Lowering the voting age to 16 would improve the health and well-being of young people, the Medical Journal of Australia (MJA) has proposed.
Independent MP Monique Ryan stood alongside youth advocates and medical professionals in Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday, throwing her support behind lowering Australia's voting age from 18.
"The young people of Australia are dealing with a climate crisis, a housing crisis, a cost of living crisis, and with a HECS crisis," she said.
"It would give young people who often feel disenfranchised … a voice at the table in a way that they do not have right now."
Participation in democracy is the key focus of the Future Healthy Countdown 2030, published in the MJA on Monday.
It has identified eight policy items to help address the multiple challenges that young people face, from mental health struggles, poverty and a lack of equitable education to inaction on climate change.
It argues that political participation at various ages before 25 is critical to health: "fostering social inclusion, empowerment and equity, which are essential for mental and physical wellbeing".
Ryan, a former paediatric neurologist, said young people have both the mental and emotional maturity to make a decision about who should govern them.
"The experience in other countries where the voting age has been lowered has been that you improve participation and understanding of the process if you lower the voting age," she said.
What countries allow voting under the age of 18?
If Australia was to change its voting age, it would not be alone.
In 2007, Austria was the first country in Europe to lower its voting age below 18.
In the past decade Greece, Scotland and Wales have followed suit.
Meanwhile, both Belgium and Germany temporarily dropped the voting age to 16 to allow young people to cast their votes for the first time in June's European Union parliamentary elections.
Amelia Condon-Cernovs, 16, said these countries are proof that Australia is "falling behind".
The year 11 student is part of the Make it 16 campaign and argues people her age already have "a lot of the same responsibilities as adults".
"We can work and we're taxed. We can also join the military, we can consent to medical procedures and we can also be criminally convicted in some states and territories," she said on Wednesday.
"If young people can be sent to prison for their actions, they can also participate in democracy too."
She said lowering the age while students were at school would allow them to be guided through the process so that they could vote for policies that mattered to them.
"I think it's time for politicians to truly listen to young people, not just say they're listening, but actually prove that they care and lower the voting age to 16."
