I’ve been reading a lot around the social media about the concerns that the youth of today showing no interested in politics. With an election looming it’s a bit of a stumbling block as we attempt to encourage those who haven’t enrolled to vote, to do so.
OK, maybe they’re not interested in politics, but surely they must have some interest in their future. Maybe they need a gentle push, a whisper in the ear that the two are unavoidably intertwined.
In the United States Bernie Sanders attracts an enormous following with the under 25s. Bernie Sanders, from what I know of him, agitates for social and economic programs that put people ahead of profits. The average American youth doesn’t want a future that was engineered by governments who ignored ‘the 99%’ in favour of the corporate elite. The consequences of such will of course be devastating.
I can’t see it being much different in Australia.
We are witnessing a widening gap between rich and poor. We are doing nothing to mitigate the devastation of climate change. We are handing billions of tax payer’s dollars to the elite at the expense of the middle and lower classes. We are technologically barren and insist on remaining so. We have snubbed science and the opportunities of the future. We are placing a decent education out of reach of most young Australians. In a nutshell, we are robbing the youth of Australia of their future. And I say ‘we’ as we as a country have voted in a government that in only one term has dismantled the social, economic and environmental initiatives of recent governments. Imagine the destruction of just one more term. That’s all they’ll need.
So to the youth of Australia, if you want the life that many Australians have enjoyed for the last few generations, then you can have it by simply voting for it. Please enrol to vote. Now.
The Prime Minister will most likely be calling an election shortly after the Budget is handed down in a couple of weeks. Once the election is called you will have only seven days to enrol. If you miss out . . . we will all miss out.
Cathy McGowan, the Independent member for Indi says it a lot better than myself. In a plea urging young people to vote she urges:
“To the young people … now more than any other time, we need you, the country absolutely needs you … We need young people to say here is how the world can be made better for us, here is how we can create jobs, here is the infrastructure and education we need and I’m prepared to put my hand up and be involved”.
The future is in your hands!
