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The Future
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
During 1976, the Museums Select Committee will continue to work towards fulfilling its long-term aims of providing the people of Hong Kong with a wider and more varied museum service, incorporating both the arts and the sciences. It is hoped too that further contacts and closer co-operation will take place with overseas Museum institutions and organizations towards this end.
It is also timely for the Museums Select Committee to consider the planning and construction of a new museum building in the future Tsim Sha Tsui cultural complex. In saying so, I would like to reiterate my view that I am always optimistic and I do firmly believe that with dedication on our part, we will realize the building of this cultural complex. We must begin to think in earnest and in detail about what type of building this should be, and what can and should be done to expedite the construction of such a building.
We should furthermore think in terms of specialized branch museums suitable for and adapted to the needs of people living in a particular district. The Lei Cheng Uk Branch Museum is a good example, and I am sure that there are other districts, such as Kwun Tong, where specialized branch museums can be established.
The museums of the Urban Council should be living institutions acting as a link between the past and the present, imparting to people a sense of history and of attachment to Hong Kong. They are institutions in which a continuous synthesis is taking place of Chinese, Asian and Western cultures, and as such they render a service and a contribution in the uplifting of the human spirit and the further progress of civilization.
I am sure I am voicing the views of all members of the Museums Select Committee in expressing appreciation to the Curators and staff of the Urban Council museums for the very fine efforts and accomplishments which have been arrived at during the year under review, and we look forward to an even more active year than ever before. Mr. Chairman, I have much pleasure in supporting the Motion.
MRS. E. ELLIOTT (in English): Mr. Chairman, as Chairman of the Libraries Select Committee, I wish to say a little about that subject first.
I am grateful for the co-operation and sincerity of the members of the Libraries Select Committee, who show a responsible attitude in discussing and formulating library policy. With the opening last year of the Kwun Tong Library, we now have seven libraries as well as one independent study room.
Having said this, I regret to mention that our library expansion programme is now in the melting-pot, due to so-called financial stringency. Most of our careful planning has been dumped overboard by Government delays, or cancellations of multi-purpose building projects which were to include libraries. This action in depriving our people of essential facilities is to be deplored, as it cuts out one more way of keeping people, especially young people, occupied in healthy surroundings. This severe blow to our hopes will not deter us from seeking other means of serving the public, either by continuing to rent premises, or by expanding the mobile library pilot scheme which will begin its operations in 1976. We are now carefully combing through our work to see what can be pared away and what can be added to our services to the best advantage of the public and at least cost to the ratepayers. It is a pity that we ever trusted the Government to carry out the promised projects, because by now we could have had a library in Sham Shui Po.
And now I should like to turn to some other matters that have caused me some concern during the past three years since we became, in name at least, financially autonomous, but were shorn of our most important responsibility, housing. I intend to be frank, and will undoubtedly tread on some party toes.
There was a time when the Urban Council was regarded by the public as the one Government body which had a slightly democratic flavour. Urban Council public meetings used to be lively, with questions on matters of vital interest and importance such as housing, and motions on constitutional reform and expanded jurisdiction. At that time, the Urban Council was the one body in Hong Kong that might be called an "Opposition", in the healthy political sense, for without an Opposition, any Government is dead and cannot represent the people it rules.
But now the Urban Council is dead. There is no longer any voice of opposition. Once we were in OPPOSITION to a stubborn bureaucracy; now we are in SUBJECTION to a microscopic dictatorship, a totalitarian majority that cares for its image and brooks no opposition. Our policies are made behind closed doors, and are often the result of private telephone calls and conversations; our public statements are subject to control, and our public meetings have become dull and monotonous routine.
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