The Court Case being heard in the High Court this month that the voting age should be dropped to 16 is a righteous one…
Dao-McLay is also the co-director of the ‘’Make it 16 campaign’’ which was launched at Parliament in September 2019.
The campaign argues the current voting age of 18 was “unjustified aged discrimination” and that the High Court should declare it inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act.
…Taxation without representation is an obscenity – most 16 year olds have part time jobs, they pay tax & they should have a say because the climate crisis impacts them most and their hopes & dreams need to be reflected in society.
Political Parties don’t give two shits about the views of young people because young people don’t vote, lowering the voting age to 16 would force those politicians to listen to those new voting voices.
This is about expanding the Universal franchise at a a time when fewer people are choosing to participate, early voting creates life long voters and believers in the democratic process.
I’m not interested in the ‘but 16yr olds are too immature to vote’ – I know plenty of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70yr olds who are too immature to vote.
Lowering the voting age to 16 should be part of the first 100 days of a new Government.
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Nah! I disagree I think instead of lowering the voting age we should be trying to get those that can vote to do so. We need to get more people engaged so they value the vote. We need to help people to understand the significance of voting and the history behind our electoral system and voting. We need to start teaching this in schools alongside our history. We might see a different attitude towards voting when all this is done. I have heard the arguments for and against and they both raise some good points, but is increasing the pool of potential voters really the best option when we have so many people disengaged and disenfranchised in our country?
The reason many people don’t vote is that they recognise that:
1. Basic policies -of pro-globalism, pro-banking scams, pro-sacrifice-the-future-to the now, etc., remain the same whichever party is in power, and no amount of lobbying will change any of that.
2. Candidates campaign on the basis of making ‘promises’ they either have no intention of keeping or are not capable of keeping.
3. For national elections, the whole process is a media-influenced circus, a media-controlled circus even, in which NONE of the factors that determine living standards in the short term and our ability to survive in the long terms are EVER mentioned.
4. For local elections, the whole process is rigged according to who has the right connexions, who has the biggest pocket (or sponsors ) for advertising, and who is prepared to say what people want to hear, i.e. that we are all going to get wealthier via trashing the local environment and via ‘investment’ scams etc.
Thus, we ended up with parliament full of lawyers, rich farmers, hoteliers, property developers, bankers and ex-bankers, and narcissistic sociopaths, and NO ecologists or physical scientists. And local councils dominated by businessmen and businesswomen, property developers, hoteliers, restauranteurs etc. None of them with any knowledge of, or interest in, resources, energy, ecology or the fundamentals of finance and economics.
A few years ago a survey of ‘Who do New Zealanders Trust?’ was very revealing. I forget every detail but the results went along the lines of:
Doctors and dentists 80% -about the same as before
Teachers 70% -about the same as when a previous survey was condusted
Police 60% -about the same as before
Local government 12% -down 37%
Government ministers 6% -down 20%
Admittedly Shonkey was PM at the time and the appallingly low trust levels for local government and central government may have recovered slightly, but I’m sure you get the picture.
Wise management of resources, energy and the environment NEVER featured in the past and ai have seen no indication they will feature at all this time round -even as the resource base for out way of life collapses and the environment collapses.
That goodness we haven’t heard much about tax cuts -the usual pre-election bribe- this time round. Just ‘Strong Team, More Jobs, Better Economy’ bullshit, or ‘Let’s keep moving’ [in the wrong direction], or other meaningless slogans on the electioneering billboards I’ve seen.
By the way, if you think the education system is all about educating kids, I suggest you might educate yourself, starting with this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQw3nSkXMY
and when you have cone to terms with it, move on to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GKVFGYcCy0
because America is not far off this ‘ridiculous state’ now.
Nah! I disagree I think instead of lowering the voting age we should be trying to get those that can vote to do so. We need to get more people engaged so they value the vote. We need to help people to understand the significance of voting and the history behind our electoral system and voting. We need to start teaching this in schools alongside our history. We might see a different attitude towards voting when all this is done. I have heard the arguments for and against and they both raise some good points, but is increasing the pool of potential voters really the best option when we have so many people disengaged and disenfranchised in our country?
Nah! I disagree I think instead of lowering the voting age we should be trying to get those that can vote to do so. We need to get more people engaged so they value the vote. We need to help people to understand the significance of voting and the history behind our electoral system and voting. We need to start teaching this in schools alongside our history. We might see a different attitude towards voting when all this is done. I have heard the arguments for and against and they both raise some good points, but is increasing the pool of potential voters really the best option when we have so many people disengaged and disenfranchised in our country?
