HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL
19 July 1989
香港立法局
一九八九年七月十九日
130
The White Paper on pollution was published on World Environment Day, which was 5 June, not, I am afraid, a very good day for Hong Kong, and not a good one in which to compete for the publicity which we wanted. Today is a much better day to debate it, following as it does a week in which, as Mrs. TAM mentioned, the agenda of the Group of Seven meeting in Paris has actually more environmental than political content. So I am especially grateful to Members for their support and encouragement today which will help spread the message. Publicity will continue. We are in the last stage of appointing a public relations consultant who will assist Government in preparing and carrying out the public relations campaign to drive home the anti-pollution and environmental message of the White Paper. And I may say that extra resources including $1 million, which Mr. LEE mentioned, in cash and far more in free radio and TV time will be available for this purpose.
We are all deeply concerned about Hong Kong in one way or another. The White Paper on pollution is both a statement of the Government concern and a call for others to be concerned about the environment in Hong Kong. While our housing, social services and our livelihoods have all improved, our air has become dirtier, our waters more polluted and our background even noisier. We have not done nearly enough in the past to check this pollution of the environment and the White Paper is inevitably a back-log of expenditure, educational measures and enforcement which should have happened and have been paid for. There is still an opportunity for it to happen now, but it will not be there for long and the longer we wait, the worse will be the problems and the greater the costs. And as Mr. BARROW mentioned, our tourist industry will not wait either. We must not stop at just clearing a back-log; we must not be content with merely acceptable standards; they must be high so that Hong Kong can hold up its head to the rest of the world confidently that it is really living up to its Chinese name. This is not a dream. Japan, with its heavy industry, once had much worse pollution than we have now, but it decided not only to clean up but to set really high standards and it did so, and in many cases achieved them. Singapore did it too.
MA A
The White Paper sets out comprehensively, for the first time ever in one document, our objectives for tackling the main problem areas waste, water, air and noise and it states our programmes for dealing with these problems. We have backed this up with strategies for enforcement, education and planning
all, as Members have noted, essential components of the anti-pollution drive. In all, there are 100 strategies in the White Paper, and we have already begun taking action on each one. We have already achieved five modest ones. The target dates are bold, and are of course subject to resources, but a bold approach