Consent in Young People: Reasoning Without Legal Jargon

A fifteen year old asks you not to tell her parents. Some version of this appears in ethics circuits every season, and it triggers two opposite failures. Half the candidates announce a legal rule they half remember. The other half say it depends on the situation and stop.

Neither is what the station wants. Nobody interviewing a school leaver expects legal expertise. They want to hear whether you can think about a young person as someone with a developing voice of their own, rather than as a small adult or as a parcel handed between adults.

What you can safely say about the law

Broadly, and this is about as far as you should go: legal systems in Australia and New Zealand recognise that a young person can sometimes make their own decisions about their care when they have sufficient maturity and understanding of what is involved, rather than being ruled solely by age. The specific tests, thresholds and terminology vary between states and territories and across jurisdictions, and they change over time.

So the honest sentence in a station is: my understanding is that maturity and the seriousness of the decision matter more than a birthday, though the detail varies by jurisdiction and I would want to check it rather than guess. That is not a weak answer. That is exactly the register a first year student should be in, and check the university's current admissions page if you want to know how much background reading they expect.

What you should not do is invent an age. Naming a number you cannot support is the fastest way to look like you have crammed rather than thought.

The idea underneath the rules

Strip the legal machinery away and you get a principle you can reason with confidently. As young people grow up, they move gradually from having decisions made for them to making decisions themselves. That transition is not a switch, and how far along it a person is depends on the person and on the decision in front of them.

Two consequences follow, and both are worth saying.

• The bar moves with the stakes. A minor decision with easily reversible consequences sits differently from one that is serious and permanent. It is coherent to think a young person can decide the first and needs more support with the second.
• Involving a young person is not all or nothing. Even when someone else holds the final decision, the young person's views, fears and preferences still count and should still be sought. Being fourteen does not make you furniture.

That second point is where most candidates leave marks on the table. They frame the whole question as who decides, when a lot of the real work is how this person is included, informed and treated with respect regardless of who signs.

Questions that move the answer

Rather than reaching for a rule, reach for the facts that would change your view. Say them out loud, because that is the reasoning being assessed.

• Can she explain, in her own words, what is being proposed and what might happen either way?
• How serious and how reversible is the decision?
• Is anyone pressuring her, including a partner, a friend or a family member? Voluntariness matters as much here as understanding.
• Why does she not want her parents told? The reason usually matters more than the request. Embarrassment and fear of harm at home are very different situations.
• Is there anything here that suggests she is being harmed or is at serious risk? That question changes the shape of everything else.

Asking these in a station reads as clinical maturity. It also buys you time, and it means your eventual position is anchored to something specific instead of floating.

Do not promise secrecy you cannot keep

The tempting move, especially in a roleplay, is to reassure a distressed young person that everything they say stays between you. It builds rapport instantly and it is a trap.

Better is honest and still warm: most of what you tell me stays with me, and I will always try to talk to you first if I think something needs to go further. Notice what that does. It is truthful, it gives her real control over sequencing, and it does not make a promise that would have to be broken exactly when trust matters most.

Assessors listen for this specifically, because it sits at the join between communication and professional judgement. Our breakdown of how MMI scoring works in Australia explains why answers that satisfy two domains at once tend to outperform answers that are excellent at one.

Encouraging without overriding

There is a wide middle ground between telling parents against a young person's wishes and pretending the family does not exist. Most good answers live in it.

You can explore what she thinks would happen if they knew. You can ask whether there is any adult she trusts, which is not always a parent. You can offer to be in the room when she tells them, or to tell them with her there. You can leave the door open rather than forcing the decision today.

Saying I would want to encourage her towards involving someone who can support her, while being clear that I am not going to force it unless I am worried about her safety, shows you can hold care and respect together. That combination is the thing being tested.

How these stations are usually built

These prompts come in two flavours. A discussion station, where an assessor asks what you would do and then pushes on the edges. Or a roleplay, where the young person is in front of you and the ethics has to survive contact with someone upset. Our overview of what an MMI is in Australia and New Zealand sets out how those station types differ.

In the roleplay version, resist the urge to deliver your reasoning as a lecture. The person in front of you does not want a framework. Ask, listen, reflect back, and let your position emerge from the conversation rather than arriving fully formed in the first thirty seconds.

Practising it honestly

Take three young person scenarios of increasing seriousness and answer all three, watching where your position shifts and why. If your answer is identical across all three, you are applying a rule rather than reasoning. Our guide to MMI ethical stations in Australia has more on how these are constructed.

The hard part is tone. It is very easy to sound either dismissive of a young person or naive about risk, and almost impossible to hear which one you did from inside your own answer. MasterMed's live AI interviewer runs timed MMI stations and marks you against a rubric, so you get an outside read on both. The first speaking station is free on the trial, no card, and the trial does not convert by itself.

Come back to the one line that keeps you safe: maturity and stakes, not birthdays. Say what would change your mind, admit what you would need to check, and treat the young person in the scenario as the person the decision is about.