June 15, 2023 • 12 mins
A campaign launched this week by youth-led organisation Make It 16 is calling on the federal government to lower the legal voting age to 16.
Supporters of the push say that if 16- and 17-year-olds can drive, pay taxes and join the army, then they should also have the right to vote. Both major parties are saying it is not a priority.
In today’s deep dive, we’ll give you the background info you need to help you understand both sides of the argument.We're running a poll on whether the voting age should be lowered in Australia. Have your say here.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bunjelung Cargoton woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's Friday,
the sixteenth of June. I'm sam, i'm zara. A campaign
launch this week is calling on the Federal government to
lower the legal voting age to sixteen. It's being led
by a group called Make It Sixteen, who are saying
that the change would strengthen our democracy.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Our goal is to lower the voting age to sixteen
and have young people be able to participate in our
democracy in a much more real way.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's a surprisingly divisive subject and we're going to hear
more about it in the Deep Dive. But before we
get there, a big day in Federal Parliament yesterday.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
It was we had Senator David Van removed from the
Parliamentary Liberal Party. That followed allegations made by Independent Senator
Lydia Thorpe yesterday, who claimed she'd been sexually assaulted by Van.
Van has denied these allegations. Opposition leader Peter Dudden said
the decision was made after further allegations against Van were
relayed to him. Dudden said he wasn't making quote any
(01:21):
judgment on the veracity of the allegations and anyone's guilt
or innocence.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
PwC will be suspended from any new tax contracts with
the New South Wales government for the next three months.
It comes on the back of allegations that consultants at
PwC used confidential federal government information for their client's interests.
PwC will also be required to ensure that any staff
members who breached confidentiality agreements at a federal level aren't
(01:48):
involved in those new South Wales government contracts.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Our friends over the Ditch, New Zealand have entered a recession.
That's according to the latest national data, gross to MESSI
product was down point one percent in the March quarter,
after falling point seven percent in the three months to
December twenty twenty two. Tropical cyclones in January and February
were among the reasons listed for the downturn in economic activity.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And today's good news. You can say goodbye to all
cricket fans for the next little while because they'll be
distracted by the men's Ashes cricket Test series between Australia
and England that kicks off tonight. The five match series
will begin in Birmingham and be played across five different
venues across the UK. Australia are the reigning champs. They
won the last men's and women's Ashes series.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Sam. Today, I want to talk about the voting age
because there's been a lot of news recently about a
campaign that is pushing to lower it to sixteen. Turns
out it's quite a divisive.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Topic, yeah, and it's really split our audience down the middle.
We launched a poll on Instagram this week asking our
audience whether they would support lowering the voting age, and
that pole is still live. There's a link in the
show notes and it's pretty much half and half. I mean,
we've got fifty point two percent of respondents saying yes
they think it should be lowered, Forty eight point three
percent of people are voting no, and there's a very
(03:11):
small fraction who are in the middle.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I'm keen to hear what you think about this, but
I think that before we go there, I want to
just set up a bit of context here. So firstly,
voting is compulsory in Australia and the way that that
is policed per se is that you are fined if
you failed to vote and if you're enrolled. But all
of this only applies for people who are eighteen and over.
But that's not always been the case.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
No, it was only in nineteen seventy three that the
voting age was lowered from twenty one to eighteen. To
change the voting age, you really just need one act
to change and that's the Commonwealth Electoral Act of nineteen eighteen,
and that only needs majority support in Parliament like any
other bill. Now, the last time it was changed, there'd
been a few wars with significant numbers of eighteen to
(03:55):
twenty one year olds who had lost their lives or
been seriously injured, and so it was on that context
that it was decided that asking people to give their
life for the country but not allowing them to vote
was not okay. In more recent times, supporters of this
recent push to lower the voting age down to sixteen,
are pointing out kind of similar arguments that if sixteen
and seventeen year olds can pay tax, if they can drive,
(04:17):
and if they can join the army, then they should
also have the right to vote.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I did not know until this very moment in time
that you could sign up for the army at sixteen.
