Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell: Keep it 18 for local elections

Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell says she does not support changing the voting age for local elections from 18 to 16 years old.

It follows a Supreme Court decision on November 21, which found not allowing 16 and 17-year-olds the right to vote was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights, after campaign group Make It 16 appealed a lower court decision on the matter.

The decision on whether to lower the voting age - for either local or general elections - remains with Parliament and will be considered by June.

The threshold to change the voting age for general elections is higher than local elections, which means the former is unlikely but the latter possible.

On Tuesday, Tapsell said for local government the voting age should “stay at 18″, but she admired the “passion and dedication” of Make it 16.

“Locally, we haven’t had a strong call for lowering the voting age to 16.

“We should let kids be kids and enjoy the rest of their schooling years before having to worry about adult issues.”

Tapsell said her first involvement in politics was when she was 14, and she joined the National Party in her teens.

She said she left school and home at 16, and was working, studying and paying taxes, but it was “a very rare occasion”.

“For all intents and purposes I was acting like an adult... [that] is not the case for the majority of children.”

There were other ways young people could “have a strong voice”, such as making submissions to the council, she said.

“There’s no denying that this next generation will suffer challenges far greater than we can imagine currently - whether that’s climate change or housing affordability.”

Tapsell said she was “open-minded” to a national referendum or survey of 16 and 17-year-olds “on whether this is something they would like or not”.

Tapsell was the youngest elected Rotorua district councillor in 2013 at 21, a record beaten in 2019 by councillor Fisher Wang, who was 19 when he was elected. Wang was re-elected this year.

Wang told Local Democracy Reporting he also did not support lowering the voting age to 16 - for either local or general elections.

Wang was part of the Local Government NZ Young Elected Members’ Committee - made up of elected members under 40 years old. The group had made a “consensus decision” to support the Make It 16 campaign, he said, but his personal view differed.

“I don’t support lowering the voting age to 16 yet because I feel we need more civics education first.

Asked if he believed people over the age of 18 were very well educated in civics, Wang said it varied.

He understood the argument that lowering the voting age would help provide civics education, and was not “hard-set” in his position.

“I do see the merits of it and I am a supporter of it, but I just also support actually bringing in that civics education first.”

He said the criticism of a lot of young people was that “they didn’t have a clue” about politics, but he pushed back on the idea young people didn’t care or were not well enough informed.

Make It 16 Rotorua representative Aston Dow, 17, said he felt patronised by Tapsell’s comments.

He said he and many of his friends were already paying taxes, worried about mental health issues and climate change, and were therefore already dealing with “adult issues”.

Dow said submissions were not a substitute for the right to vote.

Make it 16 Rotorua representative Aston Dow. Photo / Felix Desmarais / LDR

He said he was working on starting a local movement and had been further spurred on.

With regard to Wang’s comments, Dow said he - and Make it 16 - also supported bolstered civics education, but he didn’t believe that justified keeping the voting age at 18.

“As a 16 [or] 17-year-old, you can pay tax, I can leave home, I can work full-time, I can even enlist in the army if I want to. I can consent to sex, to medical procedures, I can do all these things... [but] I’m not trusted to be able to have a say in my future.

“In a world like today, where it’s constantly changing - one election cycle could mean decades of irreversible changes.

“We just feel a bit frustrated that people keep talking down to us and writing us off as ‘kids’, where we actually feel we’ve been given all these rights [...] but we’re not trusted to vote for our future.”

Local Government NZ chief executive Susan Freeman-Greene said only four in 10 eligible people voted in local elections, compared to about 80 per cent turnout in general elections.

“There’s a massive gap to bridge and there is no silver bullet. Many voters feel like local elections are complicated, and while decisions councils make have a huge impact on our lives, people often feel like they don’t know what councils actually do.”

She said there had been several recommendations about what would help increase voter turnout, but none had been implemented.

“LGNZ has called for a targeted review to bring together the recommendations from previous inquiries and look into all areas that currently act as a barrier to getting more people voting, including communications, engagement, and mechanisms of voting.

“Lowering the voting age could be one part of a broader set of changes, but if it were introduced we would want to see it supported by a strong civics education programme.”

Local Democracy Reporting is public interest journalism funded by NZ On Air.