There is a wealth of academic literature about the importance of community consultation and civic engagement for the success of the democratic process.  But it’s sometimes hard to feel sure that the effort is worthwhile when you only have 10 minutes to put your case and you are one in a stream of people that councilors listen to.  How do they manage to sit through days of submissions and still keep interested?  How do they manage to remember what different people have said, or weigh-up opposing points of view by different interest groups?

But I think that, clearly, it must be worth it because there are business interests that pay professionals for doing the work for them.  I also think that the feedback that councilors get from members of the public is an important countercheck to the advice they get from their own officers.  A document such as a Long-Term Council Community Plan, or a development strategy, or a proposed district/city plan is very largely the work of professional council staff.  Even if plan or strategy development involves councilors actively in the process, it is still mainly the work of professional experts who have particular views and assumptions about what should go into the plan and how. 

Often the expert views are based on rational assessment and logical inference.  But reason and logic do not necessarily reflect matters of the heart and ethical conviction.  For example, I well remember the arguments about waste disposal that separating household waste into paper, tin, and different forms of plastic was more expensive in terms of money and energy than piling everything into one big hole in the ground.  But the argument for waste separation reaches beyond financial cost; it takes in the fact that in separating their waste, people become more aware of the amount and kinds of waste they create.  The issue becomes as much a moral and ethical issue, an issue of life-styles and life choices, as it does of money and practicality.

So I come back to the question of submissions.  Are they worth it?  I hope they are; they give political decision-makers a wider sphere of information and different perspectives.  They perhaps help decision-makers to question and assess what is being proposed, even if, in the end, they decide to come back to the initial proposal.