A young person's place is in the House

Young politicians around the world are disproving the adage that wisdom comes with age.A fresh perspective? Or a frightening lack of experience? A mentor and her mentee talk about what they brought to politics at the age of 23. All around the world, newly elected politicians are pushing against the idea that wisdom only comes with age. In France, the country's youngest ever president has appointed its youngest ever prime minister. Add up their ages and they are still younger than the current US president, 81-year-old Joe Biden.New Zealand now has its youngest MP in 170 years and its youngest ever female MP - Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke - at 21. New Green MP Tamatha Paul is 27 and National brought in Tom Rutherford, 26 on election day. Chlöe Swarbrick entered parliament at 23 - and is now 29, having last year won the Auckland Central electorate for the second time.Today The Detail speaks to her, and to a trailblazing MP who entered the House, also aged 23, in 1975 - Dame Marilyn Waring. They are the seventh- and eighth-youngest MPs in New Zealand history.Dame Marilyn says she didn't really want to be an MP, but 1975 was International Women's Year."I thought it would be a little feminist activity ... really I just threw my hat in," she says. "It's a house of representatives, my age group just weren't represented at all." The new National MP, elected in the safe seat of Raglan, got the odd bit of pushback, with people frequently telling her she needed more life experience."I just as frequently responded that it was a house of representatives, and it might be nice to hear from other people occasionally." Swarbrick was the youngest MP since Dame Marilyn - just two months older when she hit Parliament in 2017.She had run for Auckland mayor at 22 and surprised everyone with the strength of her campaign. When it comes to pushback, Swarbrick says she "reflects on this pretty frequently"."It's no secret that I am regularly like 'what am I doing in politics?' and 'am I the right person to do this?'But she believes young people have an important voice."All human beings have different perspectives and lives and lived experiences - things we've been exposed to and not been exposed to."I think the inherent value of younger perspectives - as with middle aged and older perspectives - is that there is a different world view or a different type of experience that one has been exposed to…Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details