Greens want optional vote for 'junior'

“but if those in their mid-teens were allowed the choice to vote, I’d be pretty sure a lot of the vote would go to the Greens/ALP rather than the Libs.”

Therefore, members of Greens/ALP have not progressed past the ideas of a mid-teen? Well, OK – in the case of the Greens, maybe…….

No AD, sadly I haven’t been 17 for quite some time, I am old and decrepit.

Does the old “no taxation without representation” battle-cry still apply?

exactly Johnboy – we need a cut-off somewhere, why not leave it at what society currently sees as the “age of adulthood”?

If its moved to 16 or 17 because there’s “not much difference”, do we next change it to 14 or 15 to account for people who have a birthday two days before an election?

Leave it at 18, do our best to teach our kids to have a political conscience, and hope that one day, more voters will cast their votes in a considered way.

and yet regardless of a change in how you felt, the whole world changed around you.

some people will miss out on voting by a day no matter what threshold is set.

I’d like to second caf’s comment. What makes a 16- or 17-year-old any different to an 18-year-old? In some cases it can be a matter of just days between a birthday and an election when the previously-underaged-kid can vote. What’s to say they’ve suddenly turned into a mature adult in those few days? Or that they weren’t mature before their birthday?

Last year I left my teens behind and I can tell you I felt no different on the day after my birthday from the day before it.

Nope Im pretty sure most people mature at exactly the same age…I think what you are suggesting is very fanciful… are you 17???

Adults have to vote, do jury duty, and be fully accountable to the law for their actions.

Want to lower the age of majority? OK, i can see arguments both ways but let’s not split voting out.

Sure there are many kids who could make a more informed vote than many adults. But we don’t test for voting competence (many would say more is the pity).

If those informed kids who want to make a difference were serious they’d be manning the polling booths for the smaller parties which would do 10 times the good of their single vote.

Did you suddenly stop being stupid and fanciful on the night of your eighteenth birthday AD?

Perhaps you might like to entertain the notion that people mature at different rates and not everyone was like you at age seventeen.

I don’t see any particular benefits in extending the voting age beyond helping young people feel more connected to the process and I can see a range of practical hassles with it (electoral role managed by the Commonwealth)

But cutting people out of voting because they don’t know what’s happening outside their tiny little sphere or choose to watch the Idol final over the Election debate wouldn’t just take out 16 and 17 year olds.

bulldog – your statement ‘In fact if I had my way you would have to sit a basic common-sense in order to vote and breed – regardless of age’ may have some legs.

Add to that you would have to know the difference between which party is in govt and who is in opposition (I’ve met so many people who just can’t tell the difference and therefore would not vote based on an informed decision about the differences in party policies.)

when I was 16 I thought socialism was cool, when i was 17 I was convinced that I was born to kill the antichrist… there is no good reason for kids have the vote!!!they are stupid and fanciful

I understood where you were coming from K – it’s just that from my recolaections of being that age I don’t recall people having the slightest interes in what was happening outside their own little sphere. Maybe the internet has changed kids – I don’t know and I don’t pretend to, but I do think that (judging others by my own standards), that at sixteen or seventeen even optional voting shoudl not be entertained.

In fact if I had my way you would have to sit a basic common-sense in order to vote and breed – regardless of age.

ROTFLMAO = Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off

Bulldog what I was trying to say was there’s a whole world of information out there that those in my generation have grown up with and are growing ever used to (there’s even a marked difference between myself and my borther who is three years younger in terms of having had access and how we now use it). No longer do voters have to rely solely on their local paper to tell them what to think, there are so many alternatives out there now(see RA’s coverage of the last election for example) that many older people might not be completely comfortable with accessing.

Also remember that what’s being proposed is an optional vote. So those who are likely to get out of their computer chairs and go vote are also likely to want to be informed before doing so and seek out the information.

rolling around on the floor laughin my ass off = rotflmao and that would apply to a text message election with all included nooode jelly wrestling!

bahaha – “Dancing with the Tards”

No offence to handicapped people intended.

