By Phillip Clark
First published in The Sydney Morning Herald on June 9, 1989
Leslie Gonye in the storage room containing 150 years worth of petitions to NSW parliament.Credit: Quentin Jones
In a large room on the eighth floor of Parliament House in Sydney are housed the hopes, dreams and prejudices of tens of thousands of people in NSW spanning more than 150 years.
In hundreds of cardboard boxes stacked from floor to ceiling are the petitions presented to the NSW Parliament from hopeful citizens seeking everything from the abolition of daylight saving to the banning of the highly popular Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
One of those responsible for watching over this vast storehouse of public gripes is the Clerk Assistant of the NSW Parliament, Mr Leslie Gonye.
Though petitions are one of the oldest and most archaic forms of official public protest, Mr Gonye says there is no sign of them dying.
More are being presented than ever. On his desk yesterday were 28 petitions for presentation to the next sitting day of Parliament.
Mr Gonye looking at a 1941 petition sent in to complain about changing NSW hotel opening hours.Credit: Quentin Jones
While people from every conceivable concern present petitions, the most prolific petitioner by far is the Festival of Light, which has managed to parade an endless stream of signatures calling for the abolition of the Gay Mardi Gras and opposing abortion.
The group accounted for 20 of the petitions sitting on Mr Gonye’s desk yesterday.
Over the past three years the big issues in petitions have been AIDS, education funding, environmental protection, and prostitution.
The petition being presented by Rev Tomlinson of the Temperance Alliance to Mr Weaver MLA in 1941.Credit: Gordon Short
Petitions have to be presented in proper form and must use specified language before they will be accepted (“Your petitioners, in duty bound, will ever pray.“)
They are presented on behalf of electors by MPs, who theoretically can refuse to do so.
Presentation of a petition is not to be taken as any endorsement by the MP of the views contained in the petition. The Premier, who opposes capital punishment, has presented at least one petition on behalf of constituents calling for the death penalty.
Given the enormous effort required to collect a large petition and the short shrift it receives once it reaches Parliament, some may think it a wonder that people bother with them.
The effort does not seem to deter people. One of the most unusual petitions received by the Parliament was in 1941 from 43,000 people opposing any expansion of pub opening hours as being deleterious to the war effort.
The subject matter and the MP lodging the petition are noted by the Clerk of the Parliament in a process which takes only a few seconds.
The details are entered into a register and a letter is sent by the Clerk to the minister responsible for the subject matter of the petition.
The rest is up to the petitioners. You might say they are back to where they started.