WordPress.com



Speak Up- KōrerotiaYouth engagement in elections21 December 2016MaleThis programme was first broadcast on Canterbury’s community access radio station Plains FM 96.9 and was made with the assistance of New Zealand on Air.FemaleComing up next conversations on human rights with “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, here on Plains FM.SallyE ngā mana, E ngā reo, E ngā hau e whāTēnā koutou katoaNau mai ki tēnei hōtaka: “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”.?Tune in as our guests “Speak Up”, sharing their unique and powerful experiences and opinions and may you also be inspired to “Speak Up” when the moment is right.Welcome to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, ko Sally Carlton tōku ingoa. Today’s topic - te kaupapa o tēnei rā: Youth engagement in elections. And I’m pretty excited to say we’ve got some members of the Christchurch Youth Council - the ?tautahi Youth Council - here with us and also someone from Youth Voice Canterbury. So I think it’s going to be quite a different topic for us and it’s nice to have some real young people along which makes a bit of a change sometimes. Now, if you guys could just introduce yourselves that would be fantastic. SofieSure, my name is Sofie, I am 19 years old and I’m the Treasurer of the Christchurch Youth Council. At the moment I am training to be a nurse and I do a lot of volunteer work through different organisations. SallyWhat kind of volunteer work? SofieSo I work at 298, the Youth Health Centre and I’ve recently been put in a role of a radio lollipop volunteer at Christchurch Hospital which is really exciting. TeiSo my name is Tei and I’m 17 years old and I am an Executive Member of the Christchurch Youth Council and like Sofie I’m also involved in different groups and volunteer for different organisations around the city. I have a particular interest in human rights but also just like international human rights as well and international law. I am with the UN Youth as well and I’m just finishing high school. SofieDo you know what you want to do next year? TeiYes I’m going to attend University of Canterbury and do a degree in Law, Political Science and Spanish. SofiePretty cool. TaylaKia ora my name is Tayla and I’m the Co-Chair of Youth Voice Canterbury. I am doing a Bachelor of Social Work, I’ve just finished my fourth year, I handed in my last assignment at 6am this morning. I really enjoying volunteering, my passion is really around youth participation whether that’s in local government or to do with wellbeing or environment, just young people having a say about what’s important to them. I believe that’s a human rights thing as well and so I just like to take different opportunities to really promote where young people can get involved. SallyOne thing that’s obviously a common thread between all of you is volunteering and it works well in terms of what we’re talking about today, youth getting involved. Just to kick the conversation off: What do you see the benefit in volunteering being? TeiI think in volunteering you really get to realise who you are as well and that’s obviously not what it’s about but if you volunteer you can definitely see other peoples’ lives, see what they’re doing, see different perspectives on the world as well as helping people and everybody wins in the situation so it makes you well-rounded and then you learn. So that’s what I think on the topic. SofieI just find it really empowering and I just love being able to work with people in a role that I might not be able to have right now, like obviously I couldn’t just work at 298 because I’m not qualified but having those positions and those roles to kind of give me an idea of what I want to do later on and I love helping young people and just working with them to kind of have their voice, it’s really cool. SallyWhen we’re talking about youth, how do you guys define it? TeiAbout 12-24 is the general youth spectrum. TaylaThat’s defined by the Youth Development Strategy for New Zealand, 12-24. TeiI know in UNCROC which is the UN…SallyConvention on the Rights of the Child. Tei That I believe is up to 18 though, not 24. People are looking at getting that raised so that’s interesting. TaylaIt’s quite interesting as well because Youth Voice Canterbury is a network of different youth councils and youth participation groups that we have quite a few cultural groups and ‘young’ is considered… To us it might be quite old but to them it’s still quite young, young professionals’ evenings… One of our youth participation groups, one of their members is 30 and they’re still considered a young person and they participate in everything that we do. So I think it’s quite a solid definition by the Strategy but it’s also quite… Not tangible… But something that’s really flexible. SallyI was speaking today with some older people and they were saying they don’t ever feel… They still feel like they’re teenagers in some ways. So it makes it difficult. SofieNo we look at it like brain development as well which has been moved from 21 to 24 now so that’s quite interesting. SallyDo you know why it’s been moved back again? SofieBack to 24? Not precisely but just through nursing stuff I’m aware that it’s because our brains have been… We’re still finding out more about the brain development and it’s looking like it’s further along than we thought it would be. TaylaSo I’m 22, I’ll hold onto it for as long as I can. SallyAnd this show is particularly around youth engagement in elections and why is that an important issue for you guys? SofieI see it that the future is everyone’s but we’ve really got to focus on engaging our young people