The voice of rangatahi: Get Vocal in Your Local

Get Vocal in Your Local was launched on 11 April 2022 and data collected through to 31 July 2022. We received 4,807 valid responses over this time.

The digital tool was created to make it easy to share what you think about some of the big questions being asked by the Review. The tool was designed to target rangatahi aged 12 – 24. We asked users to give feedback on ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ decisions were made in a place that was important to them.

Your place

Submitters were spread across the motu. With most submitters from Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

The majority of respondents selected the place where they lived (57%), followed by where they were born (15%) and where their whānau are from (13%).

Your age

The tool was designed to reach youth who were successfully targeted by the tool with a much higher response in the 10-17, 18-24 and 25–34-year age brackets compared to the general population.

Your community

When considering who they think of as their community the majority of respondents selected my friends and whānau (30%) and my neighbourhood (28%).

Your dream

When asked which vision best describes what they want for their place in 2050, a third of all respondents chose sustainable (31%), followed by safe for everyone (24%) and economically thriving (19%).

Decision making

The tool asked users to determine who should be making what decisions. When making decisions participants indicated that decision making power should be divided between the community at 58% and elected authority at 42%.

And, when making decisions about which projects should be funded participants indicated that decision making power should be divided between the community at 54% and elected authority at 46%.

Participants were asked how much decision makers should consider people now vs. future generations. The results were weighted at 40% for now, and 60% for future generations.

People were then asked to imagine their community was divided about which ideas should go ahead. 70% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that everyday people, if given the opportunity to kōrero with each other, could make the right decisions for their community.

Voices

When asked about voices that are most or least important to listen to when making decisions about their vision, experts ranked as the most important voice, followed by community and youth.

Your involvement

We asked respondents about their involvement in decision making so we could compare how involved participants are now and how involved they wanted to be in decision making.

When rating their involvement now:

• 45% of participants rate their current involvement below average (not at all or a bit) involved. 
• 27% of participants rate their current involvement above average (very or extremely) involved.

However, when rating their involvement in the future:

• 98% of participants want some level of involvement in deciding how to achieve their vision for their place.
• 63.5% of participants would like their involvement to be above average (very or extremely) involved.

Most participants (65%) want to be more involved in decision making for their place.

Voting age

When asked if Aotearoa should lower the voting age from 18 to 16 the majority of respondents thought the voting age should be lowered with 54% answering yes, 32% answering no, and 13% who said they were not sure or skipped the question.

If you would like to view our full high-level analysis you can here. 

Get Vocal in Your Local was created in partnership with Toi Āria: Design for Public Good, a research centre at Massey University’s College of Creative Arts, together with the development team at Effect.