The Greens are at it again. Whatever happened to the environment? Instead they seem to be focusing on social policy.
Now they want to lower the voting age in NZ to 16 and introduce compulsory civics education in high-school, " to make young people understand how the political system works". That could be covered in one line. You vote for people to represent you in parliament and once they are voted in they completely ignore your wishes and represent themselves instead. Simple.
Next, compulsory wheat-grass juicing training ...
Related Link: Proposal to lower voting age to 16
Now they want to lower the voting age in NZ to 16 and introduce compulsory civics education in high-school, " to make young people understand how the political system works". That could be covered in one line. You vote for people to represent you in parliament and once they are voted in they completely ignore your wishes and represent themselves instead. Simple.
Next, compulsory wheat-grass juicing training ...
Related Link: Proposal to lower voting age to 16
I think that the age of consent, the drinking age, the age of voting, the age of joining military, the age of driving, and the age of marriage should all be the same. They should all be 18.
ReplyDeleteSounds like Sue is back on the crusade to give children the same rights as adults.
ReplyDeleteWell, the age of majority for the most important action of a human in democratic NZ used to be 21. So if the voting age became 16, I assume the age of consent should drop to 11, the drinking age to 16, joining the military 13 and so on.
ReplyDeleteJC
The Greens have figured that, statistically, they will be the ones that grab the most of the new market share.
ReplyDeleteMake Al Gore's video compulsory and their 5% threshold is assured.
"You vote for people to represent you in parliament and once they are voted in they completely ignore your wishes" - exactly. So much for democracy. It's because they don't understand that if one wants to be a leader he must be the servant of all. That is anathema to the modern politician who seeks only power for its own sake.
ReplyDeleteSue uses the logic that 16 year olds can get married, therefore should vote. However, I'm pretty sure that marriage at 16 requires parental consent. So do parents check over who the kid can vote for too?
ReplyDeleteAnd the logic that they pay taxes to be eligible to vote? I think a few Greens have argued eloquently why that cannot be a basis or justification for granting the vote, particularly when the Labour Government specializes in recruiting non-tax paying voters to ensure they stay in power.
I can see it now - Greens call for only tax payers to be able to vote...I think not. Nope, a power grab and nothing more.
But you cannot argue with Sue's master stroke of logic. Austria do it. Austria!
Well she rammed her smacking bill thru.
ReplyDeleteNo telling what will happen with this but its not good.
The thing is if she standing in Northand she could only garner a meagre 8% support in her own right.
Its this wretched MMP system that gives a woman like this a seat in Parliament in the first place.
Better that the 8% who would have voted for her be completely disenfranchised? That's what FPP does, and is why we got rid of it - large numbers of us got sick of being disenfranchised. A significant proportion of the population are dumbasses like Sue - unfortunate, but they're entitled to representation in Parliament same as everyone else.
ReplyDeleteZen - you're right about the utter weirdness of the Greens promoting "No taxation without representation" for this move. The obvious flip side, "No representation without taxation" presumably isn't something they'd be keen on.
Anecdotal evidence would suggest that the majority of Greens voters are people who have not got over their teenage rebellion phase against parents and conservative values, so it would make perfect sense for them to want the voting age to include the core of the teenage rebellion phase, rather than just picking up those people a bit slow in growing out of it.
ReplyDelete