Every few years, Australia resurrects the idea of lowering the voting age to 16 – usually prompted by a campaign or because some other country (with a fairly different electoral context) is doing so. And every time, we fail to address the question of whether we are prepared as a nation; in my opinion, the answer is no.
It’s not that I’m philosophically opposed to enfranchising 16‑ and 17‑year‑olds. After all, democracy thrives on fresh voices. The hitch comes when you hand a driving licence to someone who has never sat behind a wheel. Without robust civic and media‑literacy education, and without any clear evidence that 16- and 17-year‑olds themselves demand this change, we’d be giving young Australians an Ikea flat‑pack democracy with no instruction manual.