because this will be their home soon and we are only young… Young people are turning 18 now and up to 24…TeiThis is their home though already, that’s my thought, this is their home and a lot of young people… Some people are being pushed to move out of Christchurch, especially Christchurch and Canterbury, by their friends. I don’t know what’s happening in other cities, I have heard that it’s still the same, they don’t want to stay in their home circles but now because people have realised that lots of people are because trends change and things and I just think that many want to know what’s happening, what to know about where they’ll be living. And they don’t think that’s where they go for it, they don’t think elections is the time and the place which is a little interesting because policies that are made by people who are on community boards and who are politicians - not necessarily career politicians but just people who are decision makers - actually they surround everything someone would want to know. They surround the education that young people will be getting and it’s really important and a lot of people believe that elections are a time that when we’re trying to get things like young engagement we’re trying to pull people into the politics of it all but really we’re just trying to inform them of what they want to know. So that’s kind of why it’s really important. SofieAnd young people have such different views to older people that have been voting for a long time so we’re really getting this different influx of information. Like, young people are probably more passionate about having things to do in the city because they’re getting bored whereas adults are probably more interested about pay and roads and everything that they’re involved with. So it’s really getting this whole load of different information for everyone. TeiThat’s what the young people are coming into, they want to know what they’re getting into when they become an adult. TaylaFrom my point of view when it gets around to election time what the politicians try to sell is what they can do for you, what their vision for the future is and what their commitment will be to future citizens. And young people are citizens now but they are the future citizens of Christchurch.But young people as they stand are very focused in the now, it’s really hard even for me beyond what am I going to be doing beyond this year. I’m really in the moment and a lot of young people live in the moment but when it gets to elections you need to sit down and look at, OK what are all these people offering? What’s going to benefit me? And that kind of requires a lot of forward thinking and I think that’s a really interesting mix, trying to get young people to think, OK so what do you want from your city? What do you want for your future and who is offering that and who should you vote for? It’s about highlighting how that’s really relevant. TeiThe engagement through the events by groups like YVC - Youth Voice Canterbury - or the Christchurch Youth Council are important because it means that people get to engage and not actually be too stressed about it, if you look at things at home and say, Oh I’ve got to think about this, this and this for the future then it gets it all a bit too much but if you attend an event then maybe it’s a little bit more separated and manageable. TaylaSo I think young people are… You know you live your life and elections are kind of like something that just happens whether you engage in it or not. It’s going to happen and so why should I care? And it’s kind of, like, bringing it… If young people are down here and elections are this thing it’s about how do we bring that down and make it relevant and tangible? And I think engagement, events and making it fun, making it relevant, making it something that young people want to be a part of and can see the value in. SallyThat seems like a perfect place for our first break and Tei we’re going to have the song that you’ve chosen. MUSIC BY THEIA – ROAMSally Nau mai hoki mai welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”. We’re with Sofie and Tei from the Christchurch Youth Council and Tayla from Youth Voice Canterbury and we’re discussing youth engagement in elections.And in this segment I’d like to focus a little bit on what’s just happened in the recent local body elections. So we just had elections right across New Zealand for our local councils and I know that you guys were busy doing lots of activities trying to engage youth in the process - making it relevant, as we were talking about before - so it’d be great to hear about what were some of those activities you were trying to do. TeiThere were lots! Do you want to go first? TaylaSure, so we…. Youth Voice Canterbury, the Christchurch Youth Council - and we partnered with PYLAT which is the Pacific Youth Leadership And Transformation Council - we partnered to run two events called Youth Focus and we held one on the east and one on the west and that was an event where we brought together young people, the community board members and councillors. And we got questions from young people prior to the events that we put to the community board members and the councillors and it was just a bit of a Q&A and an opportunity to network and kind of what we were talking about before, create an environment where elections and what’s happening actually seem really relevant to young people. There was also presentations as part of that, to inform young people about what are elections, why it’s important to vote, where democracy comes from and how the elections work across Environment Canterbury, Christchurch City Council and CDHB