And while we’re at it why not appeal to the teenage voter by holding an “ACT Govt Idol” competition. Whoever can ‘sing’ and dance the best would be declared Chief Minister.

Foskey: you really are a dick!

WTF is rotflmao?

j’aime for fashion minister

Is the sudden flurry of press releases from foskey on drivel topics driven by a realisation that an election will be announced in Tasmania today? The green vote there will unfortunately have an impact so is she trying to say “look at me, I’m relevant too”. Sorry, but you’re not.

Why don’t we extend her stupid idea to 13-15 year olds so we can have giggling teenage girls voting for whoever they think is teh hotness. Hell, take it even further, let ’em vote by text messaging like the Logies or Australian Idol and get some money from the 1800 number to put towards the council deficit.

I’d be so rotflmao except I know the dud is serious.

i come from a family of teachers.
close relatives were members of the cpa.

90% of the teachers i came in conact were unreconstucted leftist hippies.

if you think i didnt have to endure years of illogical dribble then youre very wrong. this from people you choose to raise your children while you earn money to feed and clothe them.

you want higher quality teachers, pay them properly. do you see the local alp raising their wages to be competitive with the rest of the market ?

i looked into becoming a teacher several years ago. i seriously could not take a pay drop of the scale required. even a headmaster earns sfa in comparison to his skills.

id quite enjoy being a history or economics teacher. and the kids of canberra miss out.

dont blame me, blame your lefty govt.

and i still dont think children should vote.

K – I don’t know many sixteen/seventeen year olds, but I’mpretty certain that at that age I would be using the internet for one of two or three things, and none of them would include researching politics…

Not entirely sure if I agree with this or not, but here are a few points to consider:
* In the ACT people aged 15 and 9 months are considered mature enough to learn how to control a motor vehicle. They’re allowed to do it on their own at age 17.
* 16 is the legal age of consent — that is, the age at which the law considers people mature enough to have responsible sex.
* I don’t think drinking has anything much to do with voting.
* Because of the internet, young people these days generally have a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the world and could most likely make very well informed opinions.

I’m not convinced that young people would vote left (Greens/ALP) at all. These are people who have only really known Howard as PM , have been statistically shown to skew conservative as a result of wanting to be on what they see as the winning side and have been far more influenced by the rightwing mainstream media than any purported left wing values from teachers.

I guess you’re not a fan of teachers Bonfire – people who enter a profession where they know they will never make the kind of money they could make in business because they’d rather make a contribution to society.

This contemporary teacher-scorn is just one more part of the anti-intellectualism poured forth by the right because they know that anyone with more than half a brain is a threat to the status-quo and pre-emptively labelling these people as extremist, elitists or politically motivated is a highly effective way to shut them down. The recent politicisation of the CSIRO is a classic case in point.

Ok, feel better now. 🙂

As bonfire states – they are targeting their core audience. The greens (watermelons) are all about hopeless ideals, and that us what you find in kids that have not yet had their spirits crushed by the hopeless reality of the big wide world.

Just another example of an MLA making noise because they have been too quiet of late.

Whilst I agree with the Toad’s sentiments, let’s not let this digress into another Public Housing strand – we all know where we stand on that subject.

Oh, ffs foskey, what a great big tree hugging hippie heap of crap. Make some worthwhile contribution to governance in the ACT instead of this shit. Did you really think of this yourself or is it something one of your advisers came up with – if so sack ’em.

If it’s your idea then it confirms your irrelevance on the local council.

And fuck off out of public housing!

People not assumed to have the ability to drink responsibly or even have sex safely being given a vote…….. riiiiiight.

the lefty pinko teachers who kneejerk anti everything non left would unduly influence students.

a ridiculous idea, obviously pandering to their own core audience.

as soon as people gain any semblance of maturity they jettison whackjob ideas, many of which emanate from the ‘greens’.

this does not mean that there are not valid conservation and environmental issues, but the ‘greens’ seem to think they have some sort of ownership of the agenda, throw in all their other fruitloop ideas and lose any credibilty.