Page 810 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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Mr Speaker, as you have heard from Mr Stanhope and others, these are many questions that we need to carefully examine. I believe that my committee, the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Young People, is the ideal place for this examination to take place and therefore I support Mr Stanhope’s amendments to the motion.
MR SESELJA (Molonglo) (5.45): Mr Speaker, it is a pleasure to be speaking on this motion today. I think Dr Foskey has raised a very interesting point and I think it is worth us having a serious debate about it. I think sending the proposal to a committee will be good but I just want to put a few things on the record.
Dr Foskey spoke earlier about the alienation that young people feel. She said that sometimes it is claimed that young people are apathetic about politics and she does not agree with that. I think that is probably right. I think there is a sense of alienation at times amongst some young people. But I guess the question is whether giving 16 and 17-year-olds the vote is the way to address that feeling of alienation. I am not sure and I remain to be convinced. I think possibly this is so but I think a fair amount of further investigation is needed.
Ms Porter talked about school visits. If the test were political knowledge then I am sure many 15 and 16-year-olds would be more than worthy of having a vote. In fact, I still think the best question I have had since being elected was from a year 10 student at St Clare’s College, which I visited some time ago. There is no doubt that if the test Dr Foskey talks about were applied, plenty of 25, 35 and 45-year-olds would not have the maturity, and possibly many 16 and 17-year-olds would. But I guess it is a matter of us drawing a line somewhere as to the kinds of rights and responsibilities that go with certain age levels. Of course, that usually starts at the age of 18 for most things, although not all things. The question is: is there a strong enough case to lower that age?
I think the motion has a certain amount of prima facie intellectual appeal. The history of voting shows that the right to vote was initially confined to relatively few people—generally men who owned land. That was gradually expanded to include people who did not own land and to include women. To our shame, Australia did not expand the vote to Aborigines until the 1960s. Expanding the vote as much as possible has obviously been a positive development in human history. This has a certain amount of intellectual appeal but how far do you go? And I guess that is the question. If you go to 16, why not 14? If you go to 14, why not 12? There has to be a point at which we decide as a society that this is the age where you get all the rights and responsibilities that go with being an adult. Under our compulsory voting system many people see voting as more of a responsibility and a burden, perhaps, than a right. But, of course, it goes both ways with a system of compulsory voting.
As I was saying, there has been a history in this country of expanding the right to vote. I think at Federation the voting age was 21. Of course, at that time the legal drinking age was 21 and that has come down to 18, as has the voting age, and I think those sorts of things often stay in line. If we were going to expand compulsory voting we would need to look at whether it was appropriate to expand other things to 16 and 17-year-olds.
Dr Foskey put forward an odd argument in relation to the single mother who has three kids but gets only one vote. I do not know where we draw the line on that. Families with
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