On September 7 my 19-year-old son will vote for the first time. He is an undecided voter and we have been careful not to enforce our political views on him.
He reads the daily news online and I have little visibility over which websites update him. I have encouraged him to watch the evening news with me. I am successful in that endeavour some of the time. He doesn’t go near newsprint even though my journalist husband brings a selection of the next day’s newspapers home with him each evening.
But he was keen to watch the leaders debate with me last night. My younger son was too. I tweeted rather than commented because I wanted to hear what the boys thought of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott without my prejudice to sway them.
Each leader should be aware of the audience segments they need to impress. For Kevin Rudd, it’s been said over again that Sydney’s western suburbs could win or lose it for him. Tony Abbott still has the female vote hanging over his head. Both have the opportunity to impress first-time voters.
My boys were largely bored by the discussion that wasn’t really a debate. A debate would have had passion. It would have stirred emotions, both in the speakers and in our hearts at home. I was hoping that one of them would have lifted my sons out of their seats with conviction. I didn’t actually care which leader. But neither did. In fact at one point my son declared: “I’ve had enough”, and I had to convince him to stay until the bitter end. It was a bitter end as my son walked away muttering something about an hour of his life that he wasn’t getting back. I knew how he felt.
To the question of asylum seekers, one of my sons asked, “aren’t they really arguing the same thing?” When it came to the GST and increasing taxes, they said, “Hopefully someone will explain what this means for me”. No such luck. They almost glazed over when talk turned to a second airport for Sydney. I asked them if they understood why we need one. The first-time voter said yes but couldn’t understand why we just keep talking about it if it’s so important. Out of the mouths of babes.
I was keen to hear their reaction to the same-sex marriage discussion. You think you raise your children with certain values but you just never know as they are hard-wired from birth in so many ways. The boys listened intently to Rudd’s expression of support for same-sex marriage and told me they couldn’t believe anyone would think it’s ok to tell anyone who they can and can’t marry. (That statement may also be a hangover from an accidental viewing of the TV show Please Marry My Boy a few days earlier.)
Neither of the leaders did the job of informing my teenage son of policies that would move him in one direction or another. It was a missed opportunity for them as my Twitter-feed and Facebook newsfeed indicated he was far from the only first-time voter hoping for a sign.
With just four weeks left before we go to the polls, I am hoping that my son can find some certainty from a political party’s communication that will connect him to the vote he is about to cast for the first time in his life.
Is that too much to ask?