A recent survey has found most young people don't rank politics highly, even though they recognise they should be more knowledgeable.
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ALP says it has found work for around 1.5million Australians since 2009 and is introducing the high-speed National Broadband Network to help benefit businesses. Furthermore, the Liberal-National Party promise to deliver one million new jobs in the next five years and create more jobs by reducing business costs and cutting taxes as well as by cutting red and green tape costs by $1 billion every year.
Despite these promises, the Future Leaders Index found that future leaders’ political interest is, at best, tepid. They do not rank politics highly as an interest and see little differences between the main parties.
However, whilst over half admit they don’t feel politically knowledgeable, they recognise that this lack of understanding is unsatisfactory.
Looking at the findings in more detail, only just over one third (37%) state they are really interested in politics, almost half (44%) believe that the political parties are so similar that it doesn’t really matter who wins the election and 6 in 10 (55%) state they don’t feel very knowledgeable about politics in general, with females and younger future leaders even more apathetic.
However, two thirds clearly recognise they should know more, with just a third (32%) stating they don’t feel they need to understand politics, at least for now.
The results definitively show that future leaders do not rank politics highly as an interest, with little perceived differences between the main political parties.
Yet whilst over half admit they don’t feel knowledgeable about politics, they recognise this lack of understanding is far from ideal.
Such political apathy is widespread across the Australian populace and The Future Leaders Index demonstrably shows that it also spreads to the brightest young minds in Australia.
Nevertheless, future leaders are concerned about who gets elected, with only one third (34%) stating they don’t care who gets in at the next election.
Investigating voting intentions in more detail, it’s clearly evident that future leaders are leaning more strongly towards the Green vote when compared to the total voting populace.
In terms of subgroups, the Greens are especially popular with females, older future leaders and postgraduates.
Whilst voting for the Greens is often seen by political commentators as more of a strategic vote (ie, more of a vote against the main political parties rather than a positive vote for the Green party), these voting results and also future leaders’ strong concern around the environment suggest this is a positive vote for an alternative party rather than a display of ‘‘back-turning’’ against the two major parties.
The research points to a group of people who are concerned about the environment that they will inherit (and likely manage) and are voting Green as a heartfelt response to what they see as being very real growing future environmental concerns.
The research, commissioned by the Co-op (an omni-channel retailer and the go-to voice for Australia’s Future Leaders) is part of a three-part report entitled the Co-op Future Leaders Index https://www.coop.com.au/media/white-paper-june-2013.pdf. This index, the first of its kind in Australia, analysed the opinions of over 2000 university students, aged between 17–29, to uncover the needs and aspirations of the nation’s Future Leaders.
