Young people and politics: the cool factor in being informed

The Focus – August 19th, 2007 by Sarah

It’s election day, 2007. Pen in hand, you’re standing in a booth at your local polling station, somewhat intimidated by the ridiculously sized piece of paper lying in front of you. Reading through the names, your mind wanders. Wow, you think, I could not care any less about this. The sun is shining, the surf is calling…I wonder what (insert friend’s name) is doing…Oh yeah. Voting. I’ll just tick THIS box. Done. Surf and sun, here I come.

Sound familiar? Well, it sure is familiar to me, because shamefully, that was pretty much my thought pattern word for word last federal election day. Truth be told, I really could not have cared less about who was going to be running my country. I mean, what difference did it make to me? I had just turned eighteen, my life revolved around studying for the HSC and trying to cram in as much socialising as possible in between. Politics was for adults. And nerds who liked doing maths and physics. Which I most certainly did not. Besides, as if I, just one little person, could really make a difference to, well, anything really.

Up until a few months ago, I would have used my youth as an excuse for the attitude expressed above. Even now, I can still see why a significant number of young people have little to no interest in paying much attention to politics. It can be boring. It’s undeniably complicated. And who really wants to listen to a bunch of old people arguing, anyway? But now, I really believe that being a young person is simply not an excuse. If anything, we should be more passionate than anyone. After all, we are the politicians of the future. In no time at all, we’ll be the ones running this place, whether we like it or not, so if we don’t want everything to be in a complete mess by the time we get there, we have to be the ones to act.

So, I’ll cut to the chase: why should young people care in the slightest about politics? Well, for starters, most young people I know have a cause they’re passionate about already. Whether it be animal rights, issues relating to Indigenous people, recognition of gay relationships or women’s rights, it’s all political. All that boring hoo-ha on the tv with the old guys arguing about this and that, that’s only one very tiny element of what is involved in the whole politics thing. If you get past all that, essentially, politics is all about fighting for a cause, and young people sure love to do that.

Also, it appears to be in the nature of young people to whinge about not being heard. In response to this, I believe it’s pretty damn difficult for anyone to hear you if you just keep your mouth shut all the time! Knowing that little bit extra about who is running the country, who could possibly be running the country and what these people plan to do with themselves when they are running the country gives you the power to vocalise your feelings about what’s going on in a way that has slightly more impact than “I just don’t like what’s going on with (insert cause here) because it’s, just, well, STUPID!”

Now I’m not saying young people need to join political parties, or that they need to watch Question Time on a regular basis, or even the news really. You can gain all sorts of interesting info in a number of accessible, young people friendly ways about all sorts of political issues. The net is great for this, even talking about issues of concern with friends and other like-minded people is an awesome start.

I plan to address the issue of young people and politics on a regular basis. When election time comes around, if my suggestions have made just one less young person donkey vote, or one less young person vote for Little Johnny out of sheer laziness, I will be one very happy girl.

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