Consultation fatigue | Simultaneously held public consultations ‘quite improper’

The recent emergence of three public consultations in two months is not giving the general public a clear idea of each, leaving members of the public quite confused, said local commentators.
In September, the government commenced the public consultation for the Master Urban Plan, which will decide what Macau will be like in the future and where each type of constructions will be located in the city.
Then, the government commenced the public consultation for the Sandwich-class Housing Scheme, which is trying to define sandwich-class and the features of such housing estates.
Yesterday saw the commencement of the public consultation for the Youth Policy Framework for the next decade, which will affect the population aged between 13 and 35 years.
The serial consultations are breeding a “consultation fatigue” – as described by social commentator Johnson Ian – among the general public. This year was not the first time the government ran public consultations in this manner.
The public has been criticizing the government for running public consultation for the sake of running, Ian recalled. He added that the government is currently stepping up to “squeeze in several public consultations.”
“It is giving the society the perception of being perfunctory,” Ian described.
Former lawmaker Paul Chan was less criticizing, noting that the arrangement was “quite improper.” Chan remarked, “Inserting a gap between each consultation is better in terms of both effects and feeling.”
Squeezing several public consultations within a short period of time is giving the public a sense of complications, according to academic-commentator Leung Kai Yin.
“Maybe the government thought the three consultations concerned different people,” Leung speculated.
As for the reason of the overlapping, Chan and Ian estimated that it was because the government is trying to rush policies or bills before the end of the year, which is also the conclusion of the first year of the mandate of the incumbent Chief Executive, Ho Iat Seng. Ho took office in December last year.
“The works in question have been piled up for long, so they need to be rushed [before the end of the first year of the Chief Executive],” Chan estimated.
For Ian, it has become somewhat a habit to rush bills out before the government head gives a new Policy Address.
On the other hand, Leung thought there has been no coordination between the five secretaries. “Whenever a piece of work is cross-secretarial, each secretary has no idea what their counterparts are working on,” Leung added. It is part of the CE’s election platform that he will work on cross-departmental collaborations when he takes office.
Leung thinks that up until now, each secretary is only focused on their area when making policies or public consultations.
However, Leung believes the government may not have been deliberate. Rather, it was coincidental that those public consultations overlapped each other. “Some works have been there for long and they have to catch the year-end threshold,” Leung said.
Chan shared the same view. “Each secretary is only concerned with their own areas, while the administration and justice sector did not coordinate well,” He explained.
Furthermore, in Ian’s opinion, the government is more focused on kicking off a lawmaking process than on actually achieving “some positive impacts.”
On top of Ian’s opinion, Chan suspected that the government is trying to rush bills out so as to show the public that it is delivering work. Meanwhile, rushing bills into the parliament will also get its hands clean.
Ian also described that many recent public consultations have had “poorly written consultation or introductory texts,” forcing members of the public to spend extensive time to understand the texts.
“It is time consuming, let alone the texts’ poor quality. […] When the texts have insufficient supporting data, even if people want to make opinions, they won’t be making in-depth ones,” he explained.
Ian also criticized the government for not offering sufficient support to members of the public who are willing to participate in the public consultations. “It hasn’t given any explanation on technical terms in public consultations on, for instance, the Master Urban Plan, which was full of technical terms,” Ian explained.
“I don’t know what the government wants to achieve,” Ian said.