3 times again. What is up with your system?
Lowering the voting age to 16 should be part of the first 100 days of a new Government.
Strongly agree.
It may come as a surprise “Covid is pa”; but your posts do not actually improve third time around!
You got this one wrong, Bomber.
He got it correct. The global scientific consensus is tracking The Great Anthropogenic Extinction, not only do sane people want millennials voting, we want them to volunteer for the fight. Without a declaration of war against a global threat, 16yr olds can volunteer no other way than to vote.
Rubbish, there is no global anthropogenic extinction, ffs theres 8 billion of us,
Consensus is politics not science, the only global threat is Communism and its killed far more people that the current or past plagues, WTFU you dumbass
Hi friend. Please don’t be weird.
16 year olds haven’t even had to be entirely responsible for themselves.
18 year olds should have had to contemplate very seriously the world and how they’re going to face it.
The vast majority of 16 year olds are morons.
Same too for most 18 & 19 year olds.
A had a part time job at the local supermarket when I was 12.
Should I have been able to vote then?
Jesus Martyn, you are quickly joining the woke brigade aren’t you?
Jays – the NZ voter as things are probably has an average reading age of about 13…
And so presumably the average 13 year old has a reading age of 8?
Not a great way to cement your argument.
You may want to be careful about reading ages Jays. Noted in your first comment…
“A had a part time job at the local supermarket when I was 12”
Now unless your Scottish, I’d say In Vino’s comment is well and truly cemented based on that sentence.
Just saying…
@jays
“The vast majority of 16 year olds are morons.”
Fuck off they are. I’ve met many kids who’ve got a far greater understanding of the world they live in than most middle class, middle aged, middle of the road, conservative, TV watching, grey haired, hump backed, I think I just shit myself- thought it was a fart, she’ll be righters.
That’s a nasty generalisation @ jays.
My only wish, apart from tons of money, a bigger diddle and a non stop supply of good E would be to introduce mandatory voting. Just give it a go for a couple of election cycles? See what happens?
And boot out mmp. MMP’s a redundant Natzo plaything that allowed the likes of winston peters to run defence for his mates in Camp Neoliberal while we all flew off to vote for $ix Figure$ fairies and unicorns.
You’re right @ MB. Lowering the voting age is a good idea.
Get on some of the blog sites which centre on political things. The most brain dead, short-sighted, rabid, ignorant views are on display.
A wild guess, maybe a crazy generalisation, but I would say the vast majority of those contributing are over 18. They’ll not want 16 year olds to have the vote. Why? Because they see the young ones as not worldly wise, too inexperienced, too naive and too dumb to be trusted with a vote. What???????
Exactly, peter.
Then there’s a section of society who are entering various stages of dementia.
Then there are those ‘adults’ who are bombed out on various drugs including alcohol, or are hyper-aggro on Meths.
There are others who are going through personality changes via steroid use,
and some dumbed down to zombie-level on a range of prescribed medications.
There are those who have committed violent crimes (and will do so again).
There are domestic violence perpetrators and child abusers, and damaged victims of these.
Etc, etc, etc.
Yet young, fresh minds, as yet uncontaminated by many of the mind-twisters addicting ‘adults’, are considered unfit to vote. What a sick joke.
If kids don’t vote at 18 WTF do you imagine they would at 16? The easiest way to devalue something is to make it more available.
Before dropping the voting age to 16, how about making it something 18 yo’s desire & engage in, then when 16 yo’s clamour for it, that will be the time to drop the age.
Those of us unfortunate enough to remember when voting was restricted to 21 yo plus, at a time when 18 year olds could get sent off to ‘die for their country’ agitated for a change because the right to vote was considered valuable – it got dropped to 20 – typical weak arsed politician move, but it came about because of pressure. Get out a bit and ask 16 yo’s if they want to vote and most will say “Nah, why would I want to vote for a bunch of creeps & liars?” The first step must be to alter a system of government where politicians are more influenced by squeaky wheels aligned with corporate & narrow interest groups. Change the machine so ordinary humans are who politicians respond to & many more people will vote whether or not the age is dropped.
Doing it right now will have SFA effect on voting numbers.
