New 70-member Legco shows little appetite for legislators' traditional scrutinising role
Despite adding 10 extra members last year, the lawmakers - at least according to legal sector legislator Dennis Kwok Wing-hang - have shown little enthusiasm for one of their most important duties: scrutinising proposals and drawing up amendments.
Does a bigger Legislative Council mean more can be achieved? Perhaps not, if Legco's first year as a 70-member body is anything to go by.
"Committee stage amendments" allow lawmakers to contribute directly to the drafting of laws for the statute books.
Only four such amendments were put forward, all from the same two pan-democratic lawmakers, Kwok, of the Civic Party, and the Labour Party's Cyd Ho Sau-lan.
That was a sharp decline on the 19 amendments put forward in 2008-09, the first year of the previous legislature.
Both figures exclude amendments made to the budget bill, to which radical lawmakers last year proposed hundreds of amendments as part of a filibuster. In 2008-09, where there were no filibusters, there were 11 amendments offered to the bill.