BTN: Episode 6 Transcript 13/3/18
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
BTN: Episode 6 Transcript 13/3/18 Hey, Amelia here. Thanks for joining me for a massive BTN. Coming up today. • We find out how Australia became home to more than 24 million people. • We reveal what was written in the world's oldest message in a bottle. • And join us for the launch of a special survey that aims to find out just how valuable Australian kids are. Voting Age Experiment Reporter: Jack Evans INTRO: All that and more soon. But we'll start today with a look at Australia's voting age. It's currently 18, but have you ever wondered what would happen if it was lowered? That's something that South Australia's Commissioner for Children and Young People is aiming to test out during the upcoming state election there. Take a look. "Should Australia lower the voting age to 16?" JAMES: I think that people who have enough knowledge and they feel confident in what they want to say and what they want to have a decision in should be given an opportunity to have a vote because their voices need to be heard as well. GEORGIA: Personally, I think 16's a little bit young. I feel like people are still maturing and you know and working out who they are. We don't like... none of us really know anything about politics. RHYS: I do believe that it should be lowered as it gives a voice to the younger students. LALLA: I personally think that if it was lowered to 16 and 17 it would only work if it was voluntary, which means you’d get the people who are educated the people who are passionate about politics who are voting and not the people that don't care. At the moment you have to be 18 years old to vote in Australia. Before 1973, it was actually much older, 21. But that's not the only time Australia's changed the rules around who can vote. Women weren't allowed to vote until 1902 and it wasn't until 1962 that all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were allowed to have their say. Now some people think we should make another change and lower the voting age to 16. It's something the South Australian Commissioner for Children and Young people has decided to test out. By seeing how local high school students like these guys at Scotch College would vote in the upcoming real South Australian state election, if they could. They've asked the students themselves to hold the elections. ©ABC 2018 LALLA: So next Tuesday we'll be holding a mock election for 16 and 17-year old’s. It will mean that students in year 11 and 12, 16 and 17, will get the chance to actually learn how to fill in a ballot paper. Their votes won't actually be included in the official result. But they will be added after the results are released to see how they might have affected the outcome. It'll also help gauge how many young people actually want to vote and what issues they're most passionate about. LALLA: I think it will have an impact definitely for the people involved with youth because it'll actually be able to pin point where the issues are and what the issues are that youth are passionate about. RHYS: I'd say an issue that is important to me was like seeing how many jobs are offered in SA I see many people; many young people move out to interstate to get a job because we just unfortunately don't have enough jobs in SA. So, I would definitely enrol to go see if my voice counts towards what could happen in the future. It might even encourage more young people to get interested in politics. LALLA: I think a lot of the problems come from people assuming that 16 and 17-year olds aren't mature enough. But then again there’s so many adults that don't know anything about politics and what's to say the second you turn 18 you're all of a sudden going to have a scope of knowledge. JAMES: I personally don't have enough experience within politics and I don't feel confident when I'm at the age of 18 and can vote that I won't have enough education and won't know how to do that. For now though, we'll have to wait to find how these guys found their first voting experience. And we'll bring you the full results later this month. Ask a Reporter Have you got a question about our voting age? Ask me live on Friday during Ask A Reporter. Head to our website for all the details. Poll And we'll also make that topic our poll this week. Let us know what you think on our website. ©ABC 2018 Australia’s Population History Reporter: Ruby Cornish INTRO: Okay, over the next two weeks BTN is joining the rest of the ABC in taking a special look at Australia's population. We'll talk about the impacts of population growth and the arguments for and against having more people here soon. But first, in part 1, let's travel back in time to witness our long journey to the more than 24 million people that we have today. People. There are quite a few of them around. But like, where did they all come from? Our planet's gone from one billion to seven billion in a couple of hundred years, and that last billion’s happened in just one decade. So, things are definitely speeding up. Here in Australia we're approaching 25 million and predicted to hit 39 million by 2050. But it hasn't always been such a crowded place, and to understand how we got here we have to wind the clock back quite a bit. It's kind a hard to know what Australia's population was before the First Fleet arrived in the late 1700s, but most estimates tell us there were probably less than a million Aboriginal people living here. Things started slowly but in the 19th century the Gold Rush transformed Australia from a convict settlement into a hot destination and quickly attracted people from all over the world. By the time of Federation in 1901 there were nearly four million people living in Australia and our population was rising steadily. Then in the 1940s the Baby Boom happened. You might've heard the term baby boomer. It's used to describe people born between the years of 1946 and 1961, so it probably includes your grandparents. After the war, soldiers came home and the economy was doing really well, so there was an explosion of, yep, babies. After that things calmed down for a while but since the mid-2000s our rate of population growth's been on the up again. Our birth rates haven't really changed much. In fact, some politicians in the past have asked Aussie families to have more kids, which didn't really work. So why is our population rising faster now? The answer is immigration. Last year it accounted for nearly two thirds of our population growth and it's made us one of the fastest growing populations in the world. So, there are gonna be some more people around. So what? The more the merrier, right? Well, not exactly. Extra people bring lots of benefits, but there can be issues too. You see, no matter where they live, people need all kinds of goods and services. And as our population gets steadily bigger the people providing those goods and services will struggle to keep up. Things like rubbish collection, water supplies, the availability of food, our hospitals and of course our schools. There all things that need to be taken into consideration. So, how are we going to manage it? Can we even manage it? We'll explore the answers to those questions and more on part two of our population special on next week's episode of BTN. Quiz Time for our first quiz. Is there ©ABC 2018 More males in Australia? More females in Australia? Or is it even? The answer is: At last count there were just under 200,000 more women living here than men. This Week in News First up. The leaders of North Korea and the United States have announced they're planning to meet up. Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump have had some very public disagreements, trading insults and even threatening each other's countries with nuclear weapons. But last week in a letter to the President Kim Jong Un said his country's willing to stop testing nuclear weapons and missiles and offered to organise talks between his country and America. President Trump accepted the invite and says it's good sign of progress. But others say people shouldn't get their hopes up. Back home and more than 70 students and teachers have been rescued from a school camp after massive floods left them stranded in Northern QLD. STUDENT: We got stuck at Echo Creek for four days more than we were supposed to be. For 6 days these guys had to wait it out at an adventure park. STUDENT: It was a bit boring because of the rain because we barely got to do any activities. When there was finally a break in the bad weather rescue services were sent in and the students and teachers were taken home and reunited with their families.