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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Wednesday, 31 March 2004) . . Page.. 1454 ..

(2) Omit paragraph (2), substitute:

“(2) Calls on the ACT Government to provide the ACT Electoral commission with additional funding, where necessary, so that it can increase its role in encouraging younger voters to enrol, educating young people about the electoral system, and conducting research on the most effective and efficient means to achieve these aims;”

(3) Insert new paragraph (5):

“(5) Calls on the ACT Government to conduct an investigation into possibilities for lowering the voting age in the ACT, including opportunities for consulting young people for their views.”

I was initially concerned at Mr Hargreaves’s motion because it begins by asking us to note with concern that younger voters are sometimes not enrolled to vote. This fact has sometimes been used to argue that young people do not care about politics; that they are not happy with politicians, as Mr Cornwell has put forward; and therefore that their needs are less than those of other citizens. The argument goes that we do not need to pay attention to the voice of young Canberrans because they cannot even be bothered to complete their most basic responsibility of citizenship, which is to participate in the electoral process.

I want to make it quite clear at this point that I am not accusing Mr Hargreaves of any such argument; I know his intentions are the opposite, and I acknowledge his many contributions, through his Assembly and committee work, to the welfare and participation of young people. But why is the enrolment figure lower for younger people? The first and most obvious reason is that they simply have had far less time to get on to the electoral roll. We limit the enrolment age to 17 in Australia and therefore young people cannot enrol to vote until they have reached the age of 17. In contrast, people in, say, their 40s have had a good 20-odd years to get onto the electoral roll, and once a person is on the roll it is quite difficult to get off it again. I am not sure, but it might even be illegal to do so.

There are also other reasons why young people may not have applied to get onto the electoral roll. There is a very real feeling among young people that they are not included in the political processes, especially when they see that our parliaments are still predominantly composed of mature age men who do not represent their views. The young people do not see themselves reflected in their houses of parliament, and that is something that needs to be addressed.

There are important social reasons why young people do not enrol. They change residence far more often than do older people. They are also more likely to be homeless, living in poverty or trying to combine work and study, and they have little opportunity to think about the political environment when they are struggling to make ends meet.

My first amendment goes to the heart of this issue. It simply alters the wording of Mr Hargreaves’s first paragraph to make it clear that we are not blaming young people for the fact that they are underrepresented in the electoral system. There are a whole host of reasons for this situation, with the most obvious being the reduced time they have to get onto the roll. So my amendment calls for us to note the trend of young voters not to be listed on the electoral roll but also puts forward why that has been the case, so we are

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