So there you go, learn something new every day. So
I mean, when we think about if there's any precedent
to lowering the voting age, because that's often times what
parliamentarians will look for. We have seen it happen. It's
happened in Wales and Scotland, Brazil, Austria, Ecuador, Argentina and
(04:42):
Greece and Indonesia have lowered their voting age to seventeen
for at least some of the elections. What are policymakers
here in Australia thinking about this all?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Well, it's worth noting that it's not the first time
that lowering the voting age to sixteen has come up
in Australia. Back in twenty eighteen, the greenspot four a
proposal to introduce voting for sixteen and seventeen year olds,
but that it would be optional, not compulsory, like it
is for people aged eighteen and over. That was rejected,
but there were some Labor members who supported the idea
(05:13):
in principle, they just subjected to the voluntary component. Then,
earlier this year Green's MP Stephen Bates introduced a new
bill with compulsory voting for sixteen and seventeen year olds,
but without the fines if they failed to vote now.
At that time both major parties indicated to TDA that
they were unlikely to support the proposal, and it hasn't
(05:35):
yet been put to a vote. And then it kind
of brings us to this week with the Make It
sixteen campaign. And the premise of the Make It sixteen
campaign is largely similar to the one that Stephen Bates
put forward earlier this year, except I guess the key
difference is that this time it's young people putting the
campaign forward rather than a parliamentarian. The campaign is being
(05:56):
supported by the Greens as the previous two, as well
as a few independent MPs, but both the major parties
are still saying that it's not a priority. And earlier
this week Patrick Gorman, the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister,
told ABC Radio that he's concerned the proposal will weaken
Australia's compulsory voting system.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Compulsory voting is what makes sure that the decisions we
make here in Canberra are decisions for the whole country
and that we have consulted the whole country in those decisions.
If we take away compulsory voting or have some sort
of know your first votes free idea, which is what
that Make It sixteen proposal is that does weaken compulsory
(06:39):
voting and we can't go down that path.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
So let's hear more about Make It sixteen. Who Patrick
Gorman just mentioned there, who are behind the campaign that's
launched this week. Can you tell me a bit about
their arguments.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So there are youth led non partisan campaign and that
means they're not aligned with any party, and they had
a launch at Parliament House this week and it was
attended by three politicians, Green's MP Stephen Bates and Independence
doctor Monique Ryan and Andrew Wilkie. Now, at the launch,
each of those three parliamentarians gave slightly different reasons for
their support of the proposal. We had Bates who were
(07:13):
saying that young people deserve to have a seat at
the table on issues like climate and housing.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
And he himself is a young person, so I think.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That's definitely worth acknowledging. And then we had doctor Ryan
who said that many decisions made in Parliament about the
future madam more to young people than most of the politicians.
And then Andrew Wilkie took that point even further. He
said that his sixteen year old daughter was more invested
in the future than half of his colleagues.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Look, I think listening to politicians talk about young people's
future is one thing, but I also think it's another
thing to hear directly from young people whose futures are
on the line. You sat down with Make It sixteen
co founder Tabitha stephen Jones. Let's just play a little
bit of that now.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Tabith thanks so much for joining us on the Daily OS.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Thank you so much for having me tell.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Me about Make It sixteen. Are you pushing for compulsory
voting above the age of sixteen or do you think
that there should be an optional vote until you're eighteen.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, So our model that make at sixteen is to
have it compulsory in the same way it is for adults,
but the finds to be waived because we know that's
a huge barrier and a huge accessibility issue, especially within
regional communities and young people, so they would be waived
until eighteen and then it would progress normally from there.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
We put up a poll to the TDA audience and
we're getting some really interesting results, and some of the
interesting sentiments to come through the comments section has been
that there's not enough civic education to support compulsory voting
for sixteen to eighteen year olds. What's your feelings around that.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
I think civic education and lowering the voting age definitely
go hand in hand. I think that there is definitely
greater need for better civic education. However, talking to peers
and especially like my younger siblings, their civic education is
already a lot stronger than mine. And I just finished
high school last year, and I think that because there's
such a gap between when it's taught and people actually
(09:05):
showing up to the polling booth, it's really hard to
kind of put that into practice. And so lowering the
voting age to sixteen would mean that there's a definitely
that more of a transferable skill and system.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Why do you think it's failed before pushes like this,
I mean, we had efforts by Aussie politicians to lower
the voting age back in twenty eighteen, there was a
big proposal from the Greens, and there was another attempt
earlier this year. What do you think is holding us back?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I think now at the moment, both major parties are
hesitant because it's not high enough on the agenda, you know,
with everything coming up about the Voice and everything from
climate change to the housing crisis, it's just not high
enough on their agenda. However, we think that that's unfair
because all of these things affect young people really strongly,
(09:52):
and we've heard that young people really want to vote
in the Voice, and things like the housing crisis really
affect us and the cost of education, cost of living.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The Minister to the PM, Patrick Gorman, told ABC Radio
that there are plenty of other ways for young people
to get involved and that lowering the voting age is
not a priority. Let's have a listen.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Look, I don't think that this is the priority that
we need right now. And one of the things that
I worry about with these sort of conversations is that
it implies that it starts and stops with voting. It's
so much more than that. I have young people in
my office all the time, talking to me about climate change,
talking to me about integrity issues. You don't have to
have a vote to have a say.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
He also said that allowing for voluntary voting for sixteen
and seventeen year olds would weaken compulsory voting. What's your
general response to the politicians who say this is not
a good idea.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
I think that we've seen, especially within the past few years,
you know, with the climate crisis worsening and all of
the different other issues that young people are really engaged with.
