of votes. The LNP is actually the most fairly-represented party, getting 39% of seats from 36% of votes.
My preference is a proportional system. Probably MMP, to keep local representation, as well as to remove the need for party lists. Rather than the proportional seats being done in party order, I'd do them in "nearest loser" order based on their local races. But that's a very niche aspect. The important thing is that it be some form of proportional representation.
A counter-argument could be that our Senate uses STV, which is quasi-proportional. Which is certainly a good thing, and far better than if we didn't have it. But it's still only a rough approximation of proportionality. Labor and the LNP each won 39% of seats, from their 30% and 34% of votes. That equates to 3 or 4 seats too many for Labor, and 1 or 2 too many for the LNP.
But even if it did work perfectly, the fact is that all the attention and most of the power is in the House of Representatives. It can be very disheartening and discouraging for someone engaged politically who doesn't support Labor or the LNP to know that the chances that the candidate they give their vote to will probably not actually get in, and that's not good for civic engagement.
I thought you'd be thinking of MMP - that nearest loser sounds interesting! It does seem to be the road to better representation.
I'm all for change - I think it'd need to be accompanied with plenty of education in the form of AEC ads on tv and online. Not so much the 'how to vote' but more the 'how our system works'. Plenty of people I talk to have no idea about IRV, and consider voting for anything other than libs or Labor "throwing your vote" - which it can totally not be if people are aware of how it works.
Current system gives all regions some chance to have a voice. Otherwise only interests of cities will be considered and interests of outback will not be represented at all.
MMP gives people local representation while still making sure a party with 30% of voters' support doesn't win 51% of seats, resulting in 100% of power.
the UK region of Scotland
I've never felt this offended
Haha sorry! I'm a big supporter of Scotland having another independence referendum, especially with EU membership being one of the big points in the "remain" camp in 2014. But for now, well, Scotland is a region of the UK, and that's a point I really wanted to emphasise to make it clear that it's not something allowed by Westminster.