Consultations are vague,

Acouple of weeks ago, a document dropped in my inbox. Wellington City Council wants feedback on its goal to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill. The brochure itself is gorgeous, cheerfully yellow, quixotic photographs of children tending a cabbage patch, or dragging rubbish from a beach, and full of stupefying jargon like ‘‘designing out waste’’.

Certainly, the comms team have been busy with it. (Too pre-occupied to tell locals about the faulty 15kg street lamps, threatening to brain them from a great height.)

But it runs to 80 pages. And honestly, life is too short. Even for me, and I get paid to read consultation papers.

The strategy objectives are pleasantly vague (I mean, is anyone going to object to ‘‘Waste reduction is accessible and attractive’’?) but entirely lacking in practical information, like how much funding is available or how much interventions might cost.

The pertinent information for busy people, juggling households, families, careers and an already unreliable waste collection service doesn’t come until page 61.

The carrot: a proposed introduction of food and organic waste collection. The stick: the $17 bin bags will be collected fortnightly or monthly. Suck that down with your cup of 12.8% rates rise.

But in this draft strategy consultation, ratepayers don’t get to say whether they want more or less kerbside collection. The exercise asks them to rate some rather nebulous goals.

Letting people vent and feel heard seems like a valid goal, but this is not good policymaking. It’s an exercise in building social licence. And spending the public affairs budget.

These over-long, meandering and expensive documents put pressure on residents’ time and energy. The very words ‘‘stakeholder engagement’’ make me want to put a stake in my eye.

They aren’t asking questions which they could