[LINK] ePetitions, Oz Style?

[Stilgherrian]

On 14/1/08 10:59 PM, "rene" <rene.lk at libertus.net> wrote:
> Conroy is of the opinion that a petition signed by 20,000 people "clearly
> shows that [the view expressed in the petition] is widely shared in the
> Australian community".
> and had been using petitions in his efforts to push the Coalition into
> mandating ISP level filtering. [snip]

... and ...

> If Labor believes 20K signatures collected through churches justifies their
> policy, I'd be very worried about them paying even more attention to
> petitions than they already do.

The Australian article talks about petitions being overseen by a
parliamentary committee.

    Mr Albanese said the petitions committee... will include six
    government members and four non-government members,

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23040476-5013871,00.html

I for one hope that committee, in deciding whether or not to treat a
petition with Great Seriousness, will apply some sort of analysis of the
source of the petition so that petitions which obviously represent a narrow
slice of the Australian demographic are given less weight than those which
have garnered signatures from a broad cross-section.

However how do you do that, if you don't have a demographic database of
voters to look up?

And how do you interpret the actual content of the petition in the context
of how it might have been sold to the signers?

I can imagine a petition being written in a dozen paragraphs of
parliamentary legal jargon. The signature-collectors are gathered with a cry
of "Fight crime on our streets, sign the petition!" And yet buried in the
text is a proposal which, when translated out of that jargon, is about
rounding up immigrants and jailing them without charge.

Stil


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