Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this issue today, and it's an important issue because we know that right here in this place there is a member of this Senate, Senator Pauline Hanson, who has suggested that young people aged between 18 and 21 should not be allowed to vote. She's said it several times. She said it on national television only two weeks ago. She was given an opportunity to clarify, and she doubled down. Senator Pauline Hanson thinks that young people do not deserve the right to vote. She wants to strip Australians aged 18, 19 and 20 of their right to vote, a right they currently have. That's almost a million young people that Senator Hanson believes don't deserve to have their say, apparently because, in her own words, they don't have jobs, they don't pay taxes and they know nothing about politics. What a load of rubbish! In Australia, of course, you can be working long before you're aged 21. You can get married. You can run a business. You can even sit in the federal parliament currently, and, of course, you can even serve in the Australian Defence Force. It is just unthinkable that Senator Pauline Hanson would suggest that young people don't have a right to have their say.

If it came down to the arguments that Senator Hanson has put out as to why young people shouldn't have a right to vote—she says they're not informed enough to vote and they lack experience, knowledge or intelligence—I tell you what: I wonder what Senator Pauline Hanson would do being right here. She would be the first out the door if it came to having to be informed about the issues that we debate in this place—and quickly after her, may I point out, Senator Malcolm Roberts as well, and probably the rest of her merry, silly men.

The truth is young people are engaged in politics. They desperately want to have their say, and they have every right to. Just in the last couple of months, we've seen almost 100,000 young people sign up to the electoral roll so that they could have their say in the marriage equality postal survey. The majority are voting yes. The question is: why would Senator Hanson want to strip these young people of their right to have their say? Well, it's just like how One Nation want to gag and cut funding to the ABC because they don't like what the ABC reports, and so it follows. One Nation don't like what young people think, what they care about and how they vote. Because they don't like it, they don't want them to have their say.

Once this issue was made public, once Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation confirmed they didn't think young people should have the right to vote, the phones in electorate offices ran hot, letters to the editor were typed out and the social media frenzy was on. Young people across this country are outraged that they risk having their right to vote taken from them.

You might think this is some fringe, crazy idea, but, of course, One Nation sit in this chamber and negotiate day in, day out with the government. They say all the time, 'We want to get our policy through.' They demand concessions from the government. They wanted to cut the ABC. They wanted to beat up on the ABC and the public broadcasters. Now look what's happened: the government have rolled over for them.

So we can't be complacent. Young people have every right to feel terrified and angry that Senator Pauline Hanson and One Nation want to disenfranchise them come the next election. It is simply unfair that we live in a nation where we could send somebody to war, where we sign young people up to be in the Defence Force, and yet we have a senator in this parliament who says those same young people don't deserve a right to have their say in a democracy.

It is just mean-spirited, pathetic and gutless that One Nation would say these young people don't deserve their right to have their say because One Nation don't think that young people vote for their political party. Well, guess what: not every person in Australia believes and agrees with what the Greens say, not everybody agrees with and believes in what the government says and not everybody agrees with what any political party in this place says, but that doesn't mean they don't have a right to have their say and a right to cast their vote. It is a democracy.

At a time when we should be encouraging more people to participate, particularly young people, it is just gutless and pathetic to have a leader of a political party in this place suggest that over a million current voters should have their vote stripped from them. The arguments for it are that they don't have a job; they don't pay taxes; they don't have any idea of what's going on. Okay, we all know that that's rubbish and not true, but who comes next then?

Once One Nation have stripped the rights for young people to vote, who will they come after next? Will it be Muslim Australians? Asian Australians? If it's about not paying taxes, will it be people on the disability pension? We heard Senator Malcolm Roberts say earlier today that he thinks that people on welfare live better than kings did 200 years ago. Are we going to start taking the right for people to vote away from those who are on welfare benefits?