Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As in the previous parliament, the Petitions Committee started with a large workload that built up during the election period. The popularity of petitions with the public is continuing to grow. Despite the sitting break for the election, 703 petitions were presented in the year ending 30 June 2022, compared to 628 in the previous year and 498 in the year before.

Australians are enthusiastically using the electronic petitions system established in the 45th Parliament, with the overwhelming majority of petitions now being submitted through the parliament's website. The petitioning system is one of the few direct ways that members of the public can reach our parliament. Although petitioning parliament in the United Kingdom has a history dating back to the 12th century, it has readily adapted to the modern era and remains one of the most frequently used ways for voters to interact with their elected representatives.

Although most of our petitions are now electronic, I'd like to mention one paper petition that was considered by the committee. This is the everyday climate crisis visual petition that was tabled in the House by the member for Canberra and referred to the committee for consideration. The visual petition contains over 1,200 photographs showing the impact of climate change. The photographs were crowdsourced from women and non-binary photographers across Australia. Together the photographs form a body of work that is both politically important and a delight to look at.

The committee did, however, conclude that a petition containing only photographs doesn't comply with the requirements of the standing orders, and the petition will not be taken further. Nevertheless, I thank the member for Canberra for tabling this document and thank all those who contributed. We're ensuring it remains in the custody of the House.

I look forward to presenting many more petitions to the House in the 47th Parliament.