Change voting age

Melanie Carroll calls for votes for 16-year-olds (If a disgraced dairy director can vote, why can’t 16-yearolds?, Nov 20). I have just turned 78 and I’m on her side.

I’m part of the largest cohort of oldies in the history of Aotearoa. There are more of us and we are living longer than ever before. Half a million superannuitants enjoy on average 10 more years – three extra votes – than just 40 years ago. We have an electorate increasingly tilted towards the perceptions and interests of the old.

We are also the luckiest generation in history. We have consumed the planet with our ambitions and greed. We believe our riches and demands are justified because ‘‘we have earned it’’. So we vote to continue that good fortune.

The young see an entirely different world, a world which the oldies have taken for granted to exploit for their economic benefit. They know who will pay for climate change and the destruction of the biosphere – they will.

And that’s before we get on to housing and economic justice. The young are ready to vote. Opposition to change is driven by the politics of self-interest. That self-interest threatens the future of generations to come.

Geoff Prickett, Waikanae