because it all happens at once and it’s so confusing. SallyYes I’m not sure I fully understand it, to be honest. TeiAnd lots of people think, Oh it’s just the local body for the Government but it is also the Environment Canterbury and DHB here, like Tayla said. And we had some of those candidates along as well so we did have, like Tayla said, existing community board members and councillors but we also had people who were running for the first time.But we could actually really in person feel where they were coming from and what they were truly about which made a lot of people think about what they wanted for their city. I know that I had feedback as a member of CYC, not from people that I knew as friends but people who just came up to me and said I’ve come to this event and now I can say to my parents I’m staying here next year, I’m still going to high school or I’m going to university here and I now know that I want my parents to vote for this person or this person because of what they can do for me. So it’s about being a community and that’s what we tried to make those events about. Like, having been on the organising committee I definitely think that was a big goal and we had the survey - like Tayla said, we had 37 people answer that - so we want to get those statistics of having people answer our surveys up next year when we hopefully run one for the future events, run one for another election. SallySo can I interrupt though, what was the survey asking? TeiThe survey was just asking what the important issues were for young people like ranking the issues that we’d listed and then asking if they had any other ones that they wanted. And then asking if they had questions - that’s where we got the questions from which is really cool - to ask candidates. SofieAnd we also had the two Mayoral candidates who came along as well and it was like a 20 minute debate where they could kind of bounce of each other and talk about issues which was really cool for us to see because obviously in the elections, I guess, their main audience seems to be the adults. And they’re like, OK so this is what we can do for you and this is what we’re wanting to do but it’s like, how as a young person do we bring that back to our level and say look well this is what I want, who is going to do that for me? So that’s kind of why we had the whole event was to look at the issues that we thought were the most important and hear what they had to say about them. So it was really exciting. TeiThe thing about the ages we all are is we’re in an in-between stage, that’s why it’s 12-24 because we’re not children anymore so it’s not like they’re pitching to the adults what they want and then they can decide for the kids who are having a young family, it’s more and more becoming about what we want in our minds and as our own people which is really interesting and that’s why it was so amazing when we had… It was over 500 views overall on our live streams. TeiIt shows how many young people are so interested in these events. TaylaWe want to make the events as accessible as possible so we live Tweeted the main points of every candidate and also live streamed both the events on Facebook which saw some good engagement. SallyWhat were the main issues that these young people were bringing forward? SofieThe top one was wellbeing. TaylaSo things like wellbeing, housing, transport, environment - and these are all big issues for adults as well, don’t get us wrong - but I think when you’re pitching to a younger audience it’s a different spin. When you’re talking about housing it’s about becoming a first home buyer and a deposit and how accessible is it going to be live in the city. For transport - public transport is really relevant because most young people don’t have a license. Youth wellbeing and mental health is such an important issue in Canterbury, particularly at the moment.And so it’s about these are issues for everyone, but what are you going to do for young people in particular? And the Q&A, the opportunity for questions is really cool. Young people themselves could ask questions from the audience and so there was that real passion when people could get up and challenge candidates. Especially ones who have already been and served a term: So OK you’re saying you’ll do this but you never… So again that’s that making it really tangible and exciting. TeiAnd I think overall on a lot of those levels we had sustainability come up so much, like social sustainability, how we can keep that conversation going, around the transport again and it was in sustainable housing as well. It was really, really interesting to think that because Christchurch is a city that has so much opportunity to be whatever we want to be and like we said before, the young people are the people who will be shaping it into that, spending the most time making it that way and how we want it to be and having actually I think one of the biggest influences. So that was cool to see that they want that for our city. SallyIf we’re thinking about the work that you’ve done in terms of trying to engage young people, did you see that reflect in voter turnout? Do you have any sense of how many young people actually responded? SofieSo we don’t have any statistics on how many people voted but we do have that between 18-24 [year olds] 66% were enrolled and 25-29 [year olds] 76.8% were enrolled to vote. I’m not too sure how many people did vote. TeiWe don’t know about the young person voter turnout in general but the voter turnout overall in the local elections here was apparently 38.34% which is very low and something that I find saddening but interesting and we’re going to keep