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The case for a blatantly discriminatory Australian voting system
(www.theguardian.com)
A place to discuss Australia Politics.
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A maximum politician age would be a preferable first step if considering age caps.
Australia has preferential compulsory voting. If people here wanted to vote for a geriatric local representative then so be it. Better for the people to make that decision and to be able to take it back than to live under the boot of an autocracy.
Since we elect local and state representatives and not a tyrant any old person has to exhibit some level of political ability to navigate party politics to the front bench.
We cop a lot of distorted shit from US politics here. To the point we have lost MAGAs wandering around. The average age of their reps is 57 and their senate is 65. Their tyrant is an 80 year old with obvious dementia. Our PM is 63 and the average is 52 here. I want to see more 30 year olds in parliament and I think the average age needs to be closer to 40. I think we do this by getting young people away from their phones and into community orgs and public service not by age restrictions. How are we going to level up our young people to take on public service? It is a struggle to fill the positions on local sporting clubs and community groups. Scrolling on your phone is not participation.
I would vehemently endorse such a bill. Under the guise of 'All Australians retire at x'. I'd propose that number to be ~70 years old.
Interestingly, our politics aren't too bad at this. Only 4/226 members in parliament and senate are over this age (they're all blokes of course). Contrast to the USA where this is a far bigger issue - over a third of their senators are over 70 and a fifth of their house members (not sure what the term for those is) are over 70.