Law Society to spark fire in the bellies of young Australians

23 November 2017

The Law Society of NSW is launching a brand new website today to engage young Australians in legal politics and law-making.

The Boiling Frog has been set up by the Law Society of NSW and will officially launch at a panel event on 23 November in Sydney, discussing "Do young Australians care about law and politics? How can we better engage them in the discussion?"

The Law Society’s 2017 President Pauline Wright, who inspired the idea to create a platform to engage young Australians with the rule of law, will deliver a keynote address to explain concepts behind the website.

"As the fable has it, if you suddenly drop a frog into a pot of boiling water it will jump straight out, but if you drop the frog into cool water and slowly turn up the heat, it will stay there, not perceiving the danger of being boiled alive," Ms Wright said.

"I use the analogy of Australians as frogs boiling in water – if we pass laws that incrementally take away our civil rights and freedoms there is a danger we might not notice until it is too late.

"Young Australians are the future of this country and will inherit the laws we pass now. If they don’t have a say in the process, they risk their rights and civil liberties being eroded too far."

A who’s who of youth political journalism in Australia will command the discussion, including Brooke Boney, the popular Triple J breakfast news presenter, and Osman Faruqi, the former Greens staffer-turned news and politics editor at pop culture website Junkee.

Features editor of VICE Australia Maddison Connaughton, HuffPost Australia associate editor Josh Butler and Buzzfeed News reporter Lane Sainty will also sit on the panel, which will be moderated by the Law Society’s LSJ multimedia journalist Kate Allman.

The panel discussion and website launch follows the release of the Marriage Equality Survey results on Wednesday 15 November, which showed that young Australians had the lowest voter turnout of all voter age brackets.

Just 71.9 per cent of Australians aged 25-29 voted in the survey – compared to a far greater turnout in older age brackets. The strongest turnout was among those aged 70-74, in which 89.6 per cent of eligible Australians participated.

The panel discussion event will take place from 5pm on 23 November and will be live-streamed via the Law Society’s Facebook page (live stream commencing at 5.45pm).