You know, they are fighting on the streets, they are
you know, protesting, their contacting their local MPs. They know
how they want their country to look, they know how
they want their future to look, and that really isn't
transferring into the electoral system. Young people are being impacted
(11:05):
by the decisions that are being made today, but they
don't have any actual say on who gets elected and
who represents them. And Minister Gorman, I think that obviously
the compulsory voting system is working because young people are
turning up and I think that that's something that definitely
needs to be continued. And so yeah, for the people
who they say is just look at how young people
(11:27):
are being involved and passionate already in their communities and
think about how that could translate to the ballot box.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Will be interesting to see how to make it sixteen
campaign goes Tabitha. Thanks so much for joining us on
the Daily OHS.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Thanks for joining us on the Daily OS. If you
want to have your say about whether you think the
voting age should be lowered or kept as it is,
you can head to our show notes, where there is
a link to fill out a survey. It'll take you
two minutes, but it means that your voice is heard.
Have a great weekend and we'll chat to you on Monday.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Thinking appear communit
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bunjelung Cargoton woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Good morning and welcome to the Daily os. It's Friday,
the sixteenth of June. I'm sam, i'm zara. A campaign
launch this week is calling on the Federal government to
lower the legal voting age to sixteen. It's being led
by a group called Make It Sixteen, who are saying
that the change would strengthen our democracy.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Our goal is to lower the voting age to sixteen
and have young people be able to participate in our
democracy in a much more real way.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
It's a surprisingly divisive subject and we're going to hear
more about it in the Deep Dive. But before we
get there, a big day in Federal Parliament yesterday.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
It was we had Senator David Van removed from the
Parliamentary Liberal Party. That followed allegations made by Independent Senator
Lydia Thorpe yesterday, who claimed she'd been sexually assaulted by Van.
Van has denied these allegations. Opposition leader Peter Dudden said
the decision was made after further allegations against Van were
relayed to him. Dudden said he wasn't making quote any
(01:21):
judgment on the veracity of the allegations and anyone's guilt
or innocence.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
PwC will be suspended from any new tax contracts with
the New South Wales government for the next three months.
It comes on the back of allegations that consultants at
PwC used confidential federal government information for their client's interests.
PwC will also be required to ensure that any staff
members who breached confidentiality agreements at a federal level aren't
(01:48):
involved in those new South Wales government contracts.
Speaker 4 (01:53):
Our friends over the Ditch, New Zealand have entered a recession.
That's according to the latest national data, gross to MESSI
product was down point one percent in the March quarter,
after falling point seven percent in the three months to
December twenty twenty two. Tropical cyclones in January and February
were among the reasons listed for the downturn in economic activity.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
And today's good news. You can say goodbye to all
cricket fans for the next little while because they'll be
distracted by the men's Ashes cricket Test series between Australia
and England that kicks off tonight. The five match series
will begin in Birmingham and be played across five different
venues across the UK. Australia are the reigning champs. They
won the last men's and women's Ashes series.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
Sam. Today, I want to talk about the voting age
because there's been a lot of news recently about a
campaign that is pushing to lower it to sixteen. Turns
out it's quite a divisive.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Topic, yeah, and it's really split our audience down the middle.
