Indeed,there is plenty of evidence to show that children and young people aged 16 and even younger have displayed insight and demonstrated leadership in responding to the defining issue of our time – namely the climate emergency. Since 2018,hundreds of thousands of Australian school students have organised,mobilised and rallied,calling on older Australians to recognise the urgency of the climate crisis.

Labor’s election victory by itself,while promising greater action on climate,does not mean we will see the introduction of the far-reaching policies that are needed to avert climate disaster. We are facing catastrophic global temperature increases,the loss of biodiversity and species extinction,increases in the carbon dioxide absorbed by the oceans and their acidification,atmospheric aerosol loadingand biochemical cycles including nitrogen and phosphorus flows into the oceans and biosphere,and land cycle changes.

Young people will have to shoulder the costs of whatever governments do or fail to do now,and will have to mitigate this crisis for far longer than today’s adults. What so many Australian young people have demonstrated in the past few years is that they,perhaps more than any other age group,fully understand the danger we face.

This is not to say the climate crisis is the only issue they have a direct and immediate interest in. Affordable housing is a fantasy for most Australians under 35. Let’s not talk about being loaded up with growing education-related debt whereHECS-HELP debt is now in excess of $69 billion. Young people continue to experience precarious employment and to be the targets of endemic wage theft. And the COVID pandemic exposed a problem where children and young people experienced some of the worst effects of lockdowns,but were denied any voice in the decision-making.

Extending the vote to 16-year-olds will also enhance Australia’s democratic culture,increase voter turnout at the polls and bring us into line with many other countries and international human rights conventions. A democracy,after all,is a system of governance that encourages a plurality of views that are inclusive of all citizens and does not deliberately exclude large sections of the population simply on the basis of age (or,for that matter,of gender or indigeneity).

Several countries around the world,such as Austria,Malta and Brazil,have already lowered the voting age. For the Scottish independence vote in 2014,the voting age was lowered to 16. Debates over lowering the voting age are ongoing in the UK and New Zealand – just last month,the NZ Supreme Court ruled that the country’svoting age of 18 was discriminatory.

It’s time we took into account the voices of those whose lives are being affected right now and who have no choice but to deal with the challenges Australia faces in the next few decades.

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