Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

Some topics covered in today's petitions include a request for endometriosis to be recognised by the National Disability Insurance Scheme, a request to maintain the live animal export industry and a request relating to documentation for amateur radio operators.

With the upcoming break in parliamentary sittings, it will be several weeks before another report of the Petitions Committee will be presented. With that in mind, I'd like to use this opportunity to explain the key stages of the petitions process. All the petitions presented today are electronic petitions that were first seen by the committee at our meeting on 29 May. After the committee certified the e-petitions as being in order, they were loaded onto the petitions page on the parliament's website, where they were open for signatures for four weeks. Now that those weeks have passed, the petitions are being presented to the House. Paper petitions are treated a bit differently because they have already been signed before they come to the committee. Once the committee certifies a paper petition as being in order, it can be presented to the House at the next opportunity.

After petitions are presented to the House, those petitions that have received 50 or more signatures may be referred to the relevant minister for a response. Ministers are expected to respond to a referred petition within 90 days of presentation. Petitioners are reminded that a response from the minister is addressed back to the Petitions Committee. After the committee has noted the response, it is included in the committee's next report to the House. The ministerial responses included in today's presentation are those that the committee received at our meeting last week. In turn, responses that we receive at our committee meeting this week will be presented to the House at the next opportunity, which is scheduled for Monday 12 August. After a ministerial response has been presented, it is uploaded to the parliament's website alongside the relevant petition. The House Hansard also records petitions and responses presented to the House. Finally, I also note that the principal petitioner is notified as their petition progresses through each of the key steps in the petitioning process.

I trust this information assists those engaging with the House petitioning system, and I look forward to presenting more petitions and ministerial responses during the next sitting period.

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