Pauline Hanson’s suggestion to raise Australia’s voting age rejected by major parties
BOTH major parties have rejected Pauline Hanson’s suggestion to lift Australia’s legal voting age to 21 but a proposal to lower the age isn’t being ruled out.
National
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PAULINE Hanson’s suggestion that Australia’s legal voting age should be raised to 21 has been labelled “ridiculous” as both major parties rejected the idea.
But a Greens’ proposal to lower the voting age hasn’t been ruled out.
The One Nation leader argued yesterday that young people should not have the right to vote because they had never held a job or paid taxes.
Labor frontbencher Don Farrell, the Shadow Special Minister for State, told News Corp Australia: “The idea of raising the voting age to 21 is ridiculous.”
“Labor believes in empowering as many Australians as possible to participate in our democratic process, not reducing the number of young Australians who can vote,” Senator Farrell said.
But he left the door open to a future Labor government considering lowering the voting age.
“In the lead up to the election, Labor said this was an issue that should be on the table for legitimate discussion,” Senator Farrell said.
Special Minister of State Scott Ryan, who returned to work yesterday after two months’ leave dealing with serious health issues, said the Turnbull Government had no plans to amend the voting age.
Almost one million young Australians would lose their vote if the legal age was raised from 18 to 21, based on Australian Bureau of Statistics data from the 2016 Census.
But the youth vote would be bolstered by more than 580,000 if a Greens’ proposal to lower the voting age to 16 was introduced.
Senator Hanson and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young clashed over the proposal on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program yesterday.
“They (young people) don’t have any idea,” Senator Hanson said. .
“They’ve never held a job, they’ve never paid any taxes, they have no understanding of politics — and you want to reduce it because you think it will increase the Green’s vote. They have no idea.”
Senator Hanson-Young fired back, saying Senator Hanson was “out of touch” and raising the voting age was a “terrible” idea.
The One Nation leader accused her of being “un-Australian”.
Australia’s voting age was last changed more than 40 years ago when it was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1973 after a worldwide push to allow youth the vote.
It was argued young people paid taxes and served their country in times of war, so they should be able to have a say on how the nation was governed.
Originally published as Pauline Hanson’s suggestion to raise Australia’s voting age rejected by major parties