working at it through our different groups to try and put it forward to young people. And when you think about the age group that we keep mentioning - the 12-24 [year olds] - it’s actually 60/40 out of that roughly who get to vote because you’ve got 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and then you can vote at 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. SallySo the 60% is in that voter bit? SofieYes 60% is in the voter bit. So we can actually be doing a lot more, I think, and we’ll focus a lot on that. TaylaAs well a lot of young people who came to the event… It’s really hard to correlate the event and how successful it was to how many people voted because a lot of the young people we’re trying to engage can’t vote. So it’s installing that… the idea of democracy and getting involved before they vote so that when they do vote they realise the importance of it but it’s also saying, OK you can’t vote but we want to acknowledge that what you think about your city and what you want to ask candidates is just as valid even if you can’t vote. SofieAnd let someone else guide that through because I’m personally voting for the first time, like only being part of the Youth Council was I able to really truly grasp what I wanted to vote for. Most of my friends didn’t vote at all and I asked why and they were like, Oh well I don’t know any of the candidates and I don’t even know how to vote. And this is the thing that Tayla is saying, we should be engaging them before they turn 18 so that when they turn 18 they can vote they know what to do. Because people are not voting because they don’t understand. SallyWell that’s another great spot to have another break. Sofie, we’ve got your choice: ‘Read All About It.’ Was there a reason you chose that one? SofieI find the song incredibly empowering, it’s really my song to kind of keep doing what I’m doing even if it’s a bit hard sometimes and it’s just really getting a voice out there for anyone and that if you have something valid to say or if you have anything to say just say it. SallyYes it doesn’t have to be ‘valid’ does it? Everyone has a different interpretation of what valid might be. SofieExactly. MUSIC BY EMELI SANDE – READ ALL ABOUT IT, PART IIISallyWelcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, I’m your host Sally Carlton. We’re with Tayla from Youth Voice Canterbury and Tei and Sofie from Christchurch Youth Council discussing youth engagement in elections. We’ve just spoken about youth engagement in the local Christchurch elections, the fact that a very low voter turnout generally, although we’re not sure how that relates to the youth necessarily. And I think in this segment it’d be really cool to think about the recent elections in America and how engaged people were with that - including young people (as far as I can tell, coming from a slightly different demographic to you guys) - and just to have a reflection on why we think people were so engaged with that.TeiI have seen a lot of engagement all over pages I run and my own personal Facebook page and I think the thing is though because I’m on CYC I know a lot of people who are really, really engaged in our groups already so my… I don’t know if my view on it is actually the view on it. SallyThere has been some really interesting commentary around these ideas of social media bubbles and as people who are presumably very politically engaged in the world and in democracy we kind of socialise with people who have those same kinds of views. TaylaI think the election really brought up something that just hadn’t been seen before. I live with two males who are 22 and 23 and they have no interest in what I do. It was like pulling teeth trying to get them to vote but I refused to live with people who wouldn’t vote in the local elections and I tried to talk to them about what was going on locally and they just don’t care. But we would be there… We were sitting in the lounge and they’ll say to me, Oh did you see what Trump said? Did you see this article about Hillary Clinton? And I was like, Well how can you be interested in what’s going on over there and not really care about what’s happening in your own backyard? So I think you probably have more of it because we are in our political kind of bubbles but it just expanded beyond that this year and that’s what blows my mind. TeiI think the thing is, there is the biggest deal about America being this leader of the free world and I feel like Obama really, really enforced that - no matter your views on him or whatever - I think that’s definitely something he did. But I think the thing with this election is that it’s just become so big because of the extremism. We haven’t seen this much extremism in many, many years. We have a lot of different sides coming at us and I think the thing is that also that people don’t really understand the dynamic, or people here don’t really understand the dynamic of American politics sometimes and that it’s actually not that unusual for someone who is already a bit famous, a bit poncy - like Trump - to go for a candidacy. We’ve seen that in history and that is OK in America generally but because of who he was I feel like there was a lot of jokes and things around, even before some of the aforementioned extremism was happening. TaylaAs well that extremism with that comes controversy and drama and then memes and then jokes and I think that really engages young people because it makes it exciting and something that is coming out every single day. SofieWell to be honest in social media - where we young people tend to communicate the most - is there was definitely a lot more of American election