ACT Greens calls for voting age to be lowered to 16

Once again the greens tackling the big issues. Whilst our rates are tripled, ACT Health is a basket case, the governments leaving youth mental health to the privates to handle, building approvals a shambles, the jail is the worst in Australia etc… they focus on forcing veganism on prisoners & others & this old chestnut.

The greens are under the misapprehension that only green younger voters would opt in and are failing to understand the sheer numbers in the hardline religious groups who would opt in. All in or not at all.

Sure…. now that they have brainwashed our children that there is more then two genders and that it’s ok to be Gay before you hit puberty and the fact that C02 has stolen their childhood….what could possibly go wrong?
“Insert sarcasm here”

In the ACT at 16 you are legally able to conceive a child. So I figure you should be entitled to have a say in what world that child should grow up.

Sillier, and sillier!

Let’s lower the driving age, alcohol age etc…while we’re at it all in one swoop save time and money hey Greens? Don’t forget the consent age, let’s lower it to 13years old while you’re at it. You seem desperate for votes. You want my kindergarten kids to vote for you too while you’re at it??

No, put it up

All the Greta Mob

Lower the age to 10 right? Double digits 😂🤣

The Greens are only pushing this as it targets the demographic more likely to vote for them

If you can vote at 16 you can also be tried as an adult and go to adult prison and encompass all the other responsibilities of an adult including drinking, getting married and being elected to parliament. Bring it on.

Just as long as Election Day coincides with a school day, the blind, senseless, communist indoctrinated eco-warriors will all vote them or their bed-fellows in..

Kid’s heads are being filled by teachers with an agenda. We see this now with them being encouraged to wag school and “strike” for climate change. How mature.
What a great lesson – if you don’t like something, just have a tantrum, ignore your responsibilities and just disrupt everyone else trying to go about theirs. Funny – that’s how the Unions do it and the Teachers Union is one of the biggest.
Lowering the age will mean the kids vote for whatever they’re told to in school. Teachers are pushing the climate change agenda – we will end up with 100% left wing voters and recent experience of the Labor party just shows what a horrible idea that is.
Leave the voting age as is, when people are coming into adulthood and have some perspective on the world.
Voting is a responsibility not to be taken lightly. Everyday we see that kids are more and more self involved and self absorbed.
The last thing we need is children dictating how the country should be run – free ice creams for everyone! And f*ck the establishment!Why give all that responsibility to teachers who are doing a bad enough job as it is?

The greens would say that 🙄

Kanye West would be a good chance😁😁

LOL, cause the greens know that most young ppl have no life experience and don’t know any better. They are easy to manipulate with the type of alarmist garbage that the greens go on with.

Mel Smith – should show this to the Year 10s!!

Its only fair. if we consider Pauline Hanson voters up to the task of voting, then children definitely are.

God help us.

The ACT Greens are transparently self serving. They want to garner the immature vote as they are confident they are out on a rail in 12 months.

This Gen Xer say yes. I was very engaged in politics and so were my kids.

Hell no. This is a despicable but predictable ploy by the Greens to garner votes from the sympathetic youth.
Let kids be kids and enjoy their carefree years while they can still can.

Greens trying to get more votes

This would be fantastic! I couldn’t wait to vote – counted down the years until I was old enough to!

I am aware of little, or no, evidence that a 16 year old is more, or less, likely to vote in a bunch of idiots than a voter aged 18 or over. Our current system has consistently delivered parliaments/legislatures and/or assemblies largely populated by ineffectual self interested clowns. So could it be worse?

Perhaps the only caveat I would add is that voting is only compulsory for those 18 and over.

And the greens wonder why many people think of them as oxygen thieves. I was 16 once. You think you know it all but in reality you don’t know a damn thing.

Are the greens smoking weed, coming up with these ideas so they can continue brainwashing students and going with the latest fad rather than providing sound costed and viable policies

Ditch compulsory voting, then have the same discussion.
See if they are as motivated then.

Another ridiculous Greens idea trying desperately to find ways to boost their vote!

And have a maximum age as well, and whilst we are at it, you should be a tax payer and the value of your vote is proportionate to the amount of tax you pay. You should also get to choose what your tax gets spent on …

And where will it stop. If this gets through in a few years they will want to lower it to 14 or 15 year olds. Leave it as it is.

The ACT greens are calling for the voting age to be lowered so their supporters can legally submit a vote and improve the Greens poor election results

Smart way to receive votes from brain washed students.😡

I think that voting goes with legal adulthood. At eighteen, one has a whole bunch of rights and responsibilities, and eighteen makes sense for voting. The eighteen-year-old has an independent stake in society at that point, and is entitled to a say. Before that point, they are legally the responsibility of another person, and may not feel quite the same regard for the franchise.

