With the suggestion of the voting age being dropped to 16 I’m sure we will hear the arguments of maturity and political awareness be put to suit the whoever think they will profit or loose from its expansion.
Looking back in my life as a baby boomer I was a apprentice bat 15, a union member at the same age and yes with the education from my parents I was pretty well versed on both sides of the divide and it was up to me to decide and like many our kitchen table became great parliaments at times..
Fast forward to today how we have changed and I was part of the problem we have with todays youth.
Like all boomers we put our kids first when it come to our family priorities and Parents we secondary unlike the our parents who struggled through the war and depressions with nothing other than survival in mind. We had to share when we acquired, our parents were the most important for our survival and we knew that and respected it.
We thought we were doing the right thing changing the family priorities for the kids sake but we did them and our culture a terrible injustice. We lost that respect we gave to our parents over time and now we cry our kids have no respect, they know nothing about life, government,or they live in a technological bubble.
We boomers took our eye off the ball, handed them everything we never had, sparing our youth the experience of working and waiting, and in many cases handed over parenting to schools and our protective services.
So yes if we can use this voting age change as a catalyst to claw back self responsibility earlier, if we can encourage big picture dialogue and civic responsibility then it must be a debated, but we as the grown ups need to improve our parliamentary behaviour as that example again does nothing for the case of maturity by example.
The Lateral Hazard 