Kids want more choice after graduating, not less

Mandatory service for school-leavers would prevent us from launching into our chosen futures after school. It would stop young people immediately starting university, TAFE, an apprenticeship or joining the workforce. Fundamentally, we would no longer be the masters of our own destinies.

But after two years of lockdowns and isolation, the hundreds of thousands of Australian young people crave control more than ever.

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Control is all I wanted when I struggled through the first lockdown – looking for a way to find answers, solutions to problems literally hundreds of kilometres out of the control of a 14-year-old from Wagga.

While a system providing broad choice for young people in national service – of social justice advocacy, charitable work and emergency responses – is an improvement on mandatory military service, such a method would still limit the avenues accessible to young people by forcing us to spend time on things we may not be passionate about, rather than enabling us to spend time on things that matter to us.

So rather than forcing young people into a year or more of national service post school, we must expand the options available to young people so we remain the masters of our own destinies – the very thing we lost during the height of the pandemic.