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

This evening I am pleased to continue my reports to the House on the work of the Petitions Committee. As a new committee, we have been monitoring developments associated with petitions in other parliaments and using them to consider innovations we might seek to make in the future. The Scottish Public Petitions Committee has been an important contact for us and generous with its interest in our work. This was demonstrated again recently in our committee’s videoconference with the Scottish Public Petitions Committee—and I thank the committee for that videoconference. One of the issues that interests both our committees, and I am sure many parliamentary colleagues, is the challenge of ensuring a broad section of the community, particularly young and disadvantaged people, is interested in the work of the parliament and knows how to make contact and express its views clearly and constructively.

The Scottish committee is very active in seeking out new ways to engage with the community. It is always valuable for our committee to be informed about these developments and to consider how they might fit our own environment. The issue of engagement with parliament is something we all need to think about and work on, and I am pleased that the Petitions Committee has a chance to play a role in contributing to the way this House relates to Australians.

Our committee is presently bringing to a close its inquiry into electronic petitioning and will report to the House. Naturally enough, one of the issues that arises is the question of how the House engages with the Australian community and what role petitions can play in improving that interaction. I am sure as members of parliament we all want to work towards ensuring we have a good understanding of what matters to Australians and, in turn, that they might have a good understanding of the work of the House.

I have mentioned in previous statements the place and history of petitions to the House, in the current parliament and over the longer term. This evening I want to discuss the diversity of petitions that are presented and what they reveal about what prompts Australians to make direct contact with the House. I believe it is well known that the biggest petition ever presented to the House—the petition with the greatest number of signatures—expressed concern at the price of beer under the GST. Almost 800,000 citizens signed this petition, in 2000—and I will drink to that! It would be misleading, though, to suggest that this kind of issue dominates interaction with the House. Australians are well-rounded characters. Their petitions over the years reveal a sustained interest in matters such as healthcare funding, nuclear policy, the family and foreign affairs. Hundreds of thousands of Australians have signed petitions—for example, on private health care funding in 1993, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme in 1999, on storage of nuclear waste in 2000, on a proposal for a homemakers allowance in 1995 and on the war in Croatia in 1992.

This 42nd Parliament has also seen some ‘popular’ petitions presented to the House. Recent petitions, with signatures in the tens of thousands, have raised issues such as arrangements for the building and construction industry, requests for road upgrades and a public radiotherapy unit in regional Australia, university funding, and matters such as changes to support for tertiary students.

Petitions are not just about the numbers of signatures they attract. The committee frequently considers smaller petitions. Again, these display diversity: some raise concerns that affect only one or a handful of individuals. Others raise issues that affect society more broadly and in some cases identify new matters that perhaps we should be concerned about but have not been much discussed yet. On occasion views are expressed that parliament is somehow removed from the Australian public. Whether that perception is correct or not, the petitions that come to the House are a very public reminder of things we may not have thought about or that we may not have realised matter greatly to numbers of Australians.

The committee is well aware of the trust that petitioners have when they make that direct contact with the House. The committee will continue to refine and develop its role as a body that the House has appointed to facilitate contact between the House, the government and all Australians. As we see it, petitions, if taken seriously, contribute to the vitality of parliaments and to a healthier system of government.