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G. No, I think the reasons why we cannot have a sup reme council in Hong Kong based on the elective system is very well understood and I needn't repeat it all now.
And that is the prime consideration - elected members of the Urban Council of
course are not excluded from eligibility for the Legislative Council and there are
two on it at the moment.
Q. Do you see any relaxation in the present policy to allow perhaps elected members
of the Urban Council to at least take a place
G. The alected members are appointed, not so much because they are elected, but
because they are suitable people for the Legislative Council and they are doing a
very good job in it. There is no quota, as it were.
Q. So you don't foresee any even indirect elections and you are sort of saying that Legco formal
will be what it is now, there will be no sort of (interruption)
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G. I don't see any that a possibility for major constitutional change in Hong Kong. But I do see this as an evolving situation I don't think the present composition
or cross section of the community which the Legislative Council represents need necessarily be fixed for all time. There have been fairly drastic changes in the
last year or two as you know. And this is a situation which evolves, but the main
consideration, the thing of importance for the good government of Hong Kong and
for the confidence of the people in Hong Kong is that people in the Legislative
Council should be of a high quality and be able to deal with the extremely important
issues that come before them. This is the main consideration.
Q. About plans to improve labour legislation. I think you expressed the hope that
ultimately we should achieve equality with the best in Asia, outside of Japan. I
am just wondering, how far are we going towards achieving the standard of Singapore
in resp ect of minimum wages and restriction on overtime.
G. Well, what I said, and I think I;ve got it here, is, 'Your govemment has
concluded we should sat ourselves a target of achieving a level of legislation
governing safety, health and conditions of employment at least broadly eq uivalent
to the best in neighbouring countries whose state of economic development, social
cultural background are similar to our own which in effect means our principal
Asian competitors excluding Japan'. Now, I think there are tow things to say about
this. The first is that our target is not equivalent with a developed country like
America or a European country and I think that there has been some concern about this.
And the choice of this target, which was supported by the Prime Minister in Parliament
recently, I am sure is right. The sense of what I said was that we should now study
what comparative practice is amongst our competitors countries in East Asia, consider whether their p ractices are suitable for Hong Kong, and if they are,
and if we
are convinced they are, study the case for introducing them. But while the standard
of intemational comparability is not one that one can overlook, the price consideration
must always be whether a measure is of practical benefit to the people of Hong Kong.
Now, when you study comparability, and our study of this is by no means completa,
one of the things for instance that stood out was that every country in Asia except