Is youth an impediment to politics?
Simon Wilson, for The Panel, RNZ, July 27, 2020
Too many young people are going into politics, with too little life experience. Is that right? I think it’s nonsense.
Some of our best politicians have been young. Their youth has been integral to what makes them good. And for decades, it’s been true on both sides. The great Marilyn Waring became an MP at 23. So did her colleague Simon Upton, and he became a cabinet minister at 32.
Waring was one of the most admirable, hard working and principled MPs we’ve ever had. Upton had no trouble adhering to integrity in public life either.
In Labour, Helen Clark was an MP at 24, again, in the company of many other young MPs.
Jacinda Ardern and Nikki Kaye were 28, Chloe Swarbrick, like Marilyn Waring, was 23.
On the other hand, there have always been older members of parliament, their minds made rigid by their “life experience”, who clog up every chance of progress. We can all think of a few right now, I’m sure.
Age isn’t a determinant of quality. But if anything, it’s talented young people who will save this country. We need more of them.
The problem isn’t youth. The problem is bullies, who come in all ages.
They don’t “slip through” the screening system. They’re not aberrations. So often, they are what the system is designed to find.
Bullies. With their cocky confidence, their determination to get their own way, their low capacity for compassion, their belief other people are inferior to them, their need to be admired, and their conviction that other people are put on earth to gratify their personal urges.
Bullies, with, above all, their entitlement: their belief that they deserve all the rewards they can get their hands on because they’re special ...
If you meet a bully – in Parliament, in business, in leadership anywhere – the chances are they were chosen for the job because they are bullies.
They’re described like this: “A fine young man who knows how to get things done. And, gosh, he’s a bit of a larrikin too.”
The problem isn’t that they’re “young”: entitled older people make horrible bullies.
It’s the nods and winks involved in “get things done” and “bit of a larrikin”. All the weak people have to get out of the way because, you know, boys will be boys.
That’s what has to stop.
