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exercise his judgment on how to protect public interest, without abdicating it and leaving it to the press.
Finally, there are criticisms that the bill is not a mere codification exercise but new offences have been created, and new powers bestowed upon the Legislative Council under Clause 24. We held a further session working on Clause 24 with the Law Draftsman and the Attorney General to identify the areas we have codified and the areas covered by section 4 of Cap. 11.
This is an exercise which we had carried out already once before the bill was gazetted. It has been explained to us again that Clause 24 does fall within the scope of what is "inherently necessary" to a colonial legislature and the court in Hong Kong would not likely question the exercise of such powers conferred on the Council under this ordinance. However, in order to ensure that the new Legislative Council does not enjoy more power than we have already, an amendment will be introduced to exclude the courts' jurisdiction under Clause 24 on the lawful exercise of such powers. In fact the bill has never sought the power to prosecute or enforce its provision, which rests in the hands of the Attorney General and the courts
of law.
I have no doubt that there will still be criticisms that we have not deferred the Second Reading in order to allow more public comments on this bill. The Ad Hoc Group and our unofficial colleagues are convinced of the intrinsic value of this bill and that the Legislative Council is the proper forum for us to express our views. We have gone through many times the repeated criticisms and we believe that we should make clear our support to its intrinsic value and give reasons for it before the public judgment on the merit of this bill is so clouded by the criticisms made against parts of the bill, which we know as early as on the 3rd of June. These parts of the bill will be subjected to deletion or amendments and we should not throw away the baby with the bathwater. To me, open government, whether its legislature is appointed or elected or a combination of both, means responsible and responsive