Liam Hehir
The government has named an expert panel to look into election laws, including the voting age. They all seem like pretty talented and credentialed people. No doubt each of them uphold the highest of professional integrities in their various fields.
Based on their public comments, however, it seems to be a fairly left-wing group. The obvious exception is Robert Peden who, as former electoral officer, is not really on the record with any kind of political comment. The rest of the panel, on the other hand, falls pretty squarely within the comfort zone of the Labour Party.
Because these are accomplished professionals, I am confident each of them would bristle at the idea that they would be doing the government's work. There will be no undue influence. You can bet that they will work independently of the government to produce the report.
A locomotive also moves independently under its own power. It still goes where the tracks lead it too, however. And we've seen from the innumerable other working groups proposed by the government, independence is not always sufficient.
There will be no doubt, for example, that the panel will recommend reducing the voting age to 16. How could it not? The virtues of such a move are the received wisdom within the government-academic milieu which has supplied 100 percent of the expert panelists.
And yet New Zealanders overwhelmingly reject the idea that 16 year olds should have the vote. A poll by Curia found that 88 percent were opposed. And if you think that's tainted somehow, by the pollsters affiliation to the National Party, then consider that a TVNZ poll found that 85% were opposed.
Granting the vote to school children is less popular than inmate voting. Let that sink in.
But what if the people are just wrong? After all, there have been times in history where granting the vote to women or racial minorities was controversial. Isn't the voting age just like that?
Not really. Your gender or race are immutable (in a legal sense, at least). Your age is not since every person who is now a child will, one day, become an adult.
Unless we're willing to allow little kids to vote in elections, everyone accepts there has to be some arbitrary age requirement. If we lower it to 16 then why not 15? And if 15 then why not 14? And so on and so on.
Where we draw the line is a political decision rather than an expert one. A panel convened to provide technical advice on the voting age ought to limit itself to advice on how the age should be reduced if this is considered desirable by the people's representatives.
But if all the panelists and all of their friends happen to be of one mind on reducing the age then is it realistic to expect that they won't recommend that the age be lowered. I don't think so. Particularly given that it could well be that not a single person on the panel takes a contrary position.
Why is the government doing this? I suspect that as with the capital gains tax, it's just looking for cover. The tax working group of a few years back was clearly designed to produce a report recommending a CGT so that the government could deflect some criticism by cloaking its decision in the aura of expertise.
I suspect we will see something similar here. The voting age is going to be voted on in a private member's bill of Green MP Golriz Ghahraman. Change requires 75% of the House of Representatives voting in favour so it's unlikely to pass - but it does put Labour in an awkward position.
The path of least resistance for Labour is probably to vote in favour of the bill knowing that it's going to fail. That will placate its activist base for whom the politicisation of childhood is almost an article of faith. Government MPs will cop some heat for voting for such a deeply unpopular reform, of course, but being able to point to an expert report may diffuse some of that criticism.