Since it's election time I thought I'd bring up the issue of the voting age. Commonly it is suggested that it should be lowered to 16 years. Last year this was raised in the senate by a private bill. This bill and the public comments about it covered some of the standard reasons for lowering it. eg:
- The fact that 16-17 year olds are able to work full time and pay taxes and yet not vote on the policies that affect them (but it should be noted that in reality that it is only a small and decreasing minority of youth at this age who do work full time)
- Recognise that young people are disengaged from politics and should be recognised as a constituency in order to foster civic participation.
- Also other reasons such as human rights under UN treaties or that they can be punished for crimes the same as adults, etc.

But against this is the argument that the age should be raised instead of lowered. Reasons for this include:
- Human development of the brain means that mental maturity is not achieved until early/mid twenties,
- Because the complexity of society has continually increased it takes longer for adolescents/young adults to experience and appreciate the intricacies and interdependence of it (eg: today's society is vastly different from even 40 years ago- due to multiculturalism, environmentalism, feminism and all the other "-isms", technology, increases in specialization and division of labour, the increased interconnection of countries by trade and other global issues, etc. The majority of 16-20 year olds simply haven't had enough contact with a broad enough cross section of society to form well-informed opinions of many of these important issues.
- Youth/young adults are more dependent on their providers for longer then previously- it is typical that a young person will not achieve full independence until into their early twenties.
- They are also delaying having families (commonly into late 20's and early 30's) so they have very little direct experience/contact with the social and economic issues involved/arising with having kids.

So what I propose is a voting system that tries to balance this:

Basically you give people more voting power as they mature by having fractional votes. For example:

1) citizens aged 16-17 get 1/3 of a vote,
2) those 18-21 get 2/3 of vote,
3) and lastly those 21 and over have a full vote.

(PS: Actually, personally I think only people over 25 should have 100%,so maybe: 16-17yrs old:25%, 18-21:50%, 22-25:75% and 25+:100% but it would be simpler with just 3 age divisions like above and also historically 21 was the age of majority)

Thikabit no doubt you know those who benefit from lowering the age will support it
My ALP, so I support it
Not sure I can super lesser value for different ages
good subject however

There's two issues to consider: how much people know, and how much they care.

People do learn a lot more as they get older, but not everything they think they know is actually true, and most people support bad policies in the mistaken belief that they'll have a good effect.

And many of the older people take an "I'm alright Jack" attitude. They don't care about the problems the younger generations face, and think that long term environmental problems are safe to ignore.

We should have a license to vote, full stop ! The Constitution needs to be taught in Primary school. People should comprehend the differences in party policies. Once people fully understand we would then get the Govt. people vote for, no preferences no nothing.
If that meant no Labor & no Greens then so be it !

In fact, the voting age should be raised to 25 years of age, which is when the brain is fully matured, according to the experts. It's not surprising that Labor wants to get kids while they are young and silly: most people do become more mature and conservative as they grow older.