HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
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THE COLONIAL SECRETARY.-My hon. friends the Director of Medical and Sanitary Services, the Harbour Master, the Attorney General and the Treasurer have dealt fully with certain aspects of the remarks of the unofficial members which particularly affect their de- partments. You, Sir, will I understand deal with some of the more important subjects under discussion and it remains for me to answer those criticisms which have not been covered by other speakers and will not be dealt with by Your Excellency. In the first place, Sir, I should like to thank my unofficial colleagues for their very carefully reasoned criticism of the Budget and I think the impression left on the mind of any one who listened to their speeches was that the principles of the Budget are accepted and that only the details are subject to serious criticism. It seems to me that the forward policy of services is not in any way condemned, for the encouragement of aviation, the re-establishment of the Statistical Department and the forward move in matters of Health and Sanitation have all met with the approval of my honourable friends on the unofficial side. Their chief complaint, or so it seems to me, is that the Government has not at the same time been able to undertake some of the pressing needs of the Colony in the way of buildings, roads, recreation grounds and other material works.
Well, Sir, I may say at once that the Government fully shares their disappointment, but even the Government cannot make bricks without straw and the hardest part of a Budget framer's task is the endeavour to make the quart of the demands go into the pint pot of the revenue. There is hardly a work mentioned by our critics which has not received the most careful consideration of the Govern- ment and been finally ruled out in favour of works which seemed to the Government to merit prior performance. The work of adminis- tration has to be provided for before money can be found for public works, and in this connection I would refer to the remarks of the senior Chinese unofficial member on the rising cost of administration. The Government, Sir, admits that the cost of administration is rising and it must continue to rise so long as more and more is demanded of the Government. The largest increases in the present Budget are in answer to insistent public demand and have met with unofficial approval. So far as I can remember only one department is charged with being over-staffed, and the Harbour Master has, I think, made an effective reply to the charge.
As a matter of curiosity I have caused the expenditure on Personal Emoluments in Hong Kong to be compared, so far as information is available here, with the expenditure in neighbouring administrations, and we find the interesting result that the percentage of Personal Emoluments to Revenue in the present Budget, and in this connection it must not be forgotten that the same Personal Emoluments deal with an expenditure of nearly $2,000,000 on loan works in addition to voted expenditure, is slightly less than the percentage shown by the 1927/1928 figures for Ceylon and the 1929 figures for the Straits Settlements, and much less than the 1929
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