Julia Irwin (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Tonight I wish to speak on the work of the Petitions Committee. In my regular statements to the chamber of a Monday evening I have spoken about the rules governing petitions, the committee’s recent report on electronic petitioning and, on occasion, individual petitions of interest. Tonight I want to talk about another important aspect of the committee’s work—what happens after petitions are presented to the House. Also, as this is the final petitions statement of the year, I will conclude with an overview of the committee’s work for 2009.

It will not come as a surprise to people who have heard these statements that the committee considers ministerial responses to be a very important part of the petitions process. We see it as a great advance that in this parliament virtually all petitions receive a ministerial response. It was not always the case. In our view these responses are serious, informative and are written in good faith. They add considerably to the public’s ability to know what is happening in relation to petitioners’ concerns or grievances. It is also noteworthy that the majority of ministerial responses are timely. I cannot put too great an emphasis on the committee’s appreciation of how ministers have responded in this way to the new rules governing petitions. It really does make a difference to the state of knowledge on these issues and to government accountability.

Members will be aware that there is a further component to the work of the committee: our public hearings. These are in some ways different to the hearings of some other committees in that they arise not from a formal inquiry but from the committee’s regular work in receiving and considering petitions on a day-to-day basis. A recent hearing, on 28 October this year, showed the virtues of this practice. Appearing before the committee were representatives of the Department of Education, Employment, and Workplace Relations, the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and the Department of Human Services.

The committee asked questions about changes to youth allowance, mandatory detention and detention debt, and the placement of Medicare offices. The transcript is on the committee’s webpage. I think that my colleagues in the committee will agree that in each case the standard of response and the willingness to engage and to respond in good faith to the committee’s questions was evident. The committee was pleased with the outcome.

This week we are looking forward to another public hearing on Wednesday. This time the committee will be speaking to representatives of the Department of Defence, the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, and the Department of Health and Ageing. We will discuss unidentified war graves in New Guinea and its environs; forgotten Australians; disaster recovery payments; various aspects of the responsibilities of the Department of Health and Ageing including coverage for dental treatment under Medicare and residential and aged care; and the Australian Standard Geographical Classification Remoteness Areas classification of a regional centre—Gawler, in South Australia.

The sheer breadth of the committee’s work is highlighted in the range of issues I have just quoted. We in the committee think this is interesting and important work. It ranges from national to regional to local issues and sometimes to the concerns of a single individual. A similar range of issues makes up so much of the working life of all of the members of the House. It is a privilege for us in the committee to have these opportunities to dig deeper, with the authority of the House, into the kinds of concerns that come across the desk every day in our electoral offices. These concerns may—or may not—get some wider attention in the media and other avenues of public discussion. But the committee feels that it is indeed essential that there is a forum in parliament where such matters can be explored with relative speed and ease and, to a certain extent, cutting across the different portfolio areas of government. As a result, we look forward to future public hearings—and indeed the full range of the committee’s activities—with a good measure of anticipation and interest.

As I suggested, I will end by giving a snapshot of the committee’s work for 2009. By 29 October this year, the committee had presented 120 petitions to the House, comprising 259,477 signatures. For the same period there have been 87 ministerial responses to petitions—a dramatic rise from the years 2001-2007, for example, during which time there was at best one ministerial response in a year and frequently none at all.

The new petitions system, initiated early in 2008, is bearing fruit. I have a wonderful deputy chair in Russell Broadbent and a wonderful bipartisan committee. I am very pleased to see such a result. I and the other committee members look forward to doing more work in this great area with the Petitions Committee in 2010.

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