IT WAS with keen interest I read your column with regard to the lowering of the voting age in Australia, "Youth debate gets my vote", (WT, September 30).

As with any "hot topic", there are of course, pros and cons.

Chronological age is possibly not the only yardstick that can be used.

No matter what age is selected, (sometimes it makes you wonder whether they pull it out of a hat!), you can have 20 people the same age with varying levels of maturity.

So how do we decide what is the optimum age for anything?

Girls generally mature at an earlier age than boys, but this doesn't mean there aren't some boys more mature at the same age compared to some girls.

Parents are faced with the decision of when to send their children to school based on age.

At least in this instance, they can make an informed decision on whether their child is "ready" or not.

Is this going to be the case if the voting age is lowered to 16?

We must question the reasoning, or is there a motive for even entertaining the thought of lowering the voting age?

We are told that boys' frontal lobes reach full maturity around the age of 25, marking the cognitive maturity associated with adulthood.

We must ask ourselves whether this needs to be given consideration before any decision is made to lower the voting age.

Is this merely a ploy to coerce teenagers to vote for a particular party while they are young and impressionable and open to new ideas?

Or am I just being cynical?