I’m a 21 yr old male. I was never taught anything about politics in school despite going all the way through year 12, and my Mum knows little because she doesn’t have to vote due to the year she moved here from New Zealand years before I was born, so doesn’t pay attention to the ins and outs of things in politics, and therefore didn’t teach me much throughout child-hood and teenage-hood about it.

I was born here in Australia in 2002, so I do have to vote. But I hate that every time a vote comes around, I am completely uninformed and have to vote based off of the miniscule amount of information I have which may not even be correct. If I try to use the internet to research about it, all I can find is mainstream media pushing towards one view or the other. I don’t appreciate being manipulated by media, and would rather find an unbiased source of information; so the very fact that I have difficulty finding unbiased information (or even just something approachable to a beginner) very much gate-keeps my ability to learn and be informed about what’s even going on in my country and develop an opinion that I’m comfortable with. So does anyone have any advice for me? I don’t even understand much of the basics of how the Australian government works, and what I read online about it, I find confusing, because it constantly uses political terminology it expects me to already know.

Edit: Thanks for the comments everyone, I appreciate the advice you’ve given me

  • spiffmeister
    2·
    1 year ago

    I don’t even understand much of the basics of how the Australian government works

    It’s a meme but if you don’t know how the government works maybe start with Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_system

    There’s also boring arse government info: here

    Most of this still will probably be pretty dry, but that’s politics for you.

    I am completely uninformed and have to vote based off of the miniscule amount of information I have which may not even be correct

    To be honest this is probably most people. Even people who think their well informed can be way off the mark also (look at the cookers for instance). The only thing you can do is try get news from a range of sources, be careful to note what is opinion and what is not and try to analyse the source itself. All sources are biased, but some are more well researched or more truthful. Remember also that if you doubt something said in an article you can always cross check with another article, or even do a quick google scholar search (look at a few articles or try and find a review paper - most will tell you what they conclude in the abstract, which you can read for free).