If they are 16 years old and they were born here in Aotearoa, then they have FAR MORE Right to vote than the many thousands of imports brought here, especially under the Key govt, who have no real sense of who we are as a country, who may not speak either of our main languages, who do not necessarily share our main values, who have no sense of our history or our national identity and nor do they care.
I agree with that point. Certainly non-citizens should not be permitted to vote and even so-called dual citizens must demonstrate a long term commitment to this nation before they are entitled to the franchise. Right now non-citizens can vote in Aotearoa this year, after voting in the england elections last year. That is a crazy system. IMO people with dual citizenship can be permitted to vote in one sovereign entity only, once chosen, that is it, no chopping & changing.
Doing that would begin to make the right to vote in Aotearoa a privilege, but I don’t believe it would be sufficient to encourage young people to vote. As I said above there needs to be a major overhaul of the way politicians interact with & listen to the general public before that will happen.
That is a crazy system.
Yes. It is.
It is a crazy system because Aotearoa NZ now effectively allows an entire voting electorate to exist, eg in Auckland, whose primary loyalty may well be to the CCP. NONE have to be citizens. None have to do any sort of history test, eg, or values test, eg, to see if they even know who we are as a nation, let alone give a stuff about such minutae.
Similarly, down South, eg around Queenstown (I don’t know) – there could be enough votes to sway the difference in an electorate, where those extras were passionate followers of mr trump, and who believe as trump does that they need to “save the world from the radical left”. And again, those voters do not have to be citizens of AO/ NZ. They din’t have to k now jack about our history, about our culture, about our values etc etc. THAT’s why our system is indeed crazy, and very unwell.
I am not talking about our wider Pacifica family who share our land, nor about refugees. This is about vested interests from other countries who are here to EXPLOIT our system and our country.
“I’m not interested in the ‘but 16yr olds are too immature to vote’ – I know plenty of 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70yr olds who are too immature to vote.”
Nonsense argument. The point is there are far likely to be MORE 16 year olds who are too immature to vote than those in the older age categories.
I would prefer to raise the voting age to 21. Having taught a fair few, the vast majority of young people are over-confident and completely immature.
Are these the same 16 year olds who don’t have the mental and decision making capabilities to understand the consequences of getting into car chases with Police?
“Anyone under the age of 25 does not have the full development of their frontal lobes meaning they can’t readily appreciate the consequences of their actions…”
Dearest Fuckwit.
If you can not understand the difference between a heat of the moment adrenalin rush caused by an over enthusiastic police chase policy and 16 year olds having a voice in politics so their hopes and dreams can be heard, then I can’t do nothin for you chump.
Appreciate the response,
I think I get where you’re coming from – frontal lobe is developed enough if it suits your agenda.
Consequences are consequences- counter to your views I would be of the opinion that if someones frontal lobe isn’t developed enough to be able to figure out that running from police in 2 tonnes of metal that could very easily kill yourself and those around you (discounting the fact that a significant proportion of these children involved in such chases have stolen the car- a decision made before any adrenaline rush caused by lights and sirens) then it’s probably not developed enough to fully appreciate the immediate and longer term nuances and impacts of voting .
Obviously there will be plenty of 16 yars who would like have sufficient capacity but we have to cater to the lowest common denominator.
Flip mate! You need some anger management training.
Stop being so angus! The world is beautiful!
The world is beautiful!
I am so much looking forward to your next comments, Mark, which obviously, will demonstrate this new-found joy for the world! Wonderful 🙂 🙂 🙂
Martyn
Of course you would say that! Very transparent!
16 year olds have a tendency to vote ‘left’. Thus a continuous left govt will be assured for years and years.
Herman… and you say that like it’s a bad thing.
I think he preferred Mr Key’s way of simply importing a whole new voting electorate any time he wanted. (Remembering the imported voters don’t even have to become citizens. Only requirement was they had to have a heap of money, I think.)
I think you’ll find that most 16 year olds don’t have a job and, as they’re still considered minors, they’re considered represented by their parents. Same as all the other minors.
They don’t really listen to those who vote now. Having 16 year olds voting isn’t going to change that.
Then we need ways to encourage people in to the political process and that, IMO, is making it so that what the nation is saying as a whole is measured and parliament reacts to it. People are more likely to engage politically if they see their vote actually being counted and having an effect.
Yeah, they all vote National or ACT 😛
Now, about dropping the age of majority which is what we’re really talking about. I’m against it because I work on the principle that those who have their majority can also go to war to defend their nation and I think that 16/17 year olds are just too damn young to do that.
