Are our Pollies getting younger?

It wasn’t just the voting age that has gone down (  from 21-18 in Australia) but the actual age of our leaders.

I’d like to think it all started with President Obama who, in America is one of the younger presidents, being elected age 47. The youngest leader of the Star Spangled Banner was Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt.

In Australia, our Prime Minister, Julia Gillard turned just 50 today (not bad, and her hair is still flaming red!) however for the land down under, our youngest PM was Chris Watson from way back yonder (1918 to be exact, on an interesting aside, he was only PM from April to August, at the time he was 37 years old).

But more currently there seems to be trend with leaders to be younger, including the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, and ex PM Kevin Rudd, but what does this mean?

Are the party nominating leaders they think will relate better to the youth who are notoriously apolitical?

Or is this simply a phase, a fad if you will, where the wise owl is out and the fancy rainbow lorikeet is in?

It’s probably a combination of both, and with the election of our youngest member of the House of Representatives, and probably the Senate for that matter, Wyatt Roy, coming into the fold, it does seem that being young is the new ace in the hand.

What are your thoughts? Are our pollies getting younger, if so, why?