In some ways, I find myself in the peculiar position of voting against “shall” only because it's intended. I support the general intent or the general aspiration in the amendment that has been proposed, changing “may” to “shall”. But we need to acknowledge that there are a lot of situations in which there could be unreasonable demands for the minister to consult when it's simply not appropriate or not necessary. For one thing, a lot of agencies, a lot of NGOs, say, “For God's sake, will you stop consulting to death and get on with making a decision and support us”, or, “Are you going to ask us yet again to consult when we've made the point, we've made the briefs, and we appeared before the committee?”
So unless people are going to say ministers have no competence to make a judgment, we have to be prepared to say that a minister has an obligation to exercise their judgment, and yes, they shall consult when it's the appropriate and reasonable thing to do, but they aren't compelled to consult when it's not necessary or not reasonable.
So I'm going to vote against the “shall” amendment and urge people to consider that the next amendment before us is a more reasonable one, namely that we shall take reasonable steps to consult.