In the lead-up to the federal election, upstart spoke to six first-time voters from all walks of life – from politically engaged activists to uninterested students – to understand how they felt about the election and their relationships with politics. Despite people’s differences, we found that many people don’t feel included in politics, regardless of their desire to be.

In May, these six people voted alongside 870,000 newly enrolled voters. We asked them questions both before and after their first time. Here’s what they said, starting with a politically active young person who finally got to vote on the issue she cares about.

Emma Giles is a politically engaged first time voter and a first-year journalism student at RMIT University.

Giles has been involved in activism since 2020, when she joined School Strike 4 Climate because she felt not enough was being done to address climate change. She remained in the group until she graduated high school.

Now she works two part-time jobs while studying and someday hopes to make a career of writing about issues that matter to her. When voting this election, policies regarding climate change, housing, and human rights were important to her.

How prepared do you feel to vote in this upcoming election?

I’d say, quite prepared. I feel that having come from a lot of youth political advocacy and that School Strike background means that it’s something that I’ve become prepared for over the years of being exposed to politics, even without an official voice in democracy.

Where do you get your political information from?

I’d say it’s a combination of the news, but also, I think social media is having an increasing role. A lot of the political campaigns rely on that social media aspect to try and appeal to young voters like myself. I guess a lot of it probably comes from social media, but also, I do live in an area where there is quite a lot of political advertising because it’s quite a contested seat, this election.

Do you think your friends and family influence your political opinions?

Definitely. The people that I’m surrounded by quite often have pretty identical beliefs to what I do. I don’t know if that’s intentional or if it’s that sort of… we’ve just all learnt and grown-up in an environment that sort of encourages a particular idea, but I’d say that the conversations that I’ve had with people throughout my childhood, like my family, have influenced what my values are today and will ultimately influence how I vote.

What kind of issues will be defining your vote this election?

I think housing. I know as a uni student, I don’t want to live with my parents at home forever, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to have a stable income that will allow me to move out.

Climate change, always. Especially because for a while there, it was such a big topic in the news, but it’s kind of been pushed back in politics, and people seem to have just sort of made terms with the fact that the climate is bad, and [are] no longer looking for ways to fix it or make changes.

And I’d say, just like overall people’s rights and making sure we aren’t going backwards in time, that we’re still striving for creating an equal and equitable society for all.

Why is policies about change climate important to you?

I think just growing up and being able to see all these things happen, and then also realising that nothing was being done to fix the damage that was occurring, it felt like it was necessary to do something and try and work towards something like building a positive, safe environment. That sort of continued for me because, really, we’re still not saying any significant change to the way that the world views the climate and not doing much to fix it even though we’re seeing… these continued worse natural disasters across the world.

Do you feel that politicians care about the same issues as young people?

I find that in conversations about young people, all politics seems to be [doing] is trying to appeal to young people in terms of their advertisement strategies but not in terms of their actual policies. I think a lot of the major parties are kind of neglecting what will actually influence the future of young people, more focusing on immediate things and not shaping the world into something that could possibly benefit people over more than just a three-year term of whoever is the leading party.

Have you ever felt that your vote didn’t matter?

I think a big thing that’s impacted how I feel about my voting is just learning to understand what the Australian voting system actually is and that it’s quite different from systems that get a lot of attention, like the US system. Learning that Australia uses a preferential voting system has made me feel secure in that what I vote for will actually potentially have an impact on the outcome of an election and that nothing can be wasted.

When and why did you become involved with student activism?

So, I became involved in the School Strike in 2020. So, it was on the back of the big, big strikes in 2019. I became involved in student activism because I felt like there could potentially be a role for young people in building the future and our voices at the time was very, very unheard and neglected particularly by politics, but it shouldn’t be that way, just because someone doesn’t have the ability to vote at an election because of their age doesn’t mean that their voice and their values aren’t as important as other people.

I feel School Strikes was a particularly welcoming environment for young people that were new to the world of activism, and it was very much fighting for climate justice in a future that was safe for all in terms of being environmentally safe, but also building an accepting community.

Have you noticed much political disengagement from your peers outside of activist circles?

Yeah, definitely. I think part of that comes with the rise of red pill content which just makes it very difficult to be online and it becomes quite an unsafe space for a lot of people. And then I also think it becomes very confronting for a lot of young people, especially those that don’t feel educated to speak on topics and so politics can be a very confronting space and it’s not particularly accessible to young people now, because everything very much filled with political jargon that if you’ve never had explained to you before you’re going to feel completely lost in that world. And people don’t know how to start, so they can’t.

You’ve just voted for the first time. Tell us about your experience.

I voted at a pre-election polling booth in Brunswick a couple of days before the election. It was the main and possibly only pre-polling booth in Wills, so it was swarming with volunteers. A lot of flyers and a lot of volunteers ready to have a chat about voting.

I found it particularly interesting because I knew a hundred percent who I was going to vote for going in and the order of my preferences, but it was clear many probably didn’t, which is why it’s worthwhile for so many voting leaflets to be handed out.

I had some genuinely constructive conversations with people in line about the policies of candidates. Four out of seven candidates were present, and I spoke to both of the key candidates, Peter Khalil and Samantha Ratnam. [With] Ratnam, I had a particularly interesting conversation about the importance of young voters and the values young people hold in politics. Overall, it was quite exciting to finally have a role within the political makeup of the country after years of waiting.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Article: Angelina Giannis, Nykita Pate-Weatherley, Cam Burt and Josh Grobbelaar

Photo: Supplied by Emma Giles and used with permission.