In other words, we need to start thinking about what reaching the age of majority means, what it allows and what it doesn’t. Consider the legal ramifications. Someone who has reached majority goes to standard adult prison, can be charged with murder and rape, can sign binding agreements even if they’re scams, etcetera.
Like I say, I’m against 16 year olds being regarded as of age and, from what I’ve seen, so are many others especially on the Left as they keep saying that such an age is too young to do pretty much everything that we’d consider normal for an adult.
too young to do pretty much everything that we’d consider normal for an adult.
El Draco, or anyone thinking like this, please read the long list of things they can do, further down this page, provided by RobbieWgtn @ 2.08 pm today. (I’m sure there are more as well.)
Eg, Get married or register a civil partnership with consent
Join a trade union
Work full-time if you have left school
Pilot a glider
Join the Armed Forces with parental consent
Apply for a passport without parental consent
“Why we must lower the voting age to 16”
I’d go along with that, provided we also introduce “Civics”, or even what we once called “social studies” into the curriculum. Or even something like wot a 3rd Whurl/Developing nation calls “general knowledge’ – part of the course demonstrating to its students how their electoral system works (and actually in more than one language). And its done before and during what we describe as the secondary years of edge-ja-mikayshun. The enthusiasm with which most of the students embrace their ‘general knowledge’ subjects is something to behold. They also like edge-a-mikating their parents and rellies.
It’d be a win-win situation. We might even be able to get some shitty PTE to offer it up as an export opportunity package, alongside other courses such as “Howto Suck Eggs”. The bigliest hurdle might be if we had to run it past NZQA’s ‘comms people’
And whose going to run these Civics Lessons? My concern is the indoctrination of young people at school from union affiliated teachers.
I would rather that Economics is taught, so they have some small understanding that everything comes with a price, and the govt giving out money is not “free stuff”, that someone had to get up at 3 in the morning and work their ass off, so the govt can take it off them and hand it out
And whose going to run these Economics Lessons? My concern is the indoctrination of young people at school from teachers versed in the economic dogma of the past few decades that’s now collapsing.
How is it collapsing? You have possibly never lived in a more prosperous time in the history of mankind. More people have come out of poverty in the last 30 years than any time ever. 100s of millions of people are more well off, have better access to amenities and live longer than ever. And I’ll you in on a little secret…it wasn’t communism that did it
Climate change is proof that the economic system that we have is uneconomic.
I really don’t see how anyone can call wiping ourselves out as anything other than economic collapse.
Most 16 year olds have part time jobs? That’s a bit sweeping. Any figures to back it up?
Ah, I see what you did there Martyn. Great idea – grab those malleable young teens, fresh from their indoctrination in NZ’s feminist- and SJW-run state school system, and march em straight to the polling booths. 16 yr olds’ confidence often vaults way ahead of their competence, judgement and understanding, especially in the males. The resulting simplistic worldview, allied to the fact that their brains aren’t yet fully developed, means you can expect a lot of them to vote for Golriz, Marama, Chloe and Julie-Anne.
Good one Martyn!
Would giving 16 year olds make any real difference? Most of these so called “Youth-quakes” that are supposedly the herald of some enlightened age of new ideas tend to be overblown and a tad underwhelming.
I’ve met 16 year olds I wouldn’t trust with a bucket of pig slop that were 12 year olds I thought were so cool, intelligent and insightful only a few years earlier. Mind you I know 50 year olds I wouldn’t give the opportunity to vote for a wart on a dog’s bum.
And why 16? Couldn’t you offer the same arguments for 15 or 14? 12?
I think we should have to sit at least a scratchy test before any of us get to vote the first time and then every ten years. Listening to the moronic things being said I feel that we take the matter for granted. We’ll just buy the same toilet roll we always do is the way that people approach it. The young will probably go for a catchy new tune and vid – the old ones did remember the dancing Cossacks. Bring it down to 16 by all means and bring in a test that you have to get 7 out of 10 right of fairly basic things. No need to ask who held a pair of lady’s bloomers up in the House last century or such. And don’t go into a lot of history and names, ask what government does and how they know what to do, and what social security is for etc.
Selfish bomber, who is a migrant, supports this as it will enable him to take more money from the state.
We Maori must stand up to these foreigners
Bleach-drinkers anonymous.
Another micro woke concern as the planet burns and more important issues are not being debated in NZ.
