Page 805 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 29 March 2006
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Plus, there is the issue that, in these wonderful new super schools that the government is pursuing, you could just about get a quota in one school. Not that I would take into account such irrelevant considerations as that in looking at or pursuing the issue. There is that issue that we would have to think seriously about—and I remark jokingly and in jest—but I believe it is an issue.
As legislators or as a community, would we be comfortable, not in terms of their capacity as a 16-year-old to be Chief Minister, as to whether or not it is appropriate to suggest that we might have a 16-year-old Chief Minister and whether that would be appropriate in terms of our responsibilities to our children? Those are issues for debate and discussion. That is a real, live issue.
Mr Mulcahy: They would need a driver, too.
MR STANHOPE: Yes. We would have to change the Assembly rules. More cost! We would have to change the Assembly rules on the capacity of a 16-year-old Chief Minister to get off to functions at, say, Parliament House to meet the Prime Minister of Great Britain or to welcome the Chinese President to the ACT.
These are serious implications that would need to be worked through. That is all I am saying. These are the considerations that would need to be worked through and on which there would need to be a genuine community debate and some genuine engagement. The government is more than happy to participate in that and more than happy for others within the Assembly to facilitate a community conversation on whether to not this is a reasonable proposal or a reasonable reform to the electoral system within the ACT.
These are significant issues: inconsistency with the rest of Australia; the need for a different electoral roll; the implications of the compulsory versus non-compulsory voting for a particular cohort; the implications of whether or not some of us would ever accept any move away from compulsory voting; and, if we were not to accept that, the implications of imposing criminal penalties on children. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights or even our Human Rights Act might have something to say about the imposition of a criminal penalty on a child for a failure to participate in the democratic process. I am not sure about that, but I think there would be international rights-of-the-child implications if we were to impose criminal penalties on them for not voting. Those are issues that would need to be pursued.
There are the issues of the role that an elector or a voter might play. It is in that context that I have, on behalf of the government, moved the amendment that the proposal be investigated and that it be referred to the Standing Committee on Education, Training and Young People for inquiry and report back to the Assembly in October 2007. The government believes that it would be appropriate for the committee charged with the responsibility for young people to be the committee that inquires into this matter, and that is the substance of the amendment I moved.
One further point: I foreshadow that, having looked again at the motion—and I am a little concerned about paragraph (1)—I will quickly draft another amendment. The motion asks the Assembly to support the establishment of a scheme. It is inconsistent with my proposed paragraph (2). Paragraph (1) is not in a form that the government
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