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CHAIRMAN:-Mr. WATSON, your point is taken.
(Dr. BELL continued)
In clarification I never suggested the Commissioner would for one moment condone corruption in his Department. I hope Mr. WATSON is not insinuating that I made such a remark. Perhaps he did not understand what I said. It can perhaps be played back to him on the tape recorder later. At any rate, I am quite sure that no hut should escape detection for longer than 2 months as Mr. BERNACCHI has said, and that being the case, anyone who has lived there for 12 months is obviously going to suffer most extreme hardship when they are turned out suddenly after perhaps two years or three years, as has been the case in one particular hut that I know of, which has been used for domestic purposes for three years and they have now been turned out. I sincerely support Mr. BERNACCHI'S motion, and hope that it will go through to-day and hope that it will be voted upon to-day.
MR. SALES:-Mr. Chairman, on a point of clarification, it is hardly proper for me on the last time that our lady member is with us, to refute what she has said in my respect. I leave that to Mr. BERNACCHI when he exercises his right of reply. However, I would like to point out that the misunderstanding did not limit itself only to Mr. CHEONG-LEEN. Evidently, Dr. BELL did not understand the procedure that I wanted to adopt on that occasion, and which would have enabled the motion to be passed, the motion the substance of which is before the meeting to-day.
DR. BELL:-On a point of clarification, Mr. Chairman, indeed I understood, but I did not understand the motive behind Mr. SALES' motion last time.
MR. SALES: It was Machiavellian. (Laughter).
MR. H. CHEONG-LEEN: As you know, Mr. Chairman, Mr. SALES and I are extremely good friends and we work very closely together in this Council. Sometimes we must disagree, otherwise he could be accused by his colleagues of being a member of the Coalition. In this particular case, Mr. Chairman, Mr. SALES, perhaps because he kept to himself the procedure on his part to bring about an acceptance of this motion—I use the words "on his part" in quotations—it was not possible for me to define what was in his mind when this motion was last discussed in this Council. But I would like to say that in view of the fact that this motion has been modified it does deserve sympathetic consideration. Speaking for myself as an Elected Member who is able to exercise the right to express his own personal views, since Mr. BERNACCHI did not consult me in advance that he wished to move this motion, I do feel that its substance deserves every sympathetic consideration, and should it be voted upon to-day I will support it. What the procedure should be in implementing the motion is an entirely separate question, Mr. Chairman, and I think the matter would have to be thrashed out in Select Committee.
MR. WILFRED WONG:-Mr. Chairman, I would like to support this motion on the general grounds that it gives a better deal for the refugees and newcomers in the matter of housing. I think sometimes we might be inclined to emphasize too much the other issues, and I think this motion ought to be voted for on its merits, as it gives the squatter a better deal and better protection. I would like to support this motion.
CHAIRMAN:-Does any other Member wish to speak before Mr. BERNACCHI exercises his right of reply?
(No other Members rose to speak)
MR. BERNACCHI:-The last time that a similar but not by any means identical motion was before this Council, I fully appreciate that it seems to have been subject to a misunderstanding and I will say no more. I take issue with the Commissioner for Resettlement when he says that only a fraction of the squatter shacks have been in existence for over a year. I think if this is right, then there is no harm in this motion being passed, because, of course, it will make no difference, but in fact I think that as at present organized, many, many new squatter houses, according to definition, have been in existence not for one year but for several years. Now the Commissioner referred to there being something significant in the expression "illegal structures". I have deliberately framed this motion as meeting the views of most Members on the last occasion and cutting out the questions which were debatable and were subject to different views. But I give the Commissioner my undertaking that the word "illegal structures" in the connexion in which it is used, does not refer to conversions.
Now in answer to Mr. WATSON, I do not think by any means that I am giving anybody a slap in the face, as he says. It was not my intention to do so, and it was my intention to move the motion in such a form that it was generally acceptable to Members of this Council without being further discussed in Select Committee. The Select Committee meets once a month and does not have referred to it, as Mr. WATSON imagines, all cases of hardship by any means. The last two meetings have been, to my knowledge, for precisely 10 minutes, because from certain commitments I have from 8.30 to 9 o'clock on a Thursday morning, I cannot come to the meeting until 9 or five minutes past 9, and twice I have tried to come to the meeting only to find that it has been adjourned already—apparently it has only had a formal agenda for two meetings now. To my knowledge, one lady in a responsible position has been to the Commissioner to ask for certain cases to be referred to
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the Select Committee. I do not know what the result was.
CHAIRMAN: -I think we have had a full discussion on the motion. I will now put it to the vote.
(The motion was put to the vote and was carried.)
CHAIRMAN: -The motion is carried.
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