Talk:Make It 16 Incorporated v Attorney-General/GA1

GA Review
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Reviewer: Sammi Brie (talk · contribs) 02:28, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Welcome to GAN, ! Sourcing looks good. The main issue is copy; tweaking commas, splitting some long sentences, etc. There are some places where concision might be useful. 7-day hold. Ping me when the page is ready. Sammi Brie (she/her • t • c) 02:28, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

Lead

 * The first sentence is extraordinarily long at 86 words. Is there a way to split it?
 * The comma is unneeded. User:Sammi Brie/Commas in sentences (CinS) will tell you more.
 * Consider mentioning public opinion in the lead paragraph so that the lead summarizes the article's contents.

Background

 * "September of 2019" change to "September 2019"
 * Attorney-General David Parker publicly stated that his position was that the High Court's judgment to decline the declarations sought was correct, and that section 12 of the Bill of Rights settles any limitation on the voting age.
 * The comma is unneeded.
 * Should this read "Bill of Rights" or "Bill of Rights Act"?
 * Make It 16, disagreeing with Doogue's judgment saying, "there was no good reason why they should be excluded", took The structure of this appositive would be improved by changing "saying," to "and saying".
 * However, despite the court ruling that it was unjustified age discrimination, it stated that suffrage being extended to 16-year-olds was an issue "very much in the public arena already" and that it is "an intensely and quintessentially political issue involving the democratic process" and chose to exercise restraint and decline the applications for declarations of inconsistency. I feel like this sentence could be broken with a semicolon or period and new sentence after "process".

Judgment

 * Make It 16 co-director Caeden Tipler commented to The New Zealand Herald stating: "A formal declaration from the Supreme Court would be a powerful message to Parliament that they should fix this breach of our rights,". In addition to the punctuation mangled at the end, I think it may be more concise to say ...stated to The New Zealand Herald, "A formal...
 * Conversely, the Attorney-General argued that "the equivalent New Zealand jurisprudence [on declarations of inconsistency] is in its infancy", and that Court of Appeal's ruling... The second comma is not needed, but I think there should be a "the" before "Court of Appeal".
 * In its assessment, the Supreme Court considered the arguments given and noted that it was "not persuaded it would be premature to make a declaration" and noted that the voting age had already been previously mentioned in the Royal Commission on the Electoral System in 1986, which stated that there was "a strong case" that could be made on lowering the voting age to 16, and recommended Parliament to "keep the voting age under review". This 75-word whopper of a sentence might merit splitting.
 * However, Kós concurred with the court's majority on local elections, stating "a declaration of inconsistency must be made in relation to the provisions of the Local Electoral Act", he explained that his dissenting opinion on the age to vote for parliamentary elections does not apply to local elections as, "Those provisions stand alone, unaffected (and unprotected) by section 12 [of the Bill of Rights Act]. They are inconsistent with section 19, and the Attorney-General does not attempt to justify the inconsistency under section 5." What a whopper of a sentence. There should be a sentence split between "elections" and "stating". The comma after "local elections as" should be moved to be before the word "as"
 * "persuasive", however, also noted that The first comma should be a semicolon, and there is also a missing subject.
 * No comma after "is a declaration of inconsistency, not illegality" (CinS)

Responses

 * as it a missing an "is"
 * for the council to back the Make It 16 campaign and extending voting rights I'd use "extend" for tense consistency.

Sourcing and spot checks
Five citations were chosen at random out of 36.

Earwig's copyvio detector catches a content farm that copied the page from us (no concern there). Most of the rest are phrases like "the Bill of Rights Act" and "lowering the voting age to 16" along with a couple of quotes.


 * 13: Sentence backs the first part of the sentence in re Moran: She said the Attorney-General had not given a good reason as to why the discrimination was justified and the High Court erred in agreeing with him. ✅
 * 22: Checks out to paragraph [65] in the Supreme Court judgment. ✅
 * 25: Accurately captures the heart of Kos's dissent. ✅
 * 27: Also accurately quoted. ✅
 * 31: He said the prime minister should focus on issues like youth crime rather than the voting age. ✅


 * Kia ora, thank you for your review, I appreciate it a lot! I've made the changes you've mentioned and redone the paragraph that mentioned the Porirua City Council's endorsement to be more inclusive of other councils. If you have any further suggestions, I would be glad to make them. Carolina2k22 • (talk)  •  (edits)  14:22, 1 January 2023 (UTC)