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

The reason there are only two petitions being presented to the House today is that most electronic petitions that closed during the winter sittings break were presented last Monday. The two petitions presented today relate to local post offices and the services they can provide the community. One is a paper petition with over 16,000 signatures, and the other is an electronic petition with more than 7,000 signatures.

I'm very pleased that today's report contains 55 ministerial responses to petitions. As you know, under the standing orders, once a petition is presented to the House, the committee may refer the petition to the minister responsible for the administration of the matter raised in the petition. A minister is then expected to provide the committee with a written response to the petition within 90 days. While most petitions are responded to within this period, the committee appreciates that sometimes there can be delays, particularly where an issue can touch on multiple ministerial responsibilities.

In recent weeks the committee secretariat has been in contact with some ministerial offices about responses to petitions that have been outstanding for more than 90 days. I note that some of the petitions in question were referred to ministers prior to the committee adopting a requirement for petitions to gain 50 or more signatures for referral. This means that a response is still sought for some older petitions that received a very small number of signatures. I thank the ministerial offices for their cooperation in this matter, and, as responses continue to come in, they'll be noted by the committee and presented to the House accordingly.

I thank the House.