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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-02 Daily Xml
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Voting Age

The Hon. S.L. GAME (14:42): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before directing a question to the Attorney-General regarding calls to lower the voting age in South Australia.

Leave granted.

The Hon. S.L. GAME: The British government recently announced plans to give 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote in all UK elections. Here in South Australia, the South Australian Greens have called on the state government to lower the voting age for state and local government elections, arguing that these teenagers 'deserve a real say over the decisions that shape their future'.

Meanwhile, late last year The Australian newspaper reported that South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas, together with his NSW Labor colleague Chris Minns, backed the introduction of a social media age limit and wanted that limit to be as high as we can make it. My questions to the Attorney-General are:

1. If the government is re-elected in March, can it categorically rule out any move to lower the voting age in South Australia?

2. If it cannot provide that watertight guarantee today, can it explain how leaving that possibility open fits coherently with the Premier's desire of lifting the age that teenagers can access social media? Is having South Australian teenagers being able to vote but unable to access social media a foreseeable situation for South Australians under this government?

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Attorney-General, Minister for Industrial Relations and Public Sector, Special Minister of State) (14:43): I thank the honourable member for her question. I think we were all distressed for a moment that One Nation and the Greens might be on a unity ticket on a particular issue in this chamber. But fortunately in the latter half of the question I think the chamber breathed a collective sigh of relief—that in fact they were taking opposing positions, the natural order of things restored.

In relation to raising the voting age, we have looked with interest at what is happening around the world in the UK, but I can confirm that is not something we are pursuing in South Australia—raising the age. What we are particularly interested in is making sure that civics, democracy and how government works is better understood by younger people. I know that led by my colleague the Hon. Blair Boyer, Minister for Education, there is a determined effort to make sure that in South Australian schools that is better understood and better taught.

Just in the last couple of weeks, I was down at Adelaide Oval, where there were some significant forums running as part of that civics and democracy education piece, and there were quite a few members from right across the parties and Independents, from both houses of the South Australian parliament, who were there interacting with—I think they were largely year 10s and 11s. I think that is an exceptionally healthy thing for our democracy. But in terms of raising the voting age, no, that is not something we are pursuing.

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