Civics education in Australia
Governor-General, Sam Mosteyn, has warned of the threat posed to democracy by a lack of knowledge of civics. She also pointed to the increasing level of aggression directed towards those in public office. The two problems are interlinked: As Mosteyn points out, people have attacked her for her performance of her office, unaware that the constitution determines what she may do and how she may exercise her powers.
The problem of lack of civic knowledge runs deep. In my role as a lecturer, I teach first year students how law is made, covering the federal system and its division of power between the Commonwealth and the States, the structure of the Commonwealth parliament and the functions that it and the other two branches of government perform. All this is taught at the most basic level, yet to the overwhelming majority of my students, who are in the main less than a year out of school, it comes as new information. This is despite the fact that civics has formed part of the Australian Curriculum since 2019.
The problem, however, is that adoption of the Curriculum by States and Territories is not mandatory. Furthermore, the Curriculum provides for civics education only up to Year 10. Students seeking further knowledge need to take legal studies or politics as electives in Years 11 and 12. This means that the vast majority of students are deprived of civics education during the crucial years before they become voters.
My experience also indicates that such education as young people have received up to the end of Year 10 has made insufficient impact. Students are not to blame for this. On average, only 32 minutes per week is devoted to civics education – more in those States where civics is a free-standing subject, less in those where it forms just a component of another subject falling within the humanities or social sciences.
It is therefore unsurprising that a 2025 report into civics education by the Commonwealth Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, found that
“…many young people leave school without the knowledge and skills necessary to actively participate in Australian democracy, engage with civic practices and institutions, or understand basic processes like how to enrol to vote and cast a ballot correctly.”
Yet although the Committee recommended that the next version of the Australian Curriculum contain a mandatory stand-alone civics and citizenship subject, which would end the variations in coverage between States, the minimum amount of time that it recommended be allocated to it in Years 9 and 10 was a mere 10 hours per year. Although the Committee also recommended that civics and citizenship be made mandatory up to Year 10 in all jurisdictions, it recommended only a pilot study for its inclusion up to Year 12.
The States have taken some steps towards enhancing civics education, but they too have fallen short of what is needed: In 2024 the South Australian government announced a new civics education policy in terms of which the time allocated to civics would be increased by requiring Year 7 and 8 students to study civics for an hour per week and integrating civics into all subjects in Year 9 and 10.
However the policy did nothing to address the absence of mandatory civics education in Years 11 and 12. Similarly, while the new curriculum announced in New South Wales in 2024 for implementation by 2027 increased the time allocated to civics, it did not include a stand-alone civics subject nor did it extend civics to Years 11 and 12, failures that attracted criticism in a report by the NSW parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters which recommended the inclusion of a dedicated mandatory civics subject throughout the curriculum.
What the education system is producing is a population of young people who do not understand how government works and therefore feel confused by, and alienated from, its workings. This serves to engender a feeling of lack of control and thus resentment, which in turn leads to, even though it does not excuse, an attitude of hostility to those in public office.
What we need is a system in which civics and citizenship are taught as a discrete subject from primary school to Year 12 and which builds in students a capacity to understand and, ultimately, confidently and enthusiastically to participate in public life.
Dr Bede Harris began his academic career at the University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg. He is now a Senior Lecturer and Law Discipline Head at the School of Business in the Faculty of Business, Justice and Behavioural Sciences at Charles Sturt University where his research focuses on Constitutional Law and Indigenous legal issues.
