[LINK] Electronic petitions to Parliament

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Bernard writes,

> .... but what's the purpose of e-petitions?


Not sure if you're refering to petitions, or to e-petitions, Bernard :)

In terms of petitions, besides having personal communications with your
local member, public petitions are really the only legal way to be heard
(to some extent) in parliament. Since about 1066-AD. Now while I for one
have a close and regular (weekly) email and phone exchange with my local 
Fed Member (haha, owning a radio station helps) perhaps others don't. So
ever tried standing in the rain, outside your local supermarket, and for
several weeks or more, collecting sigatures?

However, as the final four url paragraphs that Philip posted here note:

"Making information on petitions and responses available online enables 
non-principal petitioners and other interested individuals to follow the 
progress of petitions and to read the ministerial responses, informing 
the community generally and reducing the need for principal petitioners 
in particular to try to pass on the response to a possibly disparate 
group of fellow signatories.

The next natural step in the evolution of electronic communication and 
petitioning is likely to be the introduction of electronic petitioning, 
if the House follows the example of a range of other parliaments. 

Several jurisdictions overseas & Australian state parliaments (Queensland 
and Tasmania) have introduced electronic petitioning. While the systems 
they use to process the petitions may vary, they all seek to simplify and 
modernise the petitioning process to improve access to parliament for the 
people.

While electronic petitioning may have seemed a radical concept several 
years ago when introduced and promoted by the Scottish parliament, the 
processes that have been established in Queensland and Tasmania show that 
an electronic petitioning system can operate effectively alongside the 
more traditional system of hard-copy petitions in a parliament such as 
ours.

We look forward to the next stage in the process of petitioning and to 
finding new ways of engaging Australians in the work of the House."

www.openaustralia.org/debates/?id=2011-02-28.16.1&s=speaker%3A10473#g16.2

Cheers,
Stephen