There are more than 30 candidates under the age of 30 standing in this year’s election. Voter turnout statistics for the 2017 general election for people under 30 hover below 70 per cent. But, young people are making their mark in their own way, from the School Strike 4 Climate marches to the Make it 16 campaigners arguing to lower the voting age in the High Court.
1 NEWS talks to the youngest candidates running for National, Labour, the Greens, New Zealand First and ACT to find out what makes them tick and why they’re running for Parliament.
While youth-led movements and protests are gaining attention, Robert Griffith believes in taking a politician’s route to enact change.
“I can understand why a lot of my peers do protest, but if we’re going to make real changes, I believe the way to do it is to get involved through these established political channels,” the 21-year-old New Zealand First candidate for Dunedin said.
Griffith was raised in a large family in Rotorua. He moved to Wellington to attend boarding school, then headed down to Otago University four years ago to study a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
While he and his family “weren’t very political”, Griffith said he grew up hearing about the health system because both his parents were doctors.
But it wasn’t until he got to university that he saw the extent of the effect drugs and alcohol had on people, he said.
“And even just the poor quality of housing that a lot of New Zealanders have to face and how our perspective on mental health doesn’t really lead to better outcomes," Griffith said.
“I think we throw a lot of young people into the abyss and into the world without a lot of lessons on what it’s really like.”
Griffith said those issues were what inspired him to get political and look to the past for answers.
It was also why he said he felt the most affinity to what New Zealand First stood for.
“It seems like a lot of the things we were doing in the 70s and 60s, minus the racism and minus the sexism, was perfect in terms of public policy.
“Politicians don’t really want to acknowledge that we were once a more equal society.”
Griffith said he’d advocate to better these issues if he ended up in Parliament after the election. He also wanted to see rail protected and expanded in Dunedin.
He said while his age could be a disadvantage because he was up against candidates with years of experience, it meant he viewed them with “a lot more respect”.
“The other key bit is that they have had 10 to 15 years to fix the problem, and they haven’t. And I’ve come straight into it.”
He added: “You don’t want a [decision-making] table full of 21-year-olds but you do want a young person because when they look at a problem, they don’t necessarily have 20 or 30 years of pessimism built into them.”
Griffith, who took part in TVNZ’s Young Voters’ Debate, criticised it for turning into a “shouting match” at times, and said mental health should have been a topic of discussion.
“I think it highlighted the point that we all agree on the principles of what we want — equal access to education, even free access to education, free access to health care.
“The argument is about how we get there.”
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