Generation Z - you're up!

This week the Supreme Court ruled that not allowing 16 and 17 years olds to vote based on their age was discrimination. This ruling doesn’t change the law of course, but it leads to parliament deciding whether to allow young people to vote sooner.

By sheer coincidence the views of the various political parties towards the idea seem to correlate strongly with how much they would likely benefit from having young people vote. With a majority of 75% required in parliament it looks unlikely to pass.

The Greens are all for it, they get a higher percentage of young voters than they get from other age groups, plus it’s the right thing to do, of course.

“Young people deserve to have a say in the decisions that affect them, both now and in the future.” Golriz Ghahraman.

Labour are more circumspect, the PM saying that although she is in favour of it there should be a conscience vote. They are in election mode - and don’t want to paint themselves on one side of any divisive argument at this stage.

National don’t want it, what they offer is hardly going to appeal to the majority of teenagers - tax breaks for landlords, or the misogyny and racism that’s way past it’s “use by” date. National probably think it’s bad enough letting men that don’t own property, and women, vote. Let alone school children.

David Seymour said the Supreme Court should “stick to it's knitting and quit the judicial activism. We don’t want 120,000 more voters who pay no tax voting for lots more spending”.

I’m guessing when David refers to “voters who pay no tax” he isn’t referring to property speculators, pensioners, stay at home parents, or people unable to work for health reasons. Obviously we all pay tax, GST, every time we buy something whether it’s champagne at the viaduct or vape juice at the dairy.

We complain about young people not voting and then many of our politicians oppose efforts to engage them in the election process. My view is that not only should we give 16/17 year olds the vote but that we must, the future of mankind depends on it!

We’ve fucked things up and now we need the bravery and the willingness of young people to say “why not?” rather than “we can’t”, to sort out the mess. If they’re to inherit a decent world, to have a nice life like we had, they’d best get on with sorting the place out. Probably the least we could do is let them vote on how to fix things, you know considering it affects them more than the rest of us.

Think of us like Hitler emerging from the bunker in the closing days of WW2, the Russian guns pounding in the background. Gratefully greeting the young 16 and 17 year olds wearing their ill fitting uniforms, shaking hands, a weary tear of sadness and yet respect for these brave young people who at the last moment will stop the Russian advance and save the Fatherland. Er I mean stop Climate Change and save the planet.

“Who’s a cheeky chappie then?”

Considering the problems humanity will face in the future - more frequent natural disasters, scarcity of resources, over population - who do we need selecting our government? A young person with their whole life ahead of them? Or the sort of person that voted for Wayne Brown, doesn’t give a stuff about the future and doesn’t want their money spent on it.

We need transformational change to address these issues, and the way things are going with a close election next year and a likely need for coalition agreements we aren’t going to get it whether National or Labour wins.

The big problems won’t be solved by the sort of government current voters, who are focussed on the costs of living, tax rates, wages, etc, will elect. If we want change, and we really need it, we should be engaging our young people in politics.

Young people who will still ask “why?”

Why aren’t we actually doing anything real about climate change? How come some people own seven houses and others have none - that is mental, weren’t these people taught to share when they were kids?

Engage them, teach them civics, discuss issues in the classrooms and how they could be solved, get kids thinking and treat them like the adults we want them to be.

Instead we have the right guffawing at them being allowed to vote - “they’re just children you can’t let them vote like adults”. These are the same people advocating to send kids this age, and much younger, to Boot Camps. 

Don’t we want kids to learn about choices and consequences? Is it a little ironic that National and ACT, who both advocate personal responsibility, oppose allowing young people to take part and face the consequences of their decisions?

Do you remember when you were 16 or 17, were you interested in politics? Would you have voted if you could? Would it have been for the same party you vote for now?

In August 1987 I turned 16. The country was obsessed with the sharemarket, people were listening to the likes of Bob Jones, pouring money into stocks and making a lot of money. This was a couple of months before the crash that wiped out people’s savings, and from which investment in stocks in NZ never really recovered.

I was thinking being a stock broker might be quite a good way to make money, it was glamorous, high energy, exciting. If you’d let me vote I’d have probably voted for ACT, although of course they didn’t exist, Roger Douglas was still busy destroying the Labour Party.

I’m kidding of course. Sure I might have fancied myself the next Gordon Gekko - that was the year the movie Wall Street came out - but come on David Lange was our man. He made reporters and opposition MPs look ridiculous, not through the sneering and nastiness of his predecessor Muldoon, but through his fabulous wit and humour.

By 17 following my brief sojourn with the idea of yuppiedom it was back to full on "fight the system", I don't know who I would have voted for. Labour was in the bleakest period of Rogernomics, there was no MMP providing an alternative to the two main parties.

Back then there was no party vote only electorate votes and voting for a candidate who had no chance was a waste of time, it had no impact on the election. Paul East was MP for Rotorua from 1978 when I was 7 years old until MMP arrived in 1996.

Paul east - the face of multi cultural Rotorua.

There was no point in voting in a safe blue seat prior to that. 1996 was the first time I voted, I’d left Rotorua a few years earlier to go to Uni where I became interested in politics. I was inspired seeing Jim Anderton and Pam Corkery speak in the Maidment Theatre and I voted for the Alliance.

Nowadays of course kids would have a choice. Want someone more left wing that wants to do more on climate change - vote Greens, want someone more right wing that wants to do less about the poor - vote ACT.

I had a chat with a mate the other night, the previous night the business he manages had been ram raided. They did $45k damage for $3k in stolen goods. It must be a shit of a thing to have happen to the place you work.

He said they had a sonic alarm which he described as “designed to fuck you up sonically while being legal” I was intrigued and appalled at the thought of being “fucked up sonically”, so he elaborated “vibrates the bones in your inner ear - makes you disoriented, then if you don't leave - makes you shit yourself.”

I said “like a SIX60 concert?”, he didn’t laugh.

I don’t actually particularly dislike SIX60, they were just the first name that came to mind - it’d be a sad day if there were no music in elevators.

We had a chat about the big problems and how whether it was roading infrastructure or policing nothing was really that different under National or Labour. He wasn’t impressed by National’s Boot Camp policy, “never going to work”, but we could both see why they were pushing it and that it would resonate with voters.

He commented that if crime and the economy keep going the way they are Labour would pay the price at the next election, rightly or wrongly.

And he is right, when people aren’t happy the incumbent government gets punished. Not because anyone necessarily believes that the other lot will be any better at solving the problems, but because “Arrgghh this sucks. I blame the government”.

While the current government may be moving more slowly, doing less to address the big issues, than many of us would like if ACT/National are elected we’ll stop doing even that. Kick the can down the road for another few years…

We’re running out of road.

Would allowing 16 and 17 year olds to vote solve all the problems right away? No, of course not. But bringing fresh ideas, some idealism, a willingness to actually ask tough questions about the big issues - couldn’t hurt.

Surely the votes of teenagers would be more positive for NZ than angry talkback callers who deny climate change exists, or don’t give a toss, they’ll be long gone. Maybe with that outlook those are the people who shouldn’t be voting?

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