We launched a poll on Instagram this week asking our
audience whether they would support lowering the voting age, and
that pole is still live. There's a link in the
show notes and it's pretty much half and half. I mean,
we've got fifty point two percent of respondents saying yes
they think it should be lowered, Forty eight point three
percent of people are voting no, and there's a very
(03:11):
small fraction who are in the middle.
Speaker 4 (03:13):
I'm keen to hear what you think about this, but
I think that before we go there, I want to
just set up a bit of context here. So firstly,
voting is compulsory in Australia and the way that that
is policed per se is that you are fined if
you failed to vote and if you're enrolled. But all
of this only applies for people who are eighteen and over.
But that's not always been the case.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
No, it was only in nineteen seventy three that the
voting age was lowered from twenty one to eighteen. To
change the voting age, you really just need one act
to change and that's the Commonwealth Electoral Act of nineteen eighteen,
and that only needs majority support in Parliament like any
other bill. Now, the last time it was changed, there'd
been a few wars with significant numbers of eighteen to
(03:55):
twenty one year olds who had lost their lives or
been seriously injured, and so it was on that context
that it was decided that asking people to give their
life for the country but not allowing them to vote
was not okay. In more recent times, supporters of this
recent push to lower the voting age down to sixteen,
are pointing out kind of similar arguments that if sixteen
and seventeen year olds can pay tax, if they can drive,
(04:17):
and if they can join the army, then they should
also have the right to vote.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
I did not know until this very moment in time
that you could sign up for the army at sixteen.
So there you go, learn something new every day. So
I mean, when we think about if there's any precedent
to lowering the voting age, because that's often times what
parliamentarians will look for. We have seen it happen. It's
happened in Wales and Scotland, Brazil, Austria, Ecuador, Argentina and
(04:42):
Greece and Indonesia have lowered their voting age to seventeen
for at least some of the elections. What are policymakers
here in Australia thinking about this all?
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Well, it's worth noting that it's not the first time
that lowering the voting age to sixteen has come up
in Australia. Back in twenty eighteen, the greenspot four a
proposal to introduce voting for sixteen and seventeen year olds,
but that it would be optional, not compulsory, like it
is for people aged eighteen and over. That was rejected,
but there were some Labor members who supported the idea
(05:13):
in principle, they just subjected to the voluntary component. Then,
earlier this year Green's MP Stephen Bates introduced a new
bill with compulsory voting for sixteen and seventeen year olds,
but without the fines if they failed to vote now.
At that time both major parties indicated to TDA that
they were unlikely to support the proposal, and it hasn't
(05:35):
yet been put to a vote. And then it kind
of brings us to this week with the Make It
sixteen campaign. And the premise of the Make It sixteen
campaign is largely similar to the one that Stephen Bates
put forward earlier this year, except I guess the key
difference is that this time it's young people putting the
campaign forward rather than a parliamentarian. The campaign is being
(05:56):
supported by the Greens as the previous two, as well
as a few independent MPs, but both the major parties
are still saying that it's not a priority. And earlier
this week Patrick Gorman, the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister,
told ABC Radio that he's concerned the proposal will weaken
Australia's compulsory voting system.
Speaker 5 (06:16):
Compulsory voting is what makes sure that the decisions we
make here in Canberra are decisions for the whole country
and that we have consulted the whole country in those decisions.
If we take away compulsory voting or have some sort
of know your first votes free idea, which is what
that Make It sixteen proposal is that does weaken compulsory
(06:39):
voting and we can't go down that path.
Speaker 4 (06:41):
So let's hear more about Make It sixteen. Who Patrick
Gorman just mentioned there, who are behind the campaign that's
launched this week. Can you tell me a bit about
their arguments.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
So there are youth led non partisan campaign and that
means they're not aligned with any party, and they had
a launch at Parliament House this week and it was
attended by three politicians, Green's MP Stephen Bates and Independence
doctor Monique Ryan and Andrew Wilkie. Now, at the launch,
each of those three parliamentarians gave slightly different reasons for
their support of the proposal. We had Bates who were
(07:13):
saying that young people deserve to have a seat at
the table on issues like climate and housing.
