AL head urges government to increase legislative efficiency

By
Kam Leong

The President of the Legislative Assembly, Ho Iat Seng, has slammed the government’s slow administrative procedures for affecting the Assembly’s legislative process, expressing worries that some of the bills may be nullified if the authorities cannot speed up.
“We currently have ten bills in hand, with a few more to come. The government’s procedures are quite slow so it always takes a lot of time to respond to our alterations on the bills…This makes us unable to control the time for legislation,” Mr. Ho told reporters on the sidelines of the Assembly’s media Spring lunch yesterday.
The city’s laws regulate that bills after passing the first reading would be distributed to related sub-committees for article-by-article discussion or alteration before being filed for final reading.
“As most of the bills are proposed by the government, we need to reach consensus with the authorities on the texts for the bills we draft.
Hence, if the government does not respond to us [in a timely manner] we can only sit and wait,” the AL head said.
This four-year term of the Legislative Assembly is to end next year. The AL president is worried that some of the bills may not catch up for final reading by term-end if the government does not speed up its administrative procedures.
“These ten bills have to be completed within this year as it will be the last year of this AL term next year, meaning a year for election. I don’t think legislators could still put as much focus on assisting the bills,” Mr. Ho said, indicating there could be many abandoned bills if the situation does not improve.
The legislature president claimed that the government only needs to nod, or not, on the texts that legislators draft for final reading. “This is not a very difficult procedure. I don’t understand why the government always takes so long,” he said.
“After all, once a bill passes the first reading, there will not be any major changes in principle, only some technical changes,” Mr. Ho explained, adding he has called the city’s Secretaries to push for progress but failed.
According to Mr. Ho, the local legislature has passed a total of 26 bills since the term began in October 2013.