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(3)
HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
In his speech in this Council on the Budget, on the 12th October, the Honourable the Financial Secretary said :-
"In preparing the final draft a number of items of new expenditure which it had originally been desired to include were deleted in order to avoid budgeting for any substantial deficit in the uncertain circumstances which lie before us."
That statement of the Financial Secretary I regard as an important admission that certain desirable items of expenditure were excluded from the Budget because of the "uncertain circumstances which lie before us," and nobody who is acquainted with the circumstances of Hong Kong will dispute that there are many other public works which we would like to have carried out if finances permitted.
This seems
to me a very strong argument not only against our sending home as a War Gift a sum of more than three million dollars but also a very strong argument against the imposition of a tax like income tax, which will seriously upset Chinese capitalists and industrialists in this Colony.
A few days ago I visited the Kwong Wah Hospital and found that it was badly overcrowded, with, in some cases, two patients occupying the same bed. Also I found over 200 patients quartered in four matsheds in the grounds, who are exposed to serious danger in case of fire.
In these circumstances it is obvious that more hospital accommoda- tion for several hundred patients ought to be built as soon as possible, involving a probable expenditure of about two million dollars.
I am confident that Your Excellency, who has Public Health matters in this Colony so much at heart, will agree that this is a responsibility which rests upon the Government and that these new hospital buildings ought to be erected as soon as practicable.
My Honourable friend, Mr. M. K. Lo, will presently refer in his speech to other long-overdue Public Health needs, such as a hospital for children and a sanatorium for tuberculous cases. These are obviously projects involving the expenditure of considerable sums of money.
I now pass on to the main theme of my speech, which is that, for the purpose of making a gift to the Imperial Government, other taxes which would not involve the risk of injuring the trade and prosperity of this Colony ought to be substituted for income tax.
In the opinion of responsible business men of this Colony the imposition of income tax would be a disastrous form of taxation to adopt, for it is the unanimous opinion of the Committee of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, and of the Committee and Members of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, that they are not in favour of the institution of income tax in this Colony.
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