PM Kevin Rudd was answering questions on ABC1's "Q and A" programme in the Old Parliament House last night, and one of the questions put to him was whether or not he personally was in favour of raising the legal drinking age to 21, as is the case with a number of American States.
Mr Rudd who is a declared Christian* (and who also regularly attends an Anglican Church), stated that his personal opinion was that he would like to see the age raised to 21 but that it would be policy which should in due course be subject to a proper debate.
"But I believe in something called evidence-based policy, which is if the evidence is there and it's capable of being proven and it works, then we look at these things and make a decision. But you're asking me for a personal impression, and you don't run policy that way."
- Kevin Rudd, ABC Q and A
This of course raises an interesting question. How do we respond to this? If it was personally up to me, I would leave it at 18.
Age of Majority Act 1919
s3. Subject to this section for all the purposes of the laws of the Commonwealth-
(a) a person who, on or after the day of commencement of this Act attains the age of eighteen years, attains full age and full capacity on attaining that age.
The legalese of this Act basically states that at law, the everyone who is aged 18 and over is legally held responsible for their own actions. This single piece of legislation, in one fell swoop defines when someone can vote, when they are allowed to purchase cigarettes and alcohol, when they can be conscripted for military service and when they can face a court for their own actions if they break the law.
The reason for this lies in conditions which helped to forge the legend of this nation itself. In WW1 or what was then called "The Great War", it was possible for 18, 19, and 20 year olds to die in the service of their country on some far flung field, and still not have any say about the government which directed them there.
Having said this, I think that it is obvious that some people will knowingly behave stupidly irrespective of the law. If all the government does is change the law, and the underlying attitudes which create a problem in the first place do not change, then all that happens is the criminalisation of something for which people are held responsible.
Unless you changed the minimum drinking age to something like 40, you're still going to get youthful exuberance leading to a significant proportion of alcohol abusers. From what I can tell (although admittedly I am no expert and haven't researched the issue in depth, so I'm willing to be proved wrong) there isn't a significantly reduced incidence of alcohol-related problems in somewhere like America, where the drinking age is 21, as compared to Australia.
The problem with drinking in Australia isn't age, it's the culture/attitudes of both young people and adults who encourage drinking to the point where they cannot image any event or occasion without it, or create occasions just for getting completely wasted. Raising the age will not fix this; what needs to be addressed is why people (of all ages) are drinking so much so regularly. In Italy and France where the drinking age is as low as 14, the culture for some reason doesn't seem to lead to mass cases of drunkenness and violence.
The obvious question is what purpose does the law itself serve. If the law can be shown to shape and modify society for the better, then there is a strong case to be made for changing it, but if it can not, then questions need to be asked.
Laws exist in principle either as a guideline, a boundary, an instruction or a standard. The question which I ask runs concurrently with that standard, namely is it right to assume that someone has full legal responsible for their own actions, whilst at the same time denying them reciprocal privileges under the law?
That is a little bit more difficult to answer. Personally, I think that if you do hold someone fully legally responsible for their own actions, then those reciprocal privileges should follow; thus the age of 18 should remain...
... or perhaps we should just raise the Age of Majority to 21 and be done with it.
http://www.abc.net.au/compass/s1362997.htm
- This makes for some interesting reading.
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