Lowering voting age wise for NZ'S future

All that stands between 16 and 17-year-olds and the right to vote is a 75 per cent consensus in Parliament. Legislation will be drafted to consider lowering the voting age to 16, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced on Monday afternoon.

Any change would not be in force for next year’s election.

It comes after an appeal to lower the voting age was accepted by the Supreme Court.

Justice Ellen France and Justice Mark O’regan ruled an earlier decision by the Court of Appeal to decline the case of the Make It 16 group should be set aside. Justice France told the court it was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights to not allow 16-year-olds to vote, and the decision was overturned.

The group behind the campaign, Make It 16, rightly point out they are just as impacted by the decisions of the Government as people 18 and over, but they have no say on the matter and it’s they who will be inheriting the future impacts of those decisions.

At 16, people can drive, consent to sex and medical procedures, leave school, leave home, pay rent, own a firearms licence and work a fulltime job.

Many teenagers are employed before 18 — I had been working for four years — and pay income tax.

Make It 16 claims preventing 16 and 17-year-olds from voting is “unjustified age discrimination”.

I agree, and more importantly, Justice France does too.

National Party leader Christopher Luxon says his party would not back moves to lower the voting age. Ardern said Labour had not discussed it at caucus so she could not provide the party’s views, but having joined it at 17 herself, it would have been appropriate to vote at 16.

There will no doubt be differing opinions on both sides of the political divide but I struggle to see the sense in treating 16 and 17-yearolds like adults in some ways but not in others — especially something as critical to democracy as voting.

Some people might think young people might be a wasted vote or take the mickey, but what’s to stop an adult from doing the same thing? Absolutely nothing.

Allowing 16 and 17-year-olds the option of ticking a box on a bit of paper every three years is hardly a massive deal when you consider they can be trusted with their own lives and others’ behind the wheel of a car.

What’s more, it’ll mean the views of New Zealand — and those of future New Zealand — will be better represented at elections, and that’s worth pursuing.