information coming than probably from our local elections and I think that comes from the fact that we’ve got two candidates that are extremely different and in America you can really only run if you have a huge amount of money and we’ve had Hillary run being one of the first possible female presidents and then Donald Trump coming from being one of the only ones that’s come through who has no political background at all and so we’ve had this huge clash of ‘Oh my gosh!’ and people are so scared of either one. I mean, neither of them are particularly ideal but people are afraid. TaylaIt’s even interesting listening to your language just then, you were saying “We have two candidates” like they’re our candidates as well - because they’re not but it feels like they are because they’re so in our face all the time. SofieBut you know they’re president and the way that America acts has an impact on us definitely, they’re still our president as well. TaylaNo Trump’s a….SofieThe world looks huge from the outside but actually we’re all the same. SallyInterconnected. SofieI’ve just been overseas in America and seen all of this happening and America is not that far away, it’s a 13 hour plane trip on a plane and then you’re there but it seems so far away. TaylaI agree that it is so relevant to us but then how do we separate that and say yes that is relevant to us as young people but what’s happening here is actually just as relevant if not more even from my point? I think local body government has even sometimes more of an impact on us than national elections. And so everyone is so focused on yeah this huge macro but really it’s this micro that’s going to impact us most so we really need to drum up some interest in that. TeiComing from some perceptive - because I’m half American as well, you wouldn’t know listening to my voice nowadays - but that is the thing there. Until the whole Trump/Hillary thing happened and still local body is the biggest deal for them, they’re having the public meetings, they’re having the forums and the talks and it may be a different system but it’s really… They’re all really engaged and people say you can’t see that in presidential election turnout and I don’t think you can but locally there people really care. So I have tried to kind of bring that back, like you’ve said, and say, well why don’t we care like this? I was reading more about Hillary Clinton each day than I was about Chl?e Swarbrick who is amazing and isn’t local for us but is in our country and was running for a local body election so I think that’s just something to really consider that if that country is having that much influence over us then why aren’t we listening to some of the things that we’re saying about their local politicians? Like Barack Obama, he came from local body government and then from… They don’t see the progression that really happens in all politics. But it’s all relative. SallyOne thing that struck me when I was looking at my Facebook page was one of my friends had posted something along the lines of “My seven year old son came home from school today” - the day that the election result had been announced - “worrying about a nuclear bomb.” And it’s like, how is someone at the age of seven…? That’s sort of what’s filtering down through school, through peers, through the system in which he’s living. SofieWell it’s so hard because though we’re living in a world of social media it’s really hard to know what is fact and what is actually true. And just being in America recently there was this whole scandal of like, Oh is Hillary Clinton really sick? because it was all over the media. They’re trying to come up with these stories to almost make it bigger than it is and so we are left in the receiving end of not actually being in America and seeing it but just seeing what’s happening on social media and so we only see the stuff that they want us to see and it’s just really hard and it is scary. Personally when I heard the results of either of who it was going to be I was scared, I was like, oh my gosh this is going to be like World War Three. People are so set in their minds of who they wanted that if you were in the middle people are attacking each other online. My friends were attacking each other online, oh you support Donald Trump or you support Hillary Clinton, like, oh you are a terrible person. It’s democracy! People can have an opinion of whatever they want; we don’t need to attack each other. TaylaI think that’s one of the biggest things that comes from it around raising awareness of young people is not only encouraging them to get involved in elections and take up their right to vote but also installing that respect for difference in opinion because I think that’s a huge thing that’s come out of this election is respecting that not everyone is going to agree with you even if you think you’re right. SallyAnd I think now trying to say, Well whether you voted for Trump or not he will be the President, try and support that, there’s no point continuing fighting. TeiNo one wants him to fail as a president, no one wants that because, like I said, there is the biggest deal made about America being a big deal so it’s going to influence us what he does. And personally - and I’m sure all organisations do as well - I wish him all the best in doing what he can do. So it’s just thinking about it in that way.But to address the whole awful thing of what kids are saying and what kids are hearing: it’s just terrible that a child could think like that and could have that surrounding them so it’s just about installing more the idea that there’s always going to be something negative happening and you