Media release – The Local Party, 10 May, 2022
15 YEAR OLDS SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE
Scott Rankin has spent 30 years advocating for the rights of young people and working alongside them through the work of award-winning national arts and social change organisation Big hART, and believes that 15 year olds should have the right to vote.
The 2018 Tasmanian Australian of the Year is running as an independent candidate for the marginal seat of Braddon in north-west Tasmania under the umbrella of The Local Party, and says that political parties want to prevent young people from voting because they realise they are more progressive.
“If we are gaoling young people, robbing them of JobSeeker, making them feel unsafe, ruining the chances of home ownership, denigrating them when they show environmental leadership, and actively destroying their future for short term political gain, then they should be allowed to vote”, says Scott Rankin. “They should be allowed to vote us out. They should be allowed to vote at aged 15.”
“The major parties are ignoring young people in this election. All policy should be filtered through the lens of young people. They are our future and we are stewarding the community they will inherit”, says Scott Rankin.
Scott Rankin asserts that Australia has abandoned young people to poverty, eco anxiety, education injustice, digital injustice, family violence injustice and mental health injustice. 50% of the children in Australia’s prisons are Aboriginal young people, from just 3% of the population. Little money is spent on primary prevention, long term approaches, youth specific acute care or mental health first aid. In the electorate of Braddon where Scott Rankin lives and works, young people can wait six months to see an overworked counsellor with a full case load.
Scott Rankin believes that Australia should give young people the right to vote at aged 15, and then make it compulsory at 18. If elected he would fight for the rights of young people and ensure they would have a seat at the table, working alongside him to deliver primary prevention initiatives, implementing climate change initiatives and creating democracy programs in schools and communities, and polling stations at skate parks.
Scott Rankin has been working with young people all his life. After completing school in Sydney he became a youth worker on George St working with homeless young people. In the 1980s he came to Burnie and began working with disaffected young people coming from families who had known generational poverty and unemployment. In 1992 he co-founded Big hART whose first project ‘Girl’ told the invisible stories of young offenders, with the organisation going on to work in over 52 remote and disadvantaged communities across Australia, winning 45 awards including Human Rights awards, Institute of Criminology awards, a World Health Award and the Telstra Tasmanian Charity and Business of the Year in 2017. Scott has driven acclaimed projects in prisons, family violence hotspots and isolated Indigenous communities, leading projects which expose issues around suicide, family violence, autocide, juvenile justice, slavery at sea, the Maralinga nuclear tests, Indigenous intellectual property, climate change, social housing and homelessness across Australia.
