Should 16-year-olds vote? Greens push to lower voting age

The Green Party co-leader told TVNZ1’s Breakfast they’re inspiring, informed and aware.

The Green Party wants the voting age lowered to 16 years old.

Their policy announcement comes as many school students are set to hit the streets today to protest climate change inaction. 

Green Party co-leader James Shaw said the decisions politicians make have a "huge" impact on the future of the young people of today. 

"They're allowed to leave home, learn to drive, work and pay taxes, they should be allowed to elect politicians making decisions about their future," he said. 

"Increasingly across the world, we are seeing switched on young people who are desperately unhappy with the decisions political leaders are making about their futures. With the climate change crisis upon us, millions of young people around the world are taking to the streets demanding to be heard by political leaders."

Today, students are set to strike again over climate change, with events held across the country, supported by 91 businesses. 

The Green Party would add the policy to MP Golriz Ghahraman’s member bill , which would only go through Parliament if pulled from the ballot. 

The Green Party has added voting at 16 to the Green Party priorities for electoral reform set out in Golriz Ghahraman's Strengthening Democracy Bill.

Co-leader Marama Davidson said the party agreed 16- and 17-year-olds "should have the opportunity to have their say when it comes to political leaders who make these decisions". 

"Students feel like they’ve been largely let down by adults over the decades. They want to engage in democracy and their futures, and we should absolutely make space for that."

The idea was not a new Green Party policy - with the party's former MP Sue Bradford putting forward the plan in 2007. She told TVNZ1's Q+A at the time: "At sixteen, young people can get married, have children, and be taxed. If we are serious about trying to get young peoples' voices into the public arena and heard in places of power, they should be allowed to vote."

Last year, calls to lower the voting age were renewed after the Children's Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft voiced his concern that the current age limit sets youth apart as a group "without a voice". 

Judge Becroft said in a select committee, "Young people seemed to be the least engaged in New Zealand's democratic process, yet they have the most invested in our future". 

"Children and young people under 18 have no other way of influencing policy. If they voted and had a lobby, I'm convinced our policy for under 18-year-olds would significantly improve."

Both the Government and Opposition did not support Judge Becroft's proposal. 

"Lowering the voting age is not part of the coalition agreement between Labour and New Zealand First or the confidence and supply agreement between Labour and the Greens," Justice Minister Andrew Little told 1 NEWS at the time. 

National Party leader Simon Bridges told media lowering the voting age was "certainly not a priority" and he did not think it was "necessarily something that needs to happen". 

"Ultimately you'd have to see evidence base why that would be a good idea."

New Zealand's voting age sat at 21 from the mid-1800s to 1969, when it was dropped to 20. It was reduced to 18 in 1974. 

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