Political bickering ‘turns off’ younger voters

Young voters in Australia want more thoughtful engagement with policies and are not interested in conflict and bickering between major political parties, an Australian National University academic told a public forum in Canberra.

Mark Kenny, a former political journalist and senior fellow with the university’s Australian Studies Institute, said younger voters wanted policies that look to the future.

“Younger voters who refresh the voting pool in their hundreds of thousands between each election–more since the same-sex marriage survey encouraged enrolment–are distinctly unimpressed with the dull adversarialism of major party combat,” he said.