cannot control that but there’s also always going to be something combatting that whether or not that negative thing is actually true or false or going to affect your or whatever, if you care about it you care about but then you look into it and realise there’s this which is the force against it. SallyTayla, you touched on the idea of memes and one question I’ve got for you is this idea of satire and using jokes and memes to engage people -particularly young people, who are probably most likely to get involved in that sort of approach - positive or negative? TaylaI think when we’re talking about what makes it seem relevant to young people, it’s relevant, it’s there, it makes you laugh, you might see a meme saying one thing and you’re like, OK I might look more into that . But then it also kind comes back to what Sofie said, what’s fact, what’s faction? People get a bit silly with it. So I’m not really sure. Sofie But if it stops people from attacking each other by having these jokes and silly things rather than personally going out to attack someone then I think they have a positive place but then obviously you can’t take them too far. TeiSee it is, it’s about taking it too far and I’ve seen a lot of young people make it this thing that… It’s because young people have a lot of, and New Zealand in general has a lot of, banter culture. Someone will put something forward and say, “This is funny, this is just a meme, this is just a laugh” but to someone else it’s no and it is about not taking it too far. But also I’ve seen a lot of people get really upset over things that are just supposed to be jokes so when does this kind of big deal I can see… It means social commentary, that was the original purpose, they’re going to exist it’s just around how you use them and that so-called banter being in a safe space. Like, personally, I always try and show my friends memes that would rather be a little bit controversial rather than tag them in them or just post them because that’s going to be different to every single person you’ve got on your Facebook or Twitter feed or you’re in a group chat with. TaylaI think with the memes as well, especially around the US elections, you look at it and you’re intrigued and you might have a strong response but at the end of the day we don’t live in America so I think we are able to take it more light-heartedly. Again - we share in it, we’re having a laugh but people there are living that. Looking forward to next year, maybe ones around New Zealand elections probably won’t be so hardcore and honestly I think, when I think about it I’m not thinking such controversial memes I’m just thinking funny… You know that duet where they were singing that Dirty Dancing song? I watched it, I shared it, I cracked up, it got me engaged and thinking about the candidates. So I think the funny ones are harmless. TeiYes exactly. There’s a point but it is about teaching people what that point is and, like I said, a safe space no matter what. So if you know that someone is on your Facebook who you would want to communicate with again isn’t going to like that or isn’t going to really think it’s funny then why are you sharing it? I saw Tayla shared that thing and I laughed at it because it’s funny and like I said I’ve got the perspective of the two completely different worlds at the moment that I do have family living in America, I’m going to be with my family right after an inauguration, it’s just the reality of it. SofieBut then America voted that way. If they didn’t want it they wouldn’t have voted that way. TeiYeah but then there’s the popular vote. SofieThe whole system is rigged. TeiBasically we can’t do anything about the electoral college which is popular vote, we can’t do anything about who the upper house is going to be or Trump’s council, we can’t do anything about Trump or Hillary or whoever we have controlling this free world except wish them the best. And if that involves helping the process along with social commentary I think that that’s perfectly fine as long as its social commentary and not fuelling the hate. SofieWell I kind of disagree a little bit in the way that I feel like we can do stuff about it, we can talk about the things that we’re passionate about and we can say, Hey look what you’re talking about here is not right. TaylaYou’re talking about tangible doing stuff; you’re talking about raising awareness. SofieYes. TwiI agree with that and I do that, obviously…SofieYou know if we’re not happy with something don’t just sit there and let it happen, we can encourage people to talk about it. TeiObviously talk about your issues and again reiterating that it would have to be a safe space though because I saw all over Facebook a lot of people were just getting attacked. SallyOK well we’re just going to have our final song now. Tayla, you’ve chosen ‘Youth’ by Troye Sivan.MUSIC BY TROYE SIVAN – YOUTHSally Welcome back to “Speak Up” – “Kōrerotia”, I’m your host Sally Carlton and we’re with representatives of the Christchurch Youth Council and Youth Voice Canterbury discussing youth engagement in elections. Having thought about the recent local body elections in Christchurch and elsewhere around New Zealand, and then the big dramas of the presidential elections in the US, what are some of the learnings that you think you’re going to take from 2016 as we move to our national elections next year? TeiI think that the learnings that we take is that there’s going to be a lot of room to balance things out because we were just talking about the whole social commentary thing which I think… Like I said, there’s room for it but I also in personal experience of an opportunity I had