Parliament of Australia: House of Representatives: Infosheet No. 11: Petitions

Petitions

House of Representatives Infosheet No. 11

Revised January 2001

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 directly before the 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 or 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 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 Infosheet. A recommended form of a petition to the House of Representatives is given at the end of this Infosheet.

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 of the rules set out below 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 will present it, irrespective of personal views. Presentation of a petition by a Member does not mean that the Member necessarily agrees with its content.

What happens in the House?

Petitions lodged by Members for presentation are announced in the House by the Clerk of the House following question time every sitting Monday. With each petition the Clerk announces the name of the Member who has presented it, who the petition is from, the number of signatories 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.

Rather than lodge a petition with the Clerk for presentation, a Member may choose to present the petition himself or herself during the period of Members statements in the House or the Main Committee provided it has first been checked by the Clerk as being in order. If a petition refers to a motion to be moved or called on for consideration then it may be presented by a Member as soon as the motion is moved or called on for the first time.

What happens after a petition has been presented?

After a petition has been announced in the House the full text of the petition is printed in the Hansard for that day.

Every petition presented is referred by the Clerk to the Minister responsible for the matter which is the subject of the petition. Standing orders permit the Minister to respond to a petition by lodging a response with the Clerk for announcement at the end of a subsequent 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 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 result, they inform Members and the Government, in a public way, of the views of sections of the population and they serve as one means of placing community concerns on the parliamentary agenda.

Some statistics

In recent years an average of about 500 petitions have been 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 greatest number of signatures was one presented on 4 December 2000, declared to have been signed by 792,985 persons.

Rules

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 and were substantially revised in 2000. 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:

What must be in a petition?

To be presented to the House, a petition must:

be addressed to the House of Representatives;
refer to a matter which is within the power of the House of Representatives to address, that is, a Commonwealth legislative or administrative matter;
state the facts which the petitioners wish to bring to the notice of the House; and
contain a request for the House or the Parliament to take one or more specified actions.

How a petition should be prepared

A petition must conform to the following requirements:

it must be on paper;
it must be legible;
it must be in the English language or be accompanied by a translation certified to be correct. The person certifying the translation must place his or her name and address on the translation;
the text of the petition must not contain any alterations;
it must not have any letters, affidavits or other documents attached to it;
the language used must be respectful, courteous and moderate. The petition should not contain irrelevant statements;
it must not contain any indication that it has been sponsored or distributed by a Member of the House of Representatives; except that, for the purpose of facilitating the lodgment of the petition, the name and address of a Member may be shown as an address to which the petition may be sent for presentation to the House; and
a petition from a corporation should be made under its common seal. Otherwise it will be received as the petition of the individuals who signed it.

Rules about signatures

Every petition must contain the signature and address of at least one person on the page on which the terms of the petition are written.

All the signatures on a petition must meet the following requirements:

Every signature must be written on a page bearing the terms of the petition, or the action requested by the petition. Signatures must not be copied, pasted or transferred on to the petition nor should they be placed on a blank page on the reverse of a sheet containing the terms of the petition.
Each signature must be made by the person signing in his or her own handwriting. A petitioner who is not able to sign must make a mark in the presence of a witness. The witness must sign the petition as witness and write his or her address, and the name and address of the petitioner.

An historical note

In the United Kingdom the right of petitioning the Crown and Parliament for redress of grievances dates back to the reign of King Edward I in the 13th century. The origins of Parliament itself can be traced back to those meetings of the Kings Council which considered petitions. The terms bill and petition originally had the same meaning. Some of the earliest legislation was in fact in form no more than a petition which had been agreed to by the King.

The present form of petitions developed in the late 17th century. The House of Commons passed the following resolutions in 1669:

That it is an inherent right of every Commoner of England to prepare and present petitions to the House in case of grievance; and of the House of Commons to receive them.
That it is the undoubted right and privilege of the House of Commons to adjudge and determine, touching the nature and matter of such Petitions, how far they are fit and unfit to be received.

The effect of these resolutions was inherited by the Australian Parliament and the right of petitioning thus became the right of every Australian.

The practice of petitioning Parliament has declined in relative importance in modern times because there are now other, and usually more effective, means of dealing with individual grievancesfor example, by direct representation by a Member of Parliament, by the Commonwealth Ombudsman or by bodies like the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Public grievances may nowadays be very effectively publicised through the media, and with the growth of parliamentary committees, brought to the attention of the Parliament by means of submissions to committees and subsequently in reports by those committees.

THE RECOMMENDED FORM OF A PETITION TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

PETITION

TO THE HONOURABLE THE SPEAKER AND MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ASSEMBLED IN PARLIAMENT:

The petition of certain . . .

Here identify, in general terms, who the petitioners are; for example:

citizens of Australia or residents of the State of . . . or electors of the Division of . . .

draws to the attention of the House, (or points out to the House)

Here give the circumstances of the case

Your petitioners therefore:

pray that the House, (or request the House to,) (or ask the House to)

Here outline the action that the House should, or should not, take

NAME SIGNATURE ADDRESS

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

and so on

Suggestions for further reading

House of Representatives Practice, 3rd edn. A.G.P.S., Canberra, 1997. pp 733–741.

Philip Laundy. The Office of Speaker in the Parliaments of the Commonwealth. Quiller Press, London, 1984.

Last updated: January 2001