Island Life by David Slack

104

Are you old enough?

The months ahead:

July. Government offers Sue Bradford the Fiji high commissioner post, hoping she will abandon her bill to lower the voting age. "This social engineering is killing us, Sue" says an email leaked to Nicky Hager.

August. Bradford accepts High Commissioner position, uses little-known MFAT loophole to send Keith Locke in her place.

September. John Key swings behind Bradford with 'the kids r lrite' campaign, promising to support the bill "as soon as 100,000 kids have texted Helen Clark with the message: jon4me".

October. Government announces extension of local loop unbundling to cellular networks. Outages of previous month "will not b repted", promises David Cunliffe. "Kids really like to use the txting. We need a network that can cope."

November. Government backs Bradford bill. Class sets of Bridled Power to be provided free to all secondary schools, democracy blogger Idiot Savant to get dedicated funding from vote:education. Stinging editorial in the DomPost asks: "Are some voters more equal than others in Helengrad?"

December. Huge turnout for Matt McCarten and John Minto's Supersize My Vote! rally in Queen Street: 3,000 high school students in Aotea Square and another 14,000 inside the CD stores and Burger King.

January. John Key delivers state of nation speech at Burnside High School pledging a vote for "every kid who aspires to have one". Delighted by rapturous reception from party faithful, but asks where the kids are.

February. Bain retrial gets underway. TV cameras follow the Dunedin One for three weeks of saturation coverage. Bill passes, but doesn't make the six o'clock news.

UPDATE: A post on the discussion thread reminded me that this, too, is apposite.

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