Flood of responses on anti-discrimination law amendments will delay results

An unprecedented flood of submissions on planned amendments to anti-discrimination laws will delay results of the public consultation on the changes by two to three months.

With three days left for submissions, more than 80,000 have been received, with many revealing misconceptions about the planned amendments.

"I've worked in the government for so many years and I've never seen this great a volume of submissions on a public consultation," Equal Opportunities Commission chairman Dr York Chow Yat-ngok said yesterday. He said extra part-time staff had been hired to cope with the workload.

The consultation seeks views on how the four anti-discrimination laws, covering sex, family status, disability and race, should be reviewed and whether they should be combined.

Chow said most views tended to focus on two points: whether discrimination based on citizenship, immigration status and nationality should be prohibited under the racial discrimination law, and whether de facto relationships should be protected under provisions on family status.

Many of these, he said, seemed to be misinformed, the former by Hong Kong-mainland tensions and the latter by fear the measure would lead to same-sex marriage.

"Even in de facto relationships or marriages, they need to follow the Hong Kong legal definition of marriage, which is between a man and a woman," Chow said.