ZU-NOV-1990
SECRETARIAT PRESS OFFICE
+852 868 5212
P.05
policy secretaries in March 1989.
9. And there has been a great deal of consultation. True we did not issue a “PADS Green Paper" covering the whole of the project. But we have made no secret of what we are doing, the media has been full of it for several years now and the various projects have all been put to the appropriate committees for consideraton.
10.
Throughout all the years of this project's gestation, the Avia- tion Advisory Board has been con- sulted. Several members of the Legislative Council have served on that Board. On the transport front, there has been full consultation with the Transport Advisory Committee and with the District Boards. Their comments on the Green Paper "Moving into the 21st Century" were taken into account in the White Paper issued in January this year. And, of course, serious considera. tion has always been given to the views and advice volunteered by individuals and professional bod- ies. We have attended numerous public seminars and are prepared to do more and there are plans for television programmes which will explain all aspects of the PADS to the people of Hong Kong.
11. That said, we do have to make a choice about our style of consulta- tion for infrastructural projects, either we continue to do things the way we have done so far, the tradi- tional Hong Kong way or we make a drastic change and accept the consequences. The Hong Kong style of consultation for infrastructural projects is to take the best advice available, make a decision based on that advice and then ensure that everyone who is directly affected by the decision is fully
consulted. For example, the Sham Shui Po District Board, which has a keen interest in the West Kowloon reclamation is already discussing the alignment and impact of the road on the community there. Many more District Boards will be involved as time goes on. And of course the planning process is subject to the
scrutiny of the Legislative Council and members of the Finance Com- mittee have to be satisfied with the funding.
12. There is an alternative method of consultation which is adopted in some other places around the world. It is to have a series of formal publicenquiries open to the media and the public at which every element of the project is open for public debate. That may be a per- fectly suitable course to follow in some countries but experience else- where leads us to believe there would be severe penalties if we applied the same approach in Hong Kong. For example, a decision to go ahead with Munich Airport was made in 1969 and it is still not finished largely because of delays caused by public enquiries which together took over 8 years to complete and Stansted Airport in the UK has been argued about since 1964. It is due to open next year. Somehow that style of doing things does not quite seem to fit into Hong Kong's “get up and go" image.
13.
There has been some criti- cism suggesting that the Govern- ment is drifting along, with no sense of vision or purpose waiting out time until, with a sigh of relief, we can hand over the administration of Hong Kong in 1997.
14. It is difficult to see how such an opinion can be sustained if one examines our record of achievements and plans for the future dispassion- ately. The fact is that there can be few Governments which have man- aged to maintain such consistent policy direction over wide areas of administration and for such long periods of time with such a success- ful record of delivering the goods on its long term promises and plans.
15.
We sometimes take for granted our achievements in such fields as housing, education and health, and it takes visitors to re- mind us that no territory in the world has tackled, what one of my emi- nent predecessors called, "the prob- lem of people", with such determi-
nation, imagination and success. Just look around the territory. We have over the past twenty years embarked on one of the world's most imagina- tive and successful new town build- ing programmes. We have moved two million people into modern communities complete with schools, hospitals, clinics and comprehen- sive welfare, cultural and recrea- tional facilities. In addition and at the same time we have built two new rapid transit systems, a second tunnel under the harbour and sev- eral others under our mountains. All these within budget and ahead of schedule. In education, we have achieved free education for 9 years. In the field of health we have eradi- cated previously endemic diseases. We have reduced infant mortality rates to below the levels of every- where apart from Japan and Scan- dinavia, and our people live longer on average than those in either the United Kingdom or the United States. And all this with no
foreign aid programmes to help us and while keeping public expendi- ture below 20% of GDP. Nothing “lame duckish” about that record of achievement.
16. As to the future it wou!“ indeed have been much easier to take the low road, to forget about PADS, pollution, education and policy planning. Our lives would be much more simple. But all of us in the Government are committed to strive to do what is best for the people of Hong Kong regardless of the stresses and strains that may impose on us personally and indeed on the administration as a whole. We believe it would be totally irre- sponsible of us to rest on our laurels and take the easy road to 1997 by doing the minimum needed to keep Hong Kong ticking over. We are firm believers in the Chinese saying "unless we continue to make prog- ress we lag behind" BAT JUN JAK TUL, So we have lifted our horizon well beyond 1997 and are making plans for the next century. In addi- tion to building a new airport, we are now firmly on track in expand- ing our tertiary education sector on a massive scale by more than dou-