The political editor at Otago University student magazine Critic, Annabelle Parata Vaughan, says a new cohort of young MPs will help engage young people in politics.
Saturday’s election brought Te Pati Māori’s 21-year-old Hana Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke to parliament as the youngest ever MP, and 26-year-old Tamatha Paul won Wellington Central for the Greens after service for a year on Wellington City Council.
Ms Parata Vaughan says it’s getting closer to being a representative democracy.
“Now that we’re seeing more young people in politics,I think that that’s really, really beneficial because not only is it more representation, is it more power around the decision making table, but it also actually is upholding the notion that we should have a government that represents all people, right, not just kind of those who are middle-aged or older,” she says