More pressing to youth should be this monstrosity https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/122501240/mega-polytech-has-21-staff-with-chief-executive-in-their-title of more management put over other management (with more money going out for management and restructuring not kids educations to the actual kids) and the usual failed players leading the charge.
Aka Stephan Town who did such a good jobs with the supercity and Auckland Council, NOT! Yep now the taxpayers are left with the council rich list and water CEO’s on $775,000 who don’t plan for a drought and massive increase in population in Auckland that was obvious to everybody else, transport staff and development staff who are doing an appalling job in terms of poor results for residents, while being paid handsomely.
Remember how the neoliberals destroyed Unitec!
An ‘onslaught of shock and awe’ was supposed to transform Unitec. Instead it sent it into a dive
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/105935899/unitecs-transformation-failure?rm=a
How they destroyed Unitec…
To “save” money, Unitec decided to:
Replace some teaching staff with staff from industry who were not trained teachers, taking the focus away from students.
Outsourced student services to an outside business, Concentrix. This caused problems with their call/contact centre and it is believed many enrolments were lost in the process.
Contact became even harder when Unitec took away telephone receptionsts.
Directed all first year health students into an online-only programme for their first semester, losing a number of students along the way.
This led to surprise surprise, no students enrolling because the literally couldn’t because the outsourced call centre did not function and you couldn’t call anyone up because their were no telephone receptionists!
Which led to canned courses and less choice,
The following courses which school leavers could be part of will NOT be offered at Unitec next year:
Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Communication
Bachelor Applied Science Human Bio (Osteopathy)
Bachelor Health Social Development
Bachelor of Sport
Bachelor Performing & Screen Arts – some parts
NZ Cert Horticulture Services
Dip Contemporary Music
Short courses in International Languages
NZ Cert English Language L2
NZ Cert English Language L3 – some parts
NZ Cert English Language L4 – some parts
Bachelor Communication
A number of Masters and other postgraduate courses will similarly not be offered from next year.
http://schoolleaver.nz/news-archive/192-financial-pressures-force-unitec-to-trim-some-programmes
Brighter future everybody starts with putting in bloated neoliberal management who don’t know anything to run things, removing educational standards, removing choice, stopping people from up skilling, with eduction resources siphoned off in management restructures to management who don’t know anything about education.
Works a treat for Oranga Tamariki board and executive members, too! Seem to remember the CEO was ex Bupa (private health care to richer folks), hard to see the correlation to social work to at risk kids in state care.
Unfortunately, a new Labour-Greens government is more likely to lower the voting age than to deal with real problems like the ones you’ve described above.
I’m in my 81st year. I had to be 21 before I could vote. Most folk I associated with considered it an achievement to be able to vote.
For 15 yrs – from age 57 to 72, I didn’t vote – who was there to vote for?>??! 3 years ago I voted again, but what positives has happened? I earned the equivalent of 6d as a Registered Nurse. I was valued as a contributor to my country? Bah humbug!! I was saving people’s lives; a much younger computer wizz relative earned $250,000pa before he was 25y.o. In lots of ways he was stupid – fixated on all things computers. Who to vote vote for this election? Certainly not Jacinda – she was in awe of Tony Bliar – a liar & murderer!
I remember all these same tired old red herring arguments back in the early 1970’s when the voting age was lowered to 18 & I cast my first vote to elect Norman Kirk. The real reason to deny the franchise to younger people is for the old to retain political power – a crock because the decisions made now will determine the future for the next generations. I left school at 16, working full time (for the next 45 years) & was independent, married with a child by 20. Age is no determinate of intellectual &/or practical ability or useful life experience. Now that I’m 65 it’s very clear that my teenage view that older people have no more brains than the young & sometimes a lot less was the correct one.
When you are 16 you are allowed to:
Get married or register a civil partnership with consent
Drive a moped or invalid carriage
You can consent to sexual activity with others aged 16 and over
Drink wine/beer with a meal if accompanied by someone over 18
Get a National Insurance number
Join a trade union
Work full-time if you have left school
Be paid national minimum wage for 16/17 year olds
Join the Armed Forces with parental consent
Change name by deed poll
Leave home with or without parental consent
In certain circumstances you must pay for prescriptions, dental treatment and eye tests
Choose a GP
Consent to medical treatment
Buy premium bonds
Pilot a glider
Buy a lottery ticket
Register as a blood donor, but you won’t be called to give blood until you’re 17
Apply for a passport without parental consent
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