Commentary on local governance issues

International treaties largely define "child" as someone who is under 18 "or whatever the age of majority is". In my home state, 18 is the age of majority, with a lower age of criminal responsibility (I think 14, but haven't looked that up for this hurried post, so that may be wrong). Thus, at 18, people are expected to function as an adult - earn a living, vote, and so on.

Actually, there are calls for the voting age to be lowered to 16, and I consider that a good thing. To digress on to the issue for a paragraph:

• one of the essential aspects of being able to vote is being able to think critically - to be educated to at least a basic degree, literate, and well informed. In Ancient Greece, where a partial democracy was initially instituted for rich, free men, Socrates is sometimes thought of as having railed against democracy, but he was really (according to this) pointing out the need for voters to be well informed and critical thinkers capable of not being duped or misled. Our education systems today (for all their flaws - some of which is apparent from the care we are showing by examining education closely) are MUCH better than they were even a century ago - both my adoptive and birth mothers left school before finishing high school to start working (one subsequently finished high school and obtained a Uni degree while still a single parent), and young people today receive, in my opinion, good enough education that, as a flawed (just as some adults over 18 have a questionable ability to vote as an independent adult, so too will some younger people - that does NOT invalidate either group as a whole being allowed to vote) and general guide, those who are 16 are capable of voting (note that this doesn't mean "they will vote the way I do, which is how I suspect many adults - wrongly - assess this issue); 
• our access to information, although flawed in recent years by the scourge of "fake news", linked to the age old evil of gossip, is infinitely better than say, when the USA fought its way into existence, when many newspapers were published by putting them on walls for passersby to read; and, finally, 
• I consider it unconscionable that those who are allowed to serve in the military may not have a say, through being able to vote, in wars that they are sent to.

So, we're trending towards lowering the age of adulthood, and that is generally a good thing * . . . EXCEPT for circumstances where some of the background, "taken for granted" stuff is an issue - and that is where our modern predisposition towards research and evidence comes to the rescue.

There is now good evidence that, in the case of foster children, turfing them out abruptly into full self reliance, independence and adulthood at 18 (which I suspect has its roots in a long past decision to shortsightedly reduce spending on supporting foster parents, failing to recognise the broader costs), goes badly, and that such young people struggle. The truth is that such an abrupt kicking out of the home nest doesn't occur for most people, and thus young fostered adults were being treated disadvantageously, compared to others - the very essence of ("arbitrary") discrimination, in many ways, and effectively a breach of our international obligations around children, despite the age of those involved.

In response to that, my home state's progressive government has decided to extend the age at which young foster people will receive assistance to 21 - and that is an excellent thing. 

That is good, evidence-based governance.

There were a couple of other releases yesterday that I wanted to write about, about time does not permit. In brief, those were:

• concerns about a Shire Council: there has been some excellent guidance available through government departments on governance (I've got a lot of that in my [electronic] reading pile, and read enough to know it is good), so it is . . . "surprising" that such fundamental mistakes seem (the invitation to explain has not been responded to yet, so there may yet be a valid reason for the apparent problems) to have been made.
  I was pleased to see that the concerns were specific: "Direction and Leadership; Culture and Behaviour; Decision-Making".
  If I have time, I will try to find out more about this; 
• "smart" inverters for home, on-grid solar panels. I've not found, in the information the press release links to, whether this enables solar systems to stay online during power blackouts or not, and that has been one of the major complaints around such systems (hence my preference for off-line systems, or directing everything through the batteries).

And now, time for my day job.

 * I'm aware that many young people are staying at home into their 20s. That trends goes against the trend I'm discussing, and is a concern. People need to live independently to enable them to mature properly. If you're not self reliant by the time you reach 30, your development as a human may be compromised, in my opinion - whether that happens because your family is wealthy or for cultural reasons.