unilaterally or even bilaterally are misguided.
Hong Kong
will continue to devote energy and ingenuity to addressing
these problems multilaterally,
is
through the GATT.
There
a reasonable chance that the new round of multilateral
trade
can negotiations
real achieve
and much
needed
While clearly
improvements to the world trading system.
the final results
depend on a wide range of participants
compromising on
we their differences,
intend to see that
this chance is not missed through lack of effort.
Labour shortage
13.
Finally, the labour
the labour shortage issue.
There seems
to be general agreement that
we
we should do what
can
in
the
terms of practical measures
join
to
encourage
more
people
to
labour
force.
But
there
is
considerable
disagreement when it comes to the idea that we should relax our policy on importation of labour, and Members' speeches
reflect that fundamental disagreement.
14.
This issue
was well aired in this
Council only
so I will be brief. We continue to see serious
to permit the
a month ago,
problems in relaxing our immigration rules large-scale importation of labour. These problems relate
sector
particularly
labour to
relations, to
the labour
getting its
full share
of the
as economic boom,
Mr. Tam
Yiu-chung put it, to
the effect on
housing
and social
/services
}
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