and third readings that "if the working of the Bill discloses gaps, or provisions which prove unfair or oppressive then (the)
Government will be ready and willing to consider suitable amend-
ments" was hardly a sound basis upon which to present such an
unsatisfactory piece of legislation and would do little to console
those who might in the mean time be the victims of unfairness or
oppression.
At the same time we draw attention to the fact that
this is not the only Ordinance recently passed in Hong Kong which
omitted from its provisions the traditional requirement that,
save in the most exceptional emergency, Executive action should
be reasonable and should ultimately be open to question in the
courts. On the same day that the Public Order Ordinance, 1967 was passed into law an Ordinance was passed which gave absolute authority to any police officer or any officer of the Agriculture and Fisheries Department authorised by the Director of that
Department to destroy any dog or cat which appears to him (whether upon reasonable grounds or not) to be suffering from any infectious
disease, irrespe ctive of the seriousness of the disease and of
any reasonably apprehended danger to man or beast.
Legislation in the Colony is in a language incompre- hensible to the large majority of the population and they are
entitled to assume that the legislature will take reasonable care that the statutes it enacts adequately protect them against
possible injustice, while it should be remembered that those who
have sufficient knowledge of the English language to enable them to
submit criticisms do not have unlimited time in which to read Bills
and submit reports thereon, particularly where the reports have to be of the length of the present. (It will not be forgotten that
it is but a few months since this Branch felt constrained to submit
a report of similar length upon the Commissions of Inquiry Bill,
21.