The Meeting Place > Government & Centrelink > Petitions to be opened for debate

Petitions to be opened for debate

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Ben
5 yrs ago

Petitions to the House of Representatives with over 20,000 signatures would be debated by the House under recommendations made by the House Petitions Committee.

Committee Chair Lucy Wicks MP says the recommendation threshold is based on a similar system in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, which has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the public.

“In the UK, the Petitions Committee can schedule a debate on a petition in Westminster Hall, if it reaches over 100,000 signatures,” Ms Wicks said.

“Our committee proposes using similar criteria to the UK in selecting petitions for debate, once they have gathered over 20,000 signatures.”

The report makes other recommendations around simplifying the process of petitioning the parliament and educating the public about how to lodge or sign a petition.

“We hope these changes will encourage more Australians to engage with petitioning the House, which is the most direct way of having your matter heard by the Parliament,” Ms Wicks said.

Do you think parliament should debate popular petitions? Would this help keep political parties in touch with community sentiment?

6 comments
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Triss
5 yrs ago

Politicians not to access pension until age 67.

The Corrupt parliamentary lifetime-indexed with perks after 8 years in parliament pension ruling 

reversed immediately.

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pedro the swift
5 yrs ago

Hah hah, fat chance those will ever get through any house of pollies anywhere in the world!

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Triss
5 yrs ago

That’s what the wealthy pollies in bed with the banks thought.

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Eddy
5 yrs ago

 

Not too bad an idea, but I think 20,000 is too little, should be closer to 180,000. We have a total population of 25 million with an adult population of approximately 18 million (I am guessing at this figure so do not lambast me if I am a million or two out). 180K is approx 1% of the adult population which I think is a reasonable figure to initiate parliamentry debate. Too many of the petitions I have been asked, and in some cases 'pressured',  to sign are not issues I feel strongly about or have not yet decided my position. Getting 20k signatures in any capital city probably is not too a daunting task but 180k petitioners probably means issues which are not widely supported are not likely to waste parliamentry time with unecessary debate.

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Adrianus
5 yrs ago

I agree with that Eddy, but at the risk of sounding pedantic..

There are around 16m eligible voters with approximately 90% voter turn out. 

That's around 14.4m votes.

A swing of around 2% at election time is meaningful to the point that any petition carrying 280,000 signatures would be taken very seriously. 

We have electronic media which can reach the wider population, as Labor proved with their Mediscare campaign and Clive Palmer more recently, so 280k shouldnt be too much of a hurdle? This idea kind of reminds me of the car dealers inviting customers into the yard to buy when the sales people are off on Sundays. 

Why do we find it hard to buy from a car salesman and why do we find it difficult to manage our political leaders? 

Big deal. 20,000 people take the time to sign a petition and all they are guaranteed is that it would be debated by the House. Will having a debate by the House mean anything? I don't think so. Once the debate is finished, the petition has been dealt with and that is all that has been promised, no promise to change anything, just a promise to debate it.

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shirboy
5 yrs ago

A great way to get many thousands of signatures is to join care2 which is a worldwide (the biggest actually) site. Any petition on any subject that is worthwhile will be viewed by millions of people throughout the world & they will respond.

Good idea, but 20,000 seems too low, not sure what would be right to stop extreme groups (Greens-type) drumming up such numbers regularly.

Other than that, this would be only useful if Parties also allow Conscience Vote by their MPs on these Petitions, as otherwise the party machine would simply ensure they vote to shut down all changes which don't strictly follow their pre-defined policy platforms.

6 comments



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