Same-sex marriage: Will young people send postal votes?

There are doubts over whether young people will feel engaged by the government's proposed postal plebiscite on same-sex marriage.

Supporters of marriage equality protest outside Parliament House in Canberra ahead of the plebiscite debate. Source: AAP

With the postal vote for same-sex marriage looming in mid-September – unless a court injuncts it – there’s a portion of the population who could really sway the result.

According to the Australian Electoral Commission over 85 per cent of young people aged 18 to 25 participated in the 2016 federal election, but over 250,000 of that age group were not enrolled to vote.

Dr Philippa Collin is a social scientist at Western Sydney University, who specialises in the way young people use new technologies.

She believes that young people are “certainly interested” in playing a role in shaping politics and would like to have “more of a say”, but calls postal voting a “complicated strategy”.

“We know that about a quarter of people who are not enrolled to vote on the electoral roll for the last election were 18 and 19-year-olds, so getting on to the electoral roll for first-time voters is an important issue,” she tells SBS World News.

“We also know that young people are twice as likely to be moving house as any other member of the population, which of course has implications for their registered address. So there are a number of ways in which a postal vote could present some challenges for young people wishing to participate.

“I think the best way that politicians can encourage young people’s political participation and civic engagement is to actively recognise and engage with the things that they’re saying and doing, and to show directly in the public sphere how young people’s opinions are influencing political decisions.”

Cost of postal vote 'complete waste of money'

Katie Acheson, the CEO of Youth Action, whose organisation represents one million young people and the youth services that support them in New South Wales, says that those who are eligible to vote – in addition to those who will be 18 by the next election – need to feel that politicians “care and understand” about the issues affecting them.

“There tends to be over 80 per cent support of marriage equality. And I think this $120 million that’s going to be spent on a postal vote is just a complete waste of money to find out what we already know, which is that the Australian population supports marriage equality,” she declares.

“When you don’t hear the issues that affect you being spoken about by the politicians who are asking you to vote for them, it’s really hard to care about what they say, so marriage equality, climate change, asylum seeker policies at the last election came up as the three top issues for young people, and we didn’t see politicians speaking directly to those.”