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

In the time remaining to me this evening, I would like to notify the House of some of the upcoming activities of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Petitions. As I foreshadowed last week, the committee will be travelling to the Central Coast for a public hearing next Monday.

As part of its rolling program of hearings into petitions presented, the committee will speak with principal petitioners from New South Wales next week. This will be the second time that the committee has taken evidence outside Canberra. Its first interstate hearing was held in October last year—the committee visited the Fitzroy Public Library in Melbourne, to speak with principal petitioners from Victoria. That hearing was a great success, with many petitioners given the opportunity to place their views on the public record as well as update the committee as to how progress was going to achieve the goals of those petitioners.

This time, the committee has decided to hold its public meeting at The Entrance campus of the Tuggerah Lakes Secondary College. Arrangements are currently being made with the principal of the school, Mr Andrew Newman, and, on behalf of the petitions committee, I thank him 100 per cent for the efforts he has made to allow this meeting to take place. Members are definitely looking forward to the chance to meet with students of that school as well as petitioners from around New South Wales.

Some of the petitions received from New South Wales cover issues such as the provision of local post offices and the quality—or lack—of mobile phone coverage. Other issues are as diverse as policies on uranium mining, the environment, pension entitlements, whaling, recent events on the Gaza Strip and the emergency response in the Northern Territory. Petitions also have asked for funding, whether it be for regional museums, hospitals and healthcare facilities, early intervention services for children with a disability, road upgrades, or emergency housing and accommodation. An example of a significant petition from the Central Coast area contains some 16,000 signatures, and asks that a radiotherapy unit be provided. Petitioners are being invited to attend the hearing and we hope to meet with many of them and give them the chance to tell us about how they feel about their petition and the work they have done to ensure that their voices are heard.

As the program is finalised, it will be loaded onto the committee’s website, which of course we are constantly updating with information about petitions, ministerial responses and copies of speeches made by members when their petitions are presented, as well as the transcripts from public hearings held so far. The committee’s meeting on Monday at The Entrance will also be held as a public hearing, so the Hansard record of the day’s events will be available as soon as it has been prepared.

The committee takes its role of promoting the importance of petitions in the community very seriously indeed. Members are pleased to explain the transparency of the petitioning process under the new arrangements and welcome the chance to speak directly with petitioners about their concerns.

On this occasion therefore we are particularly pleased to be able to have the chance to speak with students from the Central Coast area about the federal parliament as well as the petitions process in general. All my colleagues on the committee are committed to ensuring that young people are involved in the parliamentary process and have the chance to see that they too can be involved in petitioning us about things that matter to them. We are very happy to have the chance to speak directly with students from the Tuggerah Lakes Secondary College, and some other schools in the area, and look forward to hearing some of their views about parliament and what we do here. This of course goes beyond our roles as members of the petitions committee.

Many members of the House will remember that, for many years, petitions were presented in the House but little further action was taken. In fact, it was often the case that petitions which were not in order and which were therefore not tabled virtually disappeared. It was often the case that petitioners did not even know that no action had been taken. We are therefore pleased that under the new arrangements we have a much better chance of working with the community before signatures are gathered, to make sure that, when a petition comes to us, it will be presented and further action will be taken. We can see already from the increasing proportion of petitions which are coming to us in their correct format, and the reducing number of out of order petitions we receive, that we are making inroads into the way people think about petitions. As the committee further develops its practice and refines its operations, we look forward to being able to report on specific actions taken on petitions, including the presentation of short reports, and I look forward to being able to advise the House in more detail on these and other developments in the future.