HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES FACTSHEET No. 11 June 1991

The right of petitioning Parliament is a long-established fundamental right of the citizen. It allows any individual or group of individuals to place grievances before Parliament. It is the only direct means of communication between the people and the Parliament.

WHAT IS A PETITION.

A petition is basically a request for action. Any citizen or resident, or group of citizens of residents, may petition the House of Representatives to take action. For example, petitions may ask the House to introduce legislation, or to repeal or change existing legislation, or to take action for a certain purpose or for the benefit of particular persons. Less commonly a petition from an individual citizen may seek to the redress of a personal grievance, for example, the correction of an administrative error.

The subject of a petition must be a matter on which the House has the power to act - that is, it must be a Federal rather than a State matter and one involving legislation or government administration.

DRAWING UP THE PETITION

Care must be taken in the wording of petitions as the House imposes certain rules on their form and content. These are covered in detail later in this Factsheet. A recommended form of a petition to the House of Representatives is given on page 5.

COLLECTING SIGNATURES

Although a petition only needs to have one signature to be accepted, it will obviously appear more representative of public feeling if it is signed by as many people as possible. Some rules set out on page 3 relate to signatures and it is important to be familiar with these before beginning to gather signatures.

GETTING THE PETITION PRESENTED

A petition can only be presented to the House by a Member of the House. This can be any Member, including a Minister, and does not have to be the petitioners' local Member. It is the practice of the House that the Speaker does not present petitions but rather arranges for another Member to do so on his or her behalf.

Although a Member is not bound to present a petition sent for presentation, it is traditionally accepted that he or she is not bound to present it, irrespective of personal views. Presentation of a petition by a Member does not mean that member necessarily agree with its content.

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WHAT HAPPENS IN THE HOUSE

Petitions are announced in the house by the Clerk of the House every sitting Monday after Question Time. With each petition the Clerk announces the name of the Member who has presented it, who the petition is from, the number of signatures and a short summary of the action requested by the petition.

At the time of presentation no discussion of the subject matter of a petition takes place, although a Member may move one of the following motions: That the petition be not received; That the petition be printed, or That the petition be referred to a committee. The moving of any of these motions is very rare.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A PETITION HAS BEEN PRESENTED?

After a petition has been announced in the House its presentation is recorded in the official minutes of the House, the Votes and Proceedings, and the full text of the petition is printed in the Hansard of the day.

Every petition is referred by the Clerk to the Minister to responsible for the matter which is the subject of the petition. Sessional orders permit the Minister to respond to a petition by lodging a response with the Clerk for announcement at the end of the petitions announcement.

Ministers may also use less formal methods of responding to petitions, for example, by writing personally to petitioners. In some cases a Minister may order administrative action to be taken in response to a particular grievance.

On occasion the House has taken action itself by referring the issues raised in a petition to a committee. Each of the recently established General Purpose Standing Committees has the power to consider and report on petitions referred to it by the House, however to date none have been referred. In earlier years there have been cases of petitions being referred to select committees specifically formed for the purpose.

Even though petitions may seem to produce no immediate or obvious results, they inform Members and Government, in a public way, of the views of sections of the population and they do serve as a means of placing community concerns on the parliamentary agenda.

SOME STATISTICS

Currently about 1500 petitions are presented to the House each year. The number of signatures to a petition has only been recorded since 1988. Since then the petition with the most signatures has been one received from citizens of the electoral division of Chisholm, Victoria, signed by 212,990 persons.

RULES

http://www.aph.gov.au/house/info/infosheets/is11.pdf

The standing orders of the House set out a number of rules governing the format and presentation of petitions. These are designed to ensure the authenticity of petitions and protect the intentions of petitioners and the House. The standing orders do not impose any particular style of expression but certain other requirements must be met. It is important that those involved in drawing up petitions familiarise themselves with the rules before taking steps to collect signatures. This will avoid the possibility of the petition being ruled out of order and not being presented to the House. The main requirements are:

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FORM

Don't forget to read Creative Petitioning


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