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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Wednesday, 31 March 2004) . . Page.. 1459 ..

lot of people in our community who are presently able to vote. Basically, all that we are asking this place to do is to consider the issue.

MR HARGREAVES (5.16): I thank members for their support for the principle of what I am trying to do here. I do not support any of Ms Dundas’s amendments. Her amendment No 1 changes the focus of what I was trying to achieve here. I was trying to target 18 to 24-year-olds. Other people have got different issues as to why they are not on the roll and all the rest of it, but I wanted to target this age group specifically. Ms Dundas’s first amendment refers to people not being on the electoral “role”. The spelling is unusual for Ms Dundas, who is usually punctilious with this sort of stuff.

Mr Wood: Had a good education.

MR HARGREAVES: Indeed, almost at university too. The amendment also states that younger people “have had fewer opportunities to enrol”. Firstly, fewer opportunities than whom? Secondly, they have heaps of opportunities to enrol. It is not as though they are tied to the kitchen table leg or living out in the scrub somewhere. They have the same opportunities to enrol as a one-legged, left-handed, half-blind dork living out in the scrub somewhere. The opportunities are there. The first paragraph of my motion asks that we just focus on the 18 to 24-year-olds and recognise that they are not taking up the option.

Ms Dundas’s amendment No 2 goes to the major reason why I moved this motion in the first place. The Electoral Commission under Phil Green’s leadership is going absolutely gangbusters in creating a whole stack of opportunities to tell people, “This is your golden gift, the golden gift of democracy: the right to vote, given to you, one of its citizens, by the community.” What we have to address here is why they have not taken up that option. To throw a bucket of money at everything, even were it necessary, is not the way to go. What we need is to have the public engaged. Phil Green and his people have tried their best, along with the schools and a whole stack of other people, to engage the 18 to 24-year-olds to get on the roll. They are doing great stuff. All MLAs received an email from the Electoral Commissioner in the last 24 hours in which he quite clearly laid out what he has been doing, and he needs to be congratulated.

We need to work out why people are not engaging with Phil Green and the schools. One of the ways we can work this out is for me to enrage Ms Dundas so that she goes feral out there in the community, puts herself up there as the champion of the young person, and draws attention to the fact. If we can achieve that—wonderful. The whole idea of this motion is to put the debate into the public arena and it would appear, by some emotions anyhow, that we have been somewhat successful.

I understand the sentiments of Ms Dundas’s suggested paragraph 5, but we might think about it some other time. Now is not the time for us to confuse the issue about engaging people. We cannot get the 18 to 24-year-olds to enrol. Why do you want to treble the number? Then there are the consequential issues of this. At 18 you can enrol to vote. At 18 you reach the age of so-called majority. On top of that, at 18 you can come into this place if you can get enough votes. If we drop the age to vote down to 15, do we then give 15-year-olds the opportunity to become members of the Legislative Assembly? Do not answer that question, members; I just leave it for your fertile imagination. Now is not the time to do that. Let us not blur the issue. This is all about putting out in the public

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