As for making voting optional, I think that is a terrible way to begin one’s participation in democracy. I think that this is one of our great advantages in the Australian system, and helps avoid some of the polarisation we see in other places.

As for paying tax, children pay GST along with everybody else, and given the prices of some of the goods and services consumed by teenagers, this is not necessarily small change.

Voting is compulsory and should remain so for all eligible electors.

Great idea if the goal is to teach 16 to 18-year-olds one of the basics of domestic budgeting: you can’t spend more than you earn.

So, when the Greens’ or Labor come up with something that these kids think is a great idea, their parents can explain to them that it will have to be covered by increased rates. The money for these rates has to come from somewhere. So, expenses have to be re-allocated.

That means any of the following:
– cutting back on stuff at home
– sending them to a public school instead of the private one they love
– they get a job and pay rent
– that university degree they’ve had their hearts set on might have to be postponed for a year or two. That’s okay though. Their friends are doing gap year these days, aren’t they?

Those of you who are thinking, the kids whose parents are renting won’t care. Wrong. The landlords will need to pay for increased rents as well and they’re not going to accept a reduced profit that doesn’t cover their mortgage. Rents go up, see above.

I remember when I was growing up, there was a joke that went like this:
“When I was 16, I was a socialist.”
“Then what happened?”
“I turned 18.”

You know Scomo won’t agree to that… he says they’re children and should not have to concern themselves with adults ruining the planet for them.

Ugh. Can they make it optional for me…

“Giving teenagers the vote would favour progressive parties like Labor and the Greens, and kick the Coalition into the dustbin of history by cementing a permanent Left majority” said Sam Dastyari in an ABC article by Terry Barnes in Feb 2016.
Do we truly want immature minds controlling the voting process?

Im ok with it.
But only if old people who are old and bitter are taken out of the count. Say 75 and above. They have had their turn

Suggested compromise: we now know the brain takes a lot longer to mature than was once thought, in fact the age of full cognitive maturity isn’t til 25. So let’s lower the voluntary voting age to 16, to encompass those who do mature faster and want to be involved in civic life,but raise the compulsory voting age to 21.

It might be a good idea. When I was 16 and 17 I was politically aware. I knew who Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser were and I knew the premiers of each state. The feeling on this thread is that such a move would only benefit the Greens, but I was a conservative when I was a kid and voted for Fraser in 1977, and I would have voted Liberal in 1975 as well when I was 16. The ACT might be a special case, but I can’t see anything wrong with it. The more the merrier.

Giving 16-17 year olds the option of voting, in my opinion, is a good idea. I’ve yet to read a single cohesive argument against it from any of the comments here.

When I was that age I was paying taxes, working, and going through an education system that was evidently flawed, that I couldn’t vote on. I also owned a car, that I bought with my own taxed income, that I paid registration fees on, and then was subject to road legislation that I couldn’t vote on.

Most young people that I speak to are very well read in politics, and putting their views aside, there are a hell of a lot of adults that have not a single clue about politics when they walk to a polling booth and we force these people to vote by law, but I could almost guarantee that a senior high school student who is excercising an option to vote will know more about what they’re voting for than the uneducated adult who is forced to vote.

It seems to me that most people are against this proposal not because of the merits at hand, but because it is likely to skew toward a handful of left leaning votes if it happened. Those against this proposal, from my eyes, seem to be arguing against the proposal because it would allow more people to vote who’s views don’t align with theirs, rather than any actual educated reason that it could damage our democracy. It’s sad, really.

At the very least think about conducting a non-politicised study to see what the potential effects are on policy and our democracy before rushing to a decision on this.

Why not. Let them be sent to war as well. After all wasn’t that why it was lowered to 18 along with drinking and conscription during Vietnam war?

Too young, no need to lower age but serious need to raise IQ level of voters.

Pretty much all these arguments against young people voting was used against women voting back in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Just saying….

Yeah, we will have a cannabis territory soon

I think the problem would be that most of them would just vote for whatever is “cool” at the time.

Voting age should be raised if anything!

Lowering the voting age would allow for more relevant and meaningful education regarding the electoral process. More engagement, discussion and debate would be a good thing

Look I think it’s just a coincidence that the Greens would disproportionately benefit from this proposal.

The line needs to be drawn somewhere, and as the vast majority of 16-17 year olds are still dependent on their parents and lack any experience of what it takes to support themselves I don’t think there is a good case to drop the voting age. I’m also a strong supporter of compulsory voting and the Greens proposal to allow voluntary voting for these children flies in the face of that long established part of our democracy.

Keep it at 18