John MacDonald: 16-year-olds voting wouldn't be the end of the world

Some people will be thinking that we’re going to hell in a handbasket today.

Yesterday, Jacinda became a Dame and today, we’ve got a panel of experts saying that the voting age should be lowered to 16. 16! They’re just babies. No idea what they're doing.

That’s what some people will be thinking. Not me, though.

This independent panel also thinks the MMP threshold for getting into Parliament should be lowered from 5 percent to 3.5 percent.

Other things it's recommended include a referendum on changing the parliamentary term from three years to four years.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - I have no problem at all with the voting age going down to 16. Why’s that? Simple really, because there are people of all ages who are bozos. Not just 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds.

You get people my age who are bozos. There are people your age who are bozos. And what I mean by bozos, is people who don’t really have much of a clue what they’re doing when it comes to voting and ticking the boxes on the voting papers. These bozos of all ages base their votes on all sorts of weird ideas.

You know - won’t vote for Chris Hipkins because he’s a ginger. Won’t vote for Christopher Luxon because he’s rich. Won’t vote for the Greens because they saw this guy in the street once wearing a Green Party t-shirt and you should have seen the state of his toenails. Don’t want those dirty commies running the show. If you can’t clean your toenails, how can you run the country?

See what I mean. But, for some reason, people think 16 and 17-year-olds couldn’t possibly be trusted with this burden of responsibility that is voting. Very serious business. Not for kids.

But I don’t think that way. Because, when it comes down to it, if 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds could vote, it would only be the ones remotely interested in it who would actually do it.

And guess what? They wouldn’t all be voting for the loony left. Because that’s what some people think, don’t they? They think that anyone under the age of 18 would be ticking the box for Labour and the Greens. And some people seem to be terrified of that happening.

But I don’t think that would be the case at all. You hang around with teenagers for long enough, and they’ll tell you that quite a few young people think David Seymour, for example, is the bee's knees.

Whether it’s his social media activity or what - I don’t know - but a surprising number of young people are what I would describe as frustrated ACT voters. If they could vote, they’d be voting ACT. So that puts to bed the idea that giving younger people the vote would be a victory for the left. I don’t believe it for a minute.

So it’s a yes from me for lowering the voting age from 18 to 16.

As for extending the parliamentary term from three years to four years. This has to happen. In fact, it should be at least four years because how many times have we lamented the fact that politicians are so fixed on the next election that they only think three years ahead.

I want politicians who think ahead way further than that - and so making the parliamentary term four years is a no-brainer, as far as I’m concerned.

It’d be the end of three-term governments - because who would want the same government for 12 years?

So I’m all for the four-year term.

The recommendation I wouldn’t support, though, is the panel’s thinking that the MMP threshold for getting into Parliament be lowered from 5 percent to 3.5 percent. I think that would be disastrous.

New Zealand First would love it - because they’d romp in at three-and-a-half percent. But think of all the other fringe outfits that could also get 3.5 percent of the party vote.

Brian Tamaki’s outfit - much more likely to get three-and-a-half percent, than five percent. The New Conservatives. Lord knows who else. And can you imagine what Parliament would be like then?

It’d certainly be fun to watch - but that’s about it. So it’s a no from me in relation to lowering the MMP threshold.

The others, though - changing the voting age to 16 and extending the parliamentary term to four years - they both get the tick from me.

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