to go to parliament and hear youth speak as a youth MP which was so great to help me along with. I feel like people have said, Oh people don’t take this seriously, people don’t take elections seriously and our parliament seriously because of all the jokes and the banter. So there’s a balancing of that and how that can be relevant and how that can be social commentary and how can it be so great that we’re a community in New Zealand, we’re small but we’re diverse. So just thinking about the diversity of who that’s going to affect and just balancing it too. TaylaI think New Zealand has a laid-back view of our own politics and I know before I was talking about the funny side of it but maybe bringing out some of that controversy, highlighting the real extreme differences in opinions of all the different political parties and then highlighting how that effects young people and trying to highlight things that will affect young people and make them care… Totally lost my train of thought now, I was thinking about the youth elections but something that really… That was a controversy of the US elections for me - it was just the controversy - every day I was like, Oh my gosh what did this person say, oh how did they react, what does that mean for them? And can we bring that to our local elections to keep young people intrigued?TeiSee the thing is, I completely get what you’re saying but I also disagree with you on a level because we want that but we also don’t want that controversy because I know a lot of people in New Zealand - and I’ve spoken to them - who believe that our politics, it’s all governed on basically a game of handball between the party leading the house and the opposition. No matter who those parties are at the time it actually doesn’t matter. It’s like, if you do this I’m going to do that and it’s honestly just opposition for the sake of opposition. So there will be a lot of thoughts around that hopefully and around how we can combat that so yes everyone knows who they do support and what they’re actually saying though and not what they’re saying like, Oh well this person said this so I’m going to say that and really get them down in the dumps or whatever. We want to support each other. We haven’t got that many people in our country, why are we not sticking together? more kind of thing. SofieWell New Zealand kind of has, especially with politics, we kind of have this thing of, OK politics is something that I keep to myself and we don’t talk about it because everyone is going to attack everyone for it and we’ve just got to keep it to ourselves because it’s just a thing that we don’t talk about in our society. And it’s kind of getting that to a point that we can have our opinion and we can talk about it and that’s fine, it doesn’t change who you are, it doesn’t make you less of a person if you support this. SallyIt’s a challenging one and you’re all in positions of responsibility as members of the Youth Council, as members of Youth Voice Canterbury, and we were talking about this a little bit before and the idea that if you post something on social media there’s the opportunity for people to react to that either positively or it can be quite negative and that then reflects on you. I’d be really interested to hear what you feel about the role of people in your sort position in terms of that front-facing, trying to get people engaged. TaylaWell the role of Youth Voice Canterbury is different to the Youth Council in that Youth Council engage with young people and are about empowering them to have a voice. Youth Voice Canterbury is based a lot on skill development and installing in young people the confidence and skills to have a voice. And I think part of that is saying actually it is OK to talk about politics. I think critical debate is something that we need to talk about. But it goes both ways, we might post something and people criticise it but my response is, Well that’s my voice, that’s my opinion and you don’t have to like it but that’s what I think and it goes both ways. We have in the past, candidates have posted things on Facebook about youth issues, about young people and we have every right to go and comment on that and say actually we don’t agree with you. So it goes both ways. TeiAnd just coming from a standpoint of what I think you were trying to get at with what your responsibility is as a person who is associated with these things, everyone is going to have their own views, as you said, and I’m kind of like you: If you don’t like it basically shoo shoo get off my Facebook or deal with it. If you don’t like it don’t “like” it. But because I’ve got that responsibility, I posted on the rant about the candidate who I didn’t support, one of them that I had posted on Facebook and I did this about all of those posts. I said “Disclaimer: this is my personal view, this is not the view of CYC who I was involved in through Parliament, this is not the views of the people who I know through ECAN and such or my fellow UN Youthers.” So it’s just really thinking about doing things like that because then it is actually just definitely you so people are still allowed to have their own voice that isn’t around what the groups support. SofieYeah I mean we have a responsibility obviously as an organisation that we can’t say “OK as CYC we support this group” but as an individual that’s totally fine, you can go on Facebook and say, hey look I support this and this is why I support this. But obviously as an organisation we don’t go around saying, “Look I’m a member of Christchurch Youth Council and I support the orange party” or something. TaylaThere are a lot of groups do have social media