Bronte Forbes has waited three years for her first election. The 20-year-old student and Northern Beaches local remembers driving pastThen a teenager, she thought the political class was not listening to people like her, and she wanted change.For her father, John Forbes, the 2019 election was also a major turning point in his politics. The 52-year-old director of a large dairy company and Olympic sailing medallist had voted Liberal “since birth”.
In NSW, the Liberals are fighting to hold North Sydney and Wentworth, and the seat of Curtin in Perth, once held by former Liberal foreign minister Julie Bishop, is also deemed at risk. “When you’ve got parties who are trying to get votes from the majority of people, they’re going to aim their policies towards that majority, and that’s an older majority.
However, 17 per cent said they planned to vote for the opposite political party and 28 per cent did not know how their parents voted. The rest did not know who they would vote for, or they, or their parents, did not vote in Australia.Parents who chose to vote in line with their children’s beliefs, such as Mr and Ms Forbes, were still “unicorn” events, said Australian National University politics lecturer Jill Sheppard.