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Sedition (Amendment) Bill-second reading
Explanatory Memorandum
Emergency (Principal) Regulation 25 makes it an offence to post or distribute any placard, circular or other document con- taining an incitement to violence or counselling disobedience to the law or to any lawful order or likely to lead to any breach of the peace. The elements of this statutory offence correspond closely to the common law definition of sedition. For this reason it is felt that the Sedition Ordinance should be amended so as to cover the offence contained in regulation 25.
2. Clause 2 of the Bill seeks to widen the definition of "seditious intention" contained in section 3 of the principal Ordinance by including an intention to incite persons to violence or to counsel disobedience to any law or to any lawful order.
3.
Clause 3 seeks to amend section 4(1)(c) by making it an offence to "display" any seditious publication.
4. Clause 4 seeks to add a new section 8, which empowers police officers and public officers to remove and obliterate sedi- tious publications. However if the publication is not visible from a public place, the powers of entry and removal can only be exercised with the prior permission of the occupier of the prem- ises or under a warrant issued by a magistrate.
5. It is intended to repeal Emergency (Principal) Regula- tion 25.
LANDLORD AND TENANT (AMENDMENT) BILL 1970
THE ATTORNEY General (Mr Roberts) moved the second reading of: -“A bill to amend further the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance.”
He said: Sir, in 1968, the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance was amended so as to empower the Governor to make an order excluding any particular premises from the Ordinance, in any case in which there is no appeal to the Governor in Council against a rec- ommendation for exclusion made by a Tenancy Tribunal.
Previously, all exclusion orders had to be made by the Governor in Council, who is now obliged to make them only if there has been an appeal from the Tenancy Tribunal.
Since the 1968 amendment, it has been found that in three sections in the Landlord and Tenant Ordinance there are references to the Governor in Council only, whereas there should be references also to