Young Australians need to guide their parents and grandparents to vote Yes

The younger you are, the more likely you are to be planning on voting Yes. Now you need to ensure your elders listen, writes BIANCA LEVIN.

The advocacy of the youth is palpable and brave. I know this, because I grew up in a Jewish youth movement that was fearless and attended a Jewish day school that praised social action.

 In these contexts, young Jewish people demonstrate our pursuit of social justice and our mobilisation towards issues that we believe require change in Australian society.

Like many of the youth in 2023, being guided by my values is important but equally there comes a time where we need to enter into the adult world, get a full-time job and start to establish ourselves in the professional world. We try to balance these competing interests by volunteering. It is demanding but we do it because we care.

I sit on the board of Stand Up, the Jewish social justice non-profit that launched Kol Halev in conjunction with JCCV and am also a lawyer. On hearing that the Voice to Parliament referendum would take place this year, I took a leave of absence from my nascent career to join Kol Halev. I am one of many young people dedicating themselves to this movement for this short, precious time.

To me, this referendum is a once in a generation opportunity to step closer towards achieving justice and reconciliation for our First Nations people. I was lucky to have the support from my law firm to stand up at a time when I felt history was calling.

Young people often see the need for change before the rest of the community. This is why we are generally the most progressive demographic in a society. In the same-sex marriage postal vote, 80%, of young people supported and advocated for a Yes vote. In the upcoming Voice to Parliament referendum, recent polling places 62% of 18-34 year olds as trending towards voting Yes, compared with 42% of those aged 35-54 and only 23% of those aged over 55 or older.