Congratulations Thom. A fine article. You are on the right track !

The examples Thom mentions such as encouraging young people to run for local council and to become more involved in their communities are probably the only way that there will be real involvement by the young at 'the table'.

Tokenism is rife unfortunately but maybe all is not lost even in that, at least the myriad of Youth Summits, Forums etc raise the profile of youth involvement in the public arena to some extent.

Young people can always become more involved and there have been some very young MPs - just off the top of my head Roslyn Dundas (ACT), Kate Lundy (ACT), Sarah Hanson-Young, Paul Keating and Malcolm Fraser were all elected when they were quite young. There are probably more.

Tokenism is not only restricted to the young but to the elderly, the disabled and Indigenous people.

The LeftRight think tank is a great idea - keeping an open mind without being bogged down in the traditional Left Right politicking is the only way forward for public policy in a modern world. Great stuff!

Okay, I'll be the token old, grumpy one. Why do we wish to encourage young people to participate? Why can't they be left alone to decide whether they want to particpate or not? After all, they have the advantage of youth, and won't want to be dragged into boring community activities unless of course, they choose to be there. Any program designed to encourage youth participation will simply get those already predisposed to particpate and that's it..
While the author is pondering those issues he would do well to look at the statistics for volunteering for charity work (the ABS has stats on leisure activities somewhere). The big group in such work, from memory, is wonmen between 18 and 30.
As for encouraging young people to go onto local councils I'm horrified. Its bad enough when there parents are on, but at least they have experience. What would young people bring to the mix?

Good work Thom. As a young person myself I am routinely frustrated when I hear people discussing 'the youth of today' or 'today's young people' as though we are an homogenous group with a unified agenda. One look around the school playground shows that there is great diversity and so it is problematic for any one young person to speak on behalf of youth issues, since young people are no more united than any other age group when it comes to politics etc.

I also hate it when polys talk about 'youth issues' as though our issues are somehow separate to other issues like health, the environment, transport, education etc. ALL of these issues ARE YOUTH ISSUES as they ALL EFFECT US!

it also frustrates me that although I personally enjoy a certain level of publicity and so my voice is heard by certain publics, in certain circumstances (as a writer and an academic) most young people
are not heard or engaged with, and when they are it is in a token manner.

Once again, well done Thom

Nina Funnell

Nina

It sounds like you are frustrated a lot and hate a lot of things. Thom's article was great but you just complicated everything.
You think it is problematic for young people to be represented as there is such a variety of views, but you are frustrated by not being heard...
So what are you proposing?