Richard Prebble
Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.
I remember being 16 years old. Only my friend Jim Middleton, who went on to become the ABC’s chief political correspondent in Canberra, and I had any interest in politics.
At university among my fellow students, it was only the Vietnam War and the fear that we might be conscripted that generated interest in politics.
And me? I organised parliamentary campaigns before I was old enough to vote. At 18, I was responsible for a campaign budget large enough to buy a house. Mind you, houses were cheaper.
There was a campaign to reduce the voting age to 18. At the time, looking at my classmates, I was opposed.
Nothing I have seen then or since has changed my mind.
Through most of our history, society thought 21 was the correct age.
When the voting age was 21, the state did not spend money trying to persuade electors to enrol. This year the taxpayer is spending $18.1 million on encouraging people to enrol. At the latest count 166,746 18- to 24-year-olds are yet to do so.
In contrast, 103.25 per cent of the estimated eligible 70+ population is enrolled. (There are more of us than the commission realised.)
Not only is Labour going to let 16-year-olds vote in local elections, but as a ratepayer I am going to lose my non-resident ratepayer vote.
The Supreme Court has ruled that not allowing 16-year-olds to vote is inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act’s prohibition on age discrimination. On that logic, why not give 14-year-olds the vote?
Not only do the advocates not remember being 16, it seems to me they cannot have had any 16-year-old children.
My father had the view that only those who were not dependent on the state should vote. He thought that when he received National Super, that should disqualify him.
He had the quaint idea that those on the paying list, not those on the getting list, should decide.
As, according to IRD research, just 10 per cent of income taxpayers pay more in tax than they receive in transfers, it would be a small electorate.
I hope most of us think stealing is immoral. How is it moral for a 16-year-old who has never paid rates to be able to vote that a ratepayer like me should pay more in rates? And Labour intends to strip me of my ratepayer vote.
Revolutions have been fought over taxation without representation.
Democracy is the tyranny of the majority. But a tyranny of 16-year-olds?
This article was originally published by I’ve Been Thinking.
