Last weekend's election was the first time voting for many of our Year 13 students. Before election day, we caught up with 5 of our first-time voters to find out what was on their minds as they prepared to enter the polling booth.

Ben Heffter

What issues are you thinking about when you vote? For the most part, social and environmental issues. A big part for me are the social issues, especially relating to university, free health care and free education.

How have you educated yourself about the different parties and what they stand for? I am not the most informed at all. You hear stuff from friends, you hear stuff from parents, you hear stuff from wherever. Once I was interested in a few parties, I googled policies to find out what they would mean.

Why is it important to vote? You need the youth perspective. Different generations have different perspectives, and I think it is important (that the youth perspective is represented.) I think it is important because I think a lot of young people are not involved in politics and give it no thought at all. I don’t give it a lot of thought but I know some people who don’t give it any thought and I think it sets you up to live quite an ignorant and non-informed life that is quite dangerous for the overall health of the country.

George Burgess

What issues are you thinking about when you vote? I am thinking about housing and university student related issues.

How have you educated yourself about the different parties and what they stand for? I stayed as far away from social media as possible when I was seeking political facts and opinions. I used websites like policy.nz.

Why is it important to vote? : Because everyone else is going to vote. There are all those ads about ‘Your landlord is going vote’ ‘Your parents are going to vote’ - so you should vote too. 

Mars Benfell

What issues are you thinking about when you vote? I am mainly thinking about LGBT issues and things like that. Mainly around banning conversion therapy. I am also looking at what parties are looking at climate change and taking the most action towards minimizing the effects of climate change. Also mental health. I am looking at the mental health issues we have in New Zealand because I don’t feel like they get covered enough.

How have you educated yourself about the different parties and what they stand for? I have been using a website called policy.nz. I have been using that to compare all of the different parties' policies on different issues. For the referendums, I have been looking at both sides of the argument for both of the bills.

Why is it important to vote? Because how else are you going to have your say on things that are happening? We have important opinions and we should share them. It is our country too. We are coming into the world now, and we may as well come into the world with a government we actually agree with. 

Laura Eyles

What issues are you thinking about when you vote? LGBT rights, university fees, what parties' stances are on social issues, climate change, racism. Liberal things.

How have you educated yourself about the different parties and what they stand for? I looked at the parties I was considering, looked at their website, looked at what policies they were talking about and how long they had had those policies too. I don’t know if you saw Labour’s thing about banning conversion therapy? But they only busted that out when it was time to vote again which I thought just seemed a bit for show. I didn’t know how serious they were about those issues and if they were actually going to follow through on it.

Why is it important to vote? It affects young people the most. For young people, it is our entire future and if we want change to happen, we need to start voting. Young people are sort of politically driven these days. If you are on social media, it is all politics. I don’t know if you have seen the documentary 'The Social Dilemma?' It was a documentary about how all ads, especially for young people, are aimed at changing their political beliefs.

If you talk to any young person, they’re often far left, or far right. We are in an age where you can’t be in the centre anymore. 

Rowan Jones

What issues are you thinking about when you vote? The environment and education. Free education is good, that is why Labour would be good (to have in power) with that kind of thing. I voted Green because they (the government) need some sort of balance with the environmental side of things, keeping it all in check.

How have you educated yourself about the different parties and what they stand for? There was a really good website that had all the policies listed on it that you can compare really easily. That was pretty much it. It was the NZ Electoral website, so I knew I wasn’t getting biased information.