policies, actually you need to be wary about posting things like this. TeiCYC does. SofieYes. TaylaAnd I’m totally backtracking on what I just said on we all have our opinions and it’s OK to have that but it is also acknowledging that people will make links between you and your groups even though you did disclaim. SofieWe had that as an issue with one group. TeiThat’s why personally I never post anything that’s even really that negative, it’s just putting a spin or saying… Something different about your thoughts and about what you’re sharing. SofieI mean the truth is there will be people out there who disagree with you, that’s just life but it’s learning to not take that personally as something that’s wrong with you but just saying hey look what that person is saying shows more about them than it does about you. SallySo you’re encouraging debate. SofieAbsolutely. TeiDebate never used to be optional, debate used to be completely compulsory and I’m obviously thinking about the olden days of democracy and I know that CYC definitely encourages people to think about their different opinions as well so I can say I believe. SofieI think people are afraid and I also think that people are like, it’s so hard… Like, on the news, the Labour Party says they’ll do this and the National Party says that they’ll do this but then neither of them do what they’re saying. And so people just give up on it. I have my voice but look, they’re actually not going to listen to us. TaylaOh they’re probably going to listen to us all but its election year next year, can we trust…SofieExactly, now they will but you don’t know what they say… Like, the Party will say, Look we’re going to do this and everyone is like, OK let’s vote for them and they don’t do it. So it’s really hard to put together are they actually telling the truth, are they just saying this to get our votes? It’s really hard to trust what’s coming through. TeiIt comes back to what is fake and news on social media. Again: the bubble. SofieEven TV news. TaylaI think as well, looking at what our role is kind of promoting what is fact, not saying… It’s about laying out the options and supporting young people to make an informed choice. TeiOur responsibility comes back to events that we run like having people face-to-face saying this is what we are going to do, this is fact or these are the numbers, they may not be numbers that you like but this is fact. And then promoting that and reiterating that and not necessarily promoting certain parties and certain people just saying look we’ve had this come through, it’s going to help you make a choice. SofieYes not being biased. TeiIt’s got to be positive in the end. TaylaAnd I think we bring that from our local youth focus events where we said here are the candidates, the community board members, here are the issues, there’s what they think, we’re not going to tell you who to vote for or who best fits your needs, we’ll leave that up to you but at least you the information to make an informed decision. SofieAnd keep them accountable for doing the things that they say. SallySo if we’re looking forward to next year, just quickly to round up, what would you hope to see? SofieIdeally I’d love 100% voter turnout for young people but that’s totally not realistic but just getting as many young people informed about their options and about the parties and what they’re offering and educating them on how the whole process works because I never knew before I was in the Youth Council - and still right now I’m probably not 100% sure how it works, I don’t think anyone is - but just getting people the right information and as much of it as possible so that they can make the right decision for what they want in their lives. TaylaFor me, we talked about how a lot of focus is on Trump and Hillary but really there’s a lot of movement at the local level even for us, we’ve just had local elections in our own backyard but there wasn’t that much thought about them. For me, I think there’s going to be a lot around here, the two opposition parties but then you guys are the Christchurch Youth Council and we’re Youth Voice Canterbury so I think that we have a responsibility to bring the national elections to our focus and look at our MPs - you actually get two votes: the party vote but then your electorate vote - and I think that’s something that’s going to be really relevant for young people because that will impact you, that’s your local representative, that’s kind of your feed up. And so for me I guess taking learnings from our discussion just now and the importance of the local as opposed to the national and implementing that here next year. TeiHaving had a lot to do with party politics just through stuff I mentioned I before, as well as educating the youth or re-informing the youth or just specific things that specific groups of the youth in general want to know; like, telling them that. I reckon we do that, we see what they want and what they want to know but then we take that back to the House and say, well this is what the youth want to know, if you want to be back again next year, why aren’t you implementing this, why aren’t you doing that? And we can definitely do that at a local level with our MPs. SallyCool, big plans then. Well I’m sure we will be hopefully looking at this in another few months. We’re out of time for today unfortunately but thank you so much for coming and sharing your experiences and your opinions. And if you’re listening to this, we’ve got our Facebook page and our Twitter account and there’s also transcripts online so check them out. Kia ora. ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download