The Politics of Framing the Student Problem: Inquiries Into Australian Civics Education, 2006–2024

Recurring debates about civics, the kinds of history that should, and should not, be taught in school, and ‘standards debates’ about the ‘basics’ typically follow on the heels of recurring moral panics about the ‘declining’ state of ‘our’ education system. Since the turn of the last century, the Australian Government initiated two major inquiries into civic education and political engagement: the 2006 inquiry into civic and electoral education, and the 2024 inquiry into civic education, engagement and participation in Australia. In this article, we focus on discourses that constituted these inquiries to identify, analyse and understand how each framed ‘the problems’ they intended to address. We demonstrate how both inquiries represented young people as the central ‘problem’, framing them as politically illiterate and largely disengaged from formal politics. However, as we reveal, throughout each inquiry attempts to reflect on how and why many young people experienced a sense of disenfranchisement from formal politics were missing, while young peoples' political engagement, such as their participation in action like street protest and strategic litigation, was overlooked or discredited.