Social researcher and author Hugh McKay. But McKay said in a phone interview that 15- to 17-year-olds were not engaged in politics in any serious way and had yet to become "independent thinkers", with many influenced by what they hear at home. "It's a time when if kids are relatively normal they're completely preoccupied with their friends, probably their first blossoming of romantic interests, their families, their schools, their sport and recreation," he said. "The idea that young people should be more politically aware or politically engaged is a very strange idea. It's not as though there is an automatic interest in politics among the young - the default position is not interested and it's something that tends to blossom later." Doug Orr, from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), said at the launch event this morning that there were 1.4 million people missing from the electoral roll, and 70 per cent of these people were in the 18 to 35 age bracket. Just under half of 18-year-olds were not enrolled to vote.

Google's election 2010 website. "From today we're sending out information packs to every school around the country and basically setting up a virtual election with a virtual polling booth that will be open between August 9 and 12," said Noble. "We have worked with the AEC to ensure the ballot paper is as real as possible and the experience is as real as possible." Gillard and Brown published video clips on YouTube urging students to take part in the simulated election. Brown's line was: "It's either democracy or guns - democracy's where it's at." Gerrand said each student would get one only vote and the voting process would occur online, managed using "tokens" and a teacher from each school.

It's either democracy or guns - democracy's where it's at. "It gives them the opportunity to actually think about what's going on around them and what it means when their parents and older friends go off to vote," he said. Google launches election 2010 site Google also today unveiled its federal election 2010 website, which features a Google Maps mashup that allows people to view each electorate to see who holds each seat and which seats are safe or marginal. Polling booths are also searchable on the map. Also on the site are election search trends, enabling people to keep track of hot issues as determined by what people are searching for.

A new YouTube channel, called electionWIRE, lets young Australians have their say on the federal election and report their own stories that don't necessarily appear in the mainstream media. "Australians are going online more than any other medium to find out political information; Google wants that information to be as easily accessible as possible," Noble said. Google Australia managing director Karim Temsamani, who has been in Australia for more than 13 years but will vote for the first time this year, said Australians now expected to be engaged online and "politicians who are not online should question their relevancy to the Australian public". Google plans to compare its mock election results to the that of the real federal election, and says it will provide insight into the political views of the next generation of voters who will go to the polls in the next election. Under Australian laws, only 18-year-olds and above are allowed to vote, but some parties such as the Greens have a policy saying anyone above 16 should have the right to vote.

Greens communications spokesman Scott Ludlam, who was at Google's launch event today, said the web was "unregulated" and "anarchic" and allowed punters to put themselves into the middle of the political debate. He contrasted that with old-style election campaigns conducted through one-way mediums such as TV, singling out the recent leaders' debate as "excruciatingly boring ... a form of political anaesthetic where the only job is not to stuff anything up". "The more boring the televised election campaign gets the more interesting it becomes online," he said. "Politics is far too important to be left to politicians." But it remains to be seen whether politicians will tap into the online debates or take them on board when developing policy.

Gerrand said the major political parties' use of social media in this campaign had been fairly poor, without much engagement. "During the presidential primaries in the US they took questions from people on YouTube and actually had a fully televised debate that was all YouTube questions," he said. "That would be a really cool thing to be doing here but there doesn't seem to be the interest from the major parties."