Queensland citizens draws to the attention of the House, that e-Petitions raised by “Queensland citizens” do not incorporate information concerning the breakdown of the electoral divisions to which signatories of the e-Petitions belong. We believe that having this information publicly available would be a significant enhancement to the democratic process in our state by providing our MPs with reliable information about the views of their own electorate on issues of wider concern. At the same time, it would also provide the voting public with an official mechanism to express their considered viewpoints on issues or bills before the parliament, and subsequently measure the level to which their own elected representative represents their viewpoints.

The system envisaged is one where firstly, when the petition signatory enters their address as required, the system generates their electorate from that data, displays that to the signatory and then gives them the option to confirm the electorate, or change it (via drop-down list of electorates) in the case of some unusual circumstance.

Secondly, when the number of signatures on an e-Petition is displayed, that value would be hyperlinked to a pop-out screen where numbers of signatories from within each state electoral division was displayed in an alphabetically arranged table.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to direct the Parliamentary Service to investigate the cost to modify the current system to provide this functionality, and provided that that cost is less than $0.20 per enrolled voter in Queensland, direct the Parliamentary Service to implement this modification.