Speaker 4 (07:17):
And he himself is a young person, so I think.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
That's definitely worth acknowledging. And then we had doctor Ryan
who said that many decisions made in Parliament about the
future madam more to young people than most of the politicians.
And then Andrew Wilkie took that point even further. He
said that his sixteen year old daughter was more invested
in the future than half of his colleagues.
Speaker 4 (07:36):
Look, I think listening to politicians talk about young people's
future is one thing, but I also think it's another
thing to hear directly from young people whose futures are
on the line. You sat down with Make It sixteen
co founder Tabitha stephen Jones. Let's just play a little
bit of that now.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Tabith thanks so much for joining us on the Daily OS.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Thank you so much for having me tell.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Me about Make It sixteen. Are you pushing for compulsory
voting above the age of sixteen or do you think
that there should be an optional vote until you're eighteen.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, So our model that make at sixteen is to
have it compulsory in the same way it is for adults,
but the finds to be waived because we know that's
a huge barrier and a huge accessibility issue, especially within
regional communities and young people, so they would be waived
until eighteen and then it would progress normally from there.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
We put up a poll to the TDA audience and
we're getting some really interesting results, and some of the
interesting sentiments to come through the comments section has been
that there's not enough civic education to support compulsory voting
for sixteen to eighteen year olds. What's your feelings around that.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
I think civic education and lowering the voting age definitely
go hand in hand. I think that there is definitely
greater need for better civic education. However, talking to peers
and especially like my younger siblings, their civic education is
already a lot stronger than mine. And I just finished
high school last year, and I think that because there's
such a gap between when it's taught and people actually
(09:05):
showing up to the polling booth, it's really hard to
kind of put that into practice. And so lowering the
voting age to sixteen would mean that there's a definitely
that more of a transferable skill and system.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Why do you think it's failed before pushes like this,
I mean, we had efforts by Aussie politicians to lower
the voting age back in twenty eighteen, there was a
big proposal from the Greens, and there was another attempt
earlier this year. What do you think is holding us back?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
I think now at the moment, both major parties are
hesitant because it's not high enough on the agenda, you know,
with everything coming up about the Voice and everything from
climate change to the housing crisis, it's just not high
enough on their agenda. However, we think that that's unfair
because all of these things affect young people really strongly,
(09:52):
and we've heard that young people really want to vote
in the Voice, and things like the housing crisis really
affect us and the cost of education, cost of living.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
The Minister to the PM, Patrick Gorman, told ABC Radio
that there are plenty of other ways for young people
to get involved and that lowering the voting age is
not a priority. Let's have a listen.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
Look, I don't think that this is the priority that
we need right now. And one of the things that
I worry about with these sort of conversations is that
it implies that it starts and stops with voting. It's
so much more than that. I have young people in
my office all the time, talking to me about climate change,
talking to me about integrity issues. You don't have to
have a vote to have a say.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
He also said that allowing for voluntary voting for sixteen
and seventeen year olds would weaken compulsory voting. What's your
general response to the politicians who say this is not
a good idea.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
I think that we've seen, especially within the past few years,
you know, with the climate crisis worsening and all of
the different other issues that young people are really engaged with.
You know, they are fighting on the streets, they are
you know, protesting, their contacting their local MPs. They know
how they want their country to look, they know how
they want their future to look, and that really isn't
transferring into the electoral system. Young people are being impacted
(11:05):
by the decisions that are being made today, but they
don't have any actual say on who gets elected and
who represents them. And Minister Gorman, I think that obviously
the compulsory voting system is working because young people are
turning up and I think that that's something that definitely
needs to be continued. And so yeah, for the people
who they say is just look at how young people
(11:27):
are being involved and passionate already in their communities and
think about how that could translate to the ballot box.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
Will be interesting to see how to make it sixteen
campaign goes Tabitha. Thanks so much for joining us on
the Daily OHS.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
Thanks for joining us on the Daily OS. If you
want to have your say about whether you think the
voting age should be lowered or kept as it is,
you can head to our show notes, where there is
a link to fill out a survey. It'll take you
two minutes, but it means that your voice is heard.
Have a great weekend and we'll chat to you on Monday.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
Thinking appear communit
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