Young Australians will live with the consequences of today’s climate decisions for decades. Lowering the voting age to 16 would give more of them a say in the policies shaping their future.
Young Australians in their lifetime will face a climate emergency. They face intergenerational injustice. We should reduce the voting age from 18 to 16 years.
The World Meteorological Organization predicts that annual global temperatures during 2026–2030 will be between 1.3°C and 1.9°C above pre-industrial levels. This will have dire consequences, from rapidly melting ice sheets to ghostly white coral reefs. The catastrophe in Nepal reminds us of what is at stake.
The heating of the planet is also likely to have dire consequences for people living close to sea level in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Myanmar and the South Pacific. The World Bank’s Groundswell analysis projected that up to 216 million people could become internal climate migrants by 2050, across six regions under a pessimistic scenario. The drivers include water scarcity, declining agricultural productivity and sea level rise.
Woodside’s Scarborough gas project will add to the problem. It is expected to emit roughly 876 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime, contributing to measurable global climate damage and human health impacts. Research published in npj Climate Action links these emissions to 484 additional heat-related deaths in Europe and estimates that 516,000 people globally will face unprecedented heat exposure. Each future mass bleaching event in the Great Barrier Reef could see an extra 16 million coral colonies lost due to the warming impact of the project. The study also estimates that the emissions could push more than 356,000 people outside the range of climate conditions in which human populations have historically been concentrated.
If our government was serious about climate change, it would introduce an appropriate carbon price which would force polluters to change or pay and significantly improve the budget position. We need a phase-out date for all fossil fuels.
The scientific consensus of concern for and by young people is clear. The UN secretary-general, Guterres, has said that young people and future generations will bear the heaviest burden of the consequences of current policy failures. He has repeatedly described the climate crisis as a death sentence for young people in vulnerable countries.
Professor James Hansen – the NASA scientist whose 1988 congressional testimony is widely credited with bringing climate change to public attention – has been the most specific about intergenerational injustice. Hansen has said that we are in a situation where we are handing young people a situation that is out of their control. We have robbed them of their future without their consent. He subsequently joined climate litigation as a guardian representing future generations.
Lancet research has documented substantial and growing health risks for children and adolescents from climate change, including heat exposure, infectious diseases, food insecurity and air pollution.
A major international study published with The Lancet Planetary Health surveyed 10,000 young people – including 1,000 Australians – aged 16 to 25. It found an alarming level of climate distress. Study co-author Caroline Hickman said that our children’s anxiety is a completely rational reaction given the inadequate responses to climate change they are seeing from governments.
In Australia, UNSW reports that YouGov polling found that more than three in four young Australians are concerned about climate change, and two-thirds believe climate concerns are having a negative impact on youth mental health.
A submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters by the Australia Institute, Australian democracy in 2025, stated that: “If we also recognised the voting rights of 16- and 17-year-olds in Australia, we could have included another 600,000 or so Australians in the recent federal election.” The submission was prepared by Bill Browne, Skye Predavec and Frank Yuan. With just over 18 million people on the electoral roll at the 2025 election, that would expand the potential electorate by about 3.3 per cent.
The voting age of 21 became associated with legal majority in medieval England, particularly in the development of English common law. Australia inherited the age of 21 as part of the much older legal conception of adulthood. The federal parliament standardised the voting age at 21 in 1902, while excluding most Indigenous Australians and imposing other racial restrictions on voting rights. The federal voting age remained 21 for 71 years until it was lowered to 18 in 1973 by the Whitlam government. The votes-at-16 proposal has been advocated in Australia by the Greens and youth advocacy organisations.
Scotland extended voting rights to 16- and 17-year-olds for its 2014 independence referendum. Austria has lowered its national voting age to 16, while Germany, Belgium and other European countries allow 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in certain elections.
The most significant current development is that the United Kingdom could join Austria in allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to vote in national elections, in what the government is calling a landmark effort to “future-proof” its democracy. The legislation has passed the Commons but is still before the Lords. Former Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer specifically justified it on the basis that “if you pay in, you should have the opportunity to say what you want your money spent on.”
Research cited by the OECD suggests that voting at 16 to 17 years can strengthen political socialisation and may encourage longer-term participation, partly because young people are still embedded in schools, families and communities.
In the 2025 Lowy Institute poll, 63 per cent of Australians aged 18 to 29 regarded global warming as a serious and pressing problem, compared with 46 per cent of those over 60 – a 17-point gap.
Mission Australia’s 2024 youth survey, involving almost 18,000 Australians aged 15 to 19, found cost of living was the number one concern, cited by 56 per cent, followed by climate change and the environment. That does not invalidate the concern of 16- and 17-year-olds on climate change, but it does show that young people do not have a single-issue agenda.
A 2025 poll of Australian voters commissioned by Solutions for Climate Australia found that 79 per cent of Gen Z adults surveyed said that climate action was an important consideration in their voting decision.
Older generations have dropped the ball on climate change. Hopefully it is not too late. The people most likely to be severely affected by the heating of the planet should be able to vote about their own future. It’s time for 16- and 17-year-olds to be able to vote.
John Menadue is the Founder of Pearls and Irritations and a board member. He was formerly the Editor-in-Chief. John was the Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and CEO of Qantas.