Chapter 18 - Documents tabled in the Senate
Petitions
It is the right of any person or
organisation to petition Parliament to obtain redress of grievances, or to ask
it to take some action or not to do something that is contemplated. The right
to petition Parliament is of great antiquity.
The presentation of
a petition to the Senate is a proceeding in
Parliament and is protected by parliamentary privilege. The publication of
a petition before presentation is not similarly protected. (See Chapter 2,
Parliamentary Privilege, under Circulation of petitions.)
Petitions nowadays are mainly used to express views on public policy
issues. The use of petitions to request redress of personal grievances has
declined as other avenues for that purpose have developed. Senators frequently
attend directly to the problems of constituents, and other sources of redress
have been provided by the establishment of the Office of the Commonwealth
Ombudsman and legislation relating to administrative appeals and reviews.
Petitions when presented, like other
documents presented to the Senate, are public documents. Any person may
therefore inspect a petition and extract any information from it, including
names and addresses of signatories. There is nothing to prevent such a person
then sending material to the signatories. The harassment or other adverse
treatment of a person in consequence of their signing a petition could be held
by the Senate to constitute a contempt and punished accordingly.
Petitions are presented only by senators. This means that a person who
wishes to petition the Senate must forward the petition to a senator and ask
the senator to present it. Senators are not obliged to present petitions, but
most senators take the view that they should present any petition forwarded to
them, unless it is contrary to the rules of the Senate, and despite any
disagreement they may have with its contents.
Petitions to be presented are lodged with the Clerk (SO 69). The senator
presenting the petition places the senator’s name at the beginning of it,
together with a statement of the number of signatures. Petitions must be lodged
with the Clerk at least 3 hours before the meeting of the Senate at which it is
proposed to have them presented. In practice the rule is that petitions for presentation
on days when the Senate meets early are lodged the previous evening.
Petitions must be certified by the Clerk as being in conformity with
the standing orders. Rules relating to the form and content of petitions are
set out in standing orders 70 and 71. The most
important rule is that a petition must be addressed to the Senate and contain a
request for action by the Senate or the Parliament.
Petitions which are posted and signed electronically on the Internet
are accepted if the Senator certifies that they have been duly posted with the
text available to the signatories.
Petitions are tabled by the Clerk at the time provided in the routine
of business (SO 57). A summary
which is circulated indicates in respect of each petition the senator who
presents it, the number of signatures and the subject matter. These petitions
are deemed to have been received and the texts of the petitions are printed in
Hansard. A motion may be moved that a petition not be received (SO 69(3)). Petitions
that are received are ordered to be published under standing order 167 and therefore
attract parliamentary privilege.
There is no
provision in the standing orders for petitions for private bills, which in some
legislatures are founded upon a petition of the interested parties, but which
are unknown in the Commonwealth Parliament (see Chapter 12, Legislation).
Senators often receive representations from citizens which do not
qualify as petitions, such as petitioning letters or documents not properly
addressed to the Senate or the Parliament. Such documents may be presented as
petitions if the President is satisfied that exceptional circumstances so
warrant (SO 69(8)). Exceptional
circumstances are, for example, that the subject matter of the petition is
immediately before the Senate, that the petition refers to facts of which the
Senate might not otherwise be aware, that the petition refers to a serious
grievance or injustice to which the Senate should give immediate attention, or
that there is no other way in which the document can be treated so as to bring
it to notice. Circumstances which are not exceptional are, for example, that
there are a lot of signatures attached to the petition, that a great deal of
trouble has been taken to collect the signatures, or that the subject matter of
the petition is an important public issue.
Some unusual petitions have been presented, including one relating to
the textile, clothing and footwear industries written on a jacket and continued
on a roll of cloth, which was presented on 2 April 1992.
A petition received in 1991 was from foreign nationals resident outside
Australia. Some senators
questioned the propriety of this, but the President ruled that there is nothing
to prevent such petitions being presented (SD, 6/3/1991, p. 1234). There are
many circumstances in which foreigners overseas could legitimately ask the
Senate to take some action in relation to matters of concern to them.
Petitions presented
to the Senate are brought to the notice of the appropriate legislative and
general purpose standing committee. Committees have occasionally undertaken
inquiries based on petitions relating to their standing references.
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