Ken O'Dowd (Flynn, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I present the 16th report of the Petitions Committee for the 46th Parliament, comprising 119 petitions and 46 ministerial responses to petitions previously presented.

The past week has seen an unusually high number of visitors to our parliamentary e-petitions website, resulting in some intermittent timing-out problems. The performance of the website continues to be monitored and our IT support team are on hand to fix any problems if they arise. The committee would like to thank everyone who has tried to sign e-petitions online for their patience and eagerness to engage with petitioning. It's great to see that in these times of COVID-19, when many people may be feeling socially isolated without face-to-face interaction with their communities, online activities, such as e-petitioning, can bring like-minded people together in support for issues of mutual concern.

E-petitions can be easily shared to reach a wide audience. The House e-petitions system provides a unique URL for each certified e-petition, which can be shared via email or by posting it to social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Petitioners can then just click on the link and enter their details to sign the petition. Analytics reports for the petitions website show that sharing a petition URL via social media is by far the most popular method of promoting an e-petition. The online community is therefore a very important avenue to promote and share petitions and to foster connections during a time that is different for us all and difficult for many.

While we hope that things can return to normal as soon as possible, and people are once again able to sign, by hand, a petition that they see at the local shops or at a community event, we, as the committee, are pleased that our e-petitions system is able to continue facilitating online interactions for like-minded communities with the parliament.

I look forward to further updating the House on the committee's progress.