'One month enough consultation time for Article 23'

Executive councillor and barrister Ronny Tong on Tuesday said the consultation period of one month announced for Basic Law Article 23 national security legislation is reasonable, and people can still put forward their opinions afterwards. Tong said the February 28 end to the public consultation exercise should not be seen as a deadline for views on the proposals. "The government would put forward a bill to Legco, and then at that stage no doubt Legco would begin another round of consultation. People can continue to express their views either directly through public channels or via their representatives in Legco or attend any consultation hearing in Legco," he told RTHK. "So I think the consultation would, in practice, continue until the law is passed. Hong Kong is a place where if you put forward a reasonable and rational opinion, the government would take heed." Lau Siu-kai, a consultant to the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, echoed Tong's views, saying the government wants the legislative process to be speedy, so it would have been difficult to have a longer consultation period. "There is no strict rule as to how long the consultation should be. As I can see, the content in the National Security Law or in Article 23 is not that dense or it's not that much content anymore. It's not that difficult for people to digest the new law, as well as the offences included in the law," he told RTHK. As well as improvements to existing laws, the government plans to enact new laws covering offences such as computer-related crimes and sabotage. Lau said it was inevitable for the government to widen the scope of security legislation and to add new laws. "When the Basic Law was announced in 1990, a lot of new crimes affecting national security were not known at that time. But since then, and particularly since the last two decades, a lot of new national security crimes have emerged around the world," he said. "Hong Kong has experienced some of these in the last decade. So it is inevitable the government will expand the scope of the meaning of the terms in Article 23 to make sure that Hong Kong can cope with different sorts of national security threats effectively by law."