Youth issues could decide the election outcome, but many of the two million young Australians eligible to vote feel under represented and have not enrolled.
Despite the August 12 deadline, one in two 18-year-olds and one in three 19-year-olds had still failed to register by 8pm yesterday.
Monash University’s Associate Professor Lucas Walsh said that young people had traditionally been under enrolled, but he believed the current trend reflected a larger disengagement from the political process.
A recent survey by The Australia Institute found that 1.2 million young Australians felt that no political party adequately represented their interests.
“We see consistently in the research that young people are turned off by experts, politicians and not being included in policy making,” Prof Walsh said.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) launched a Facebook campaign to attract young voters, but Prof Walsh believed they had missed the point.
“We are not very good at taking young people’s voices seriously enough. You do have to go online to where they live, but a lot of those who aim to engage through social media are really too focused on the medium rather than the message,” he said.
Ben McDonald, 18, lives in East Brunswick and recently enrolled to vote for the first time.
He said the issues concerned him the most were asylum seekers, the economy, industry and Australia’s aging population.
“I think some care, but a lot think whoever is in government will just be there and make decisions and lie the way all politicians do,” he said.
Acting Executive Director of the Australian Youth Affairs Coalition, Reynato Reodica, agreed that young people were uninspired because politicians were not addressing their needs.
“Young people are interested in a whole spectrum of issues from marriage equality through to harder economic issues. Whether they’ll get a job, whether their education system is up to scratch, whether or not Australia has an appropriate response to asylum seekers,” Mr Reodica said
“It’s about making that system real for young people so they can see the impact that their involvement in the system will have, education can play a role in that but in that experience young people need to feel that their voices are being heard.”
Data via the Australian Electoral Commission.
