Kate Hawkesby: If young people are not even engaged in life in general, how is it they're getting engaged in politics?

The Make it 16 campaigners are annoyed apparently – because their campaign’s been shoved on the back burner by the new PM, who has worked out that it’s not a priority right now and added it to his so-called ‘bonfire’.  But it shouldn’t be a priority right now, not when the government has to contend with rising inflation, the health system in dire straits, crime at massive highs, a huge cyclone relief effort, infrastructure badly needing doing... and all the other problems we have right now. Lowering the voting age is well down the list. But not as far as the campaigners themselves are concerned and in that lies part of the problem.  Ability to read a room maybe comes with age and experience. It’s juvenile to stand there whining about it being a human rights breach when the rest of the country clearly has other more pressing concerns. I don’t doubt the Make it 16 campaigners can actually see, but they just disagree that their plight shouldn’t also be on the list. They see this as them being ‘sidelined,’ and they claim ‘decision making and democracy are bread and butter issues too.’ And while that may be the case in a regular political cycle, it’s not now.  I admire politically active teenagers and young people, it’s meritorious they show an interest and get informed and agitate for things... it beats the malaise of the alternative. But the reality is, not enough 16 year olds are interested in politics or democracy. At this stage, we don’t even have enough of them bothering to turn up to school, we have truancy at record levels, and if they can’t even engage in school, which is compulsory, how are they engaging in politics or an election? Every person we’ve interviewed or spoken to about truancy levels and ram raid increases and drifting bored unaffected youth, has told us that the problem is they’re not engaged.  So if young people are not even engaged in life in general, how is it they're getting engaged in politics? I think it’s smart to start with introducing legislation to lower the voting age for local body elections that’s a good practice run. And I imagine the Make it 16 campaigners will be desperate for 16-year-olds to rise to that occasion and prove they can be a force to be reckoned with.  But I don’t hold out much hope, given not even most adults can be bothered with local body elections. The turnout is always woeful. But the Make it 16 campaigners have already shown their political hand when it comes to their priorities. And it’s the reason left-block parties are so keen to have the age lowered too. Make it 16’ers want young people’s interests represented and guess what those interests are? ‘The climate change crisis’ they say. They say ‘the balance of power has shifted towards older voters, more conservative voters' and they want some balance back. I.e -  some balance the other way.  So I wish them luck, let’s start with local body, and see how that goes, and how many turn up to vote there, and maybe if they’re right, and 16-year-olds all over New Zealand are champing at the bit to tick a box on election day, then perhaps then they’ve got a solid argument.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.