The old way of petitioning Parliament was to type up a petition, gather lots of signatures, present it to the local parliamentarian to present in Parliament on behalf of the petitioners. Eventually the person whose name and signature appeared on the top line of the top page received a response requesting that they inform all other petitioners accordingly.
Not very creative and easily forgotten by all the members of Parliament shortly afterwards.
What I am suggesting is being creative by continually reminding the elected representatives of what their constituents want.
Whatever issue a petition deals with, there is usually more than one reason why something is wanted or not wanted. Therefore more than one petition should be written, one for each reason. So when you go to the public to collect signatures you can collect signatures on several petitions on the same issue at the same time.
Most petitions now require that the name and address of the principal petitioner appear on each page of the petition. Make some copies of the petitions with spaces for principal petitioners' names and addresses blank. This way a different principal petitioner (if they are agreeable) can nominate as principal petitioner on some sheets. Maybe someone in the household will become the principal petitioner and the remainder of the household the petitioners. This way more people will have to be notified of the decision of government once it has been made.
Then instead of handing them all to the local member at once, only hand in one page of each petition each week and ask that they present each of them to Parliament on behalf of the Petitioners. Then each week when Parliament sits, give your local member one more page of each different petition to present on behalf of the Petitioners.
The idea then is to collect signatures in adjoining electorates in the same manner and have other members of Parliament also present one page each of the several petitions each week in Parliament.
This is the same for local council, state parliament, federal parliament, and the senate.
What an achievement it would be if every elected member had to stand in parliament or council and present several different one page petitions all on the same subject each week for several weeks.
Any group of residents that can attract this amount of political attention to their issue should see some positive results.
This page is maintained by
The Rivermouth Action Group Inc
as a community service.
E-mail: activist@rag.org.au