Pauline Hanson: Raise Australia’s voting age from 18 to 21

Pauline Hanson wants the voting age raised from 18 to 21 because to her, young people don’t have enough life experience. The One Nation leader’s idea was a direct response to the Greens party, which advocates for a lowered voting age of 16.

Hanson told Channel Seven’s “Sunrise” on Monday that young people who can vote “don’t have any idea.” She claimed that the Greens wanted to lower the voting age because the party thought it would benefit them.

“They’ve never held a job; they’ve never paid any taxes; they have no understanding of politics,” Hanson, 63, told Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. “And you want to reduce it because you think it will increase the Greens’ vote. They have no idea.”

In the same split-screen interview with “Sunrise,” Hanson-Young, 35, fired back, saying the other senator has outdated views. “I can hear Macklemore now. Grumpy, old views,” she said, referring to American rapper Macklemore, who performed at the National Rugby League (NRL) grand final in Sydney on Sunday.

Macklemore performed his pro-equality song “Same Love” at grand final even after critics claimed he was politicising the sports event. “I’m getting a lot of tweets from angry old white dues in Australia,” he told ABC TV last week. Instead of backing out, he promised to “go harder” on promoting same-sex marriage, which Australia is now conducting a nationwide poll of.

Hanson-Young said the One Nation leader was “out of touch” with her “terrible” idea. Hanson replied that her younger colleague was being “un-Australian.”

Australia’s voting age was last changed in 1973 after a nationwide push for the youth to vote. It was lowered from 21 to 18 partly because of the argument that young people were already paying taxes and serving the country at 18.

This is hardly Hanson’s first controversial comment. In June, she said autistic kids should be separated from other students in the classroom because they were holding back their classmates.