Voters get older and participants get younger

An intriguing aspect of Western democracies: as the voters on average get older, the participants seem to be getting younger. The Bagehot column in the latest issue of The Economist draws attention to the new dominance in political advisory positions of callow youths. He could just as easily have been writing about the position in Australia where the gap between finishing university and advising politicians how to run the country has got very narrow indeed. In some ways surely it would be more appropriate if people like Peter Costello and Brendan Nelson were entering politics at their age rather than leaving

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