Statement from the GOOD Party
28 June 2021
Hosting an annual one-day “youth parliament”, as the Western Cape does, pays lip-service to the myriad critical issues confronting young people, GOOD secretary-general and Member of the Provincial Parliament, Brett Herron, said today.
Addressing a special sitting of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament, to which young people were invited to share their views, Herron said he would be introducing a private members’ bill to amend the provincial constitution to create a permanent Western Cape Youth Parliament.
He challenged his fellow parliamentarians to explain what real differences last year’s youth parliament, focussing on parliamentary participation, had delivered.
“Young people came to the Western Cape Provincial Parliament and shared their views. And so what? What did we as the Western Cape Provincial Parliament do with those inputs? How did we adjust our parliament to make it more accessible to young people? How did we give young people a direct stake in issues of generational justice,” Herron asked?
Among the most serious issues impacting youth today, and in future, were digital access, inequality, unemployment, access to further and higher education, climate change and poverty, he said
Hosting a one-day youth parliament, once a year, could not possibly address the exclusion of young voices, ideas and solutions in response to circumstances that directly challenge them.
Herron said many politicians lamented the increasing disinterest in participatory democracy among young people.
“But we continue to alienate young people from active participation when we invite them to participate and fail to implement anything they say. That is insulting and a waste of time.
“With all due respect Speaker, we cannot organise events that are purely symbolic…
A Youth Parliament must be a structure of our policy and law-making process where young voices are permanently considered, Herron said. Such structures had been established by many democracies across the world.
“It is for this reason that we will propose a Constitutional Amendment to introduce a permanent Youth Parliament. It’s time we took young people more seriously.”
Thanking the young people who joined parliamentarians today, he encouraged them to hold public representatives accountable: “Do not allow us to listen to you and do nothing,” he said.
Ends…