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full-scale libraries. Today I can only thank the staff, and ask them to carry on the good work.
In asking for their continued efforts, I would like to add that I hope their conditions of service and opportunities for promotion will be more closely examined by the Standing Commission on Civil Service Salaries and Conditions of Service, to give an added incentive to their excellent work. The Commission has classified some librarians in the 'matriculation grades', ignoring the fact that after training they are professionals. We are professional service, but in some cases are paying only for unskilled matriculants.
This leads me to my second subject today, that is, the discontent expressed generally over the report of the Salaries Commission, as indicated by the immediate reaction and unrest following its publication. It is easy for the public to condemn all industrial action, and to tell civil servants that they are already well enough paid. Some indeed are. But we need to realize that it is the unfairness of the system, not so much the demand for higher pay, that makes lower-ranking civil servants angry. There is a wide disparity between higher-ranking civil servants who enjoy high pay, free chauffeur-driven transport, luxury flats paid for in the main by tax-payers, and numerous other fringe benefits, and the lower-ranking civil servants who enjoy none of these benefits but even find their paltry pay rises immediately cancelled out by inflation. It is this disparity that riles the unions, and drives the rank and file to industrial action. Those in the higher ranks make their own working conditions, but seem to be totally unaware of the hardships of the rest. Each pay revision widens the gap, gives more to the have-alls, little to the have-nots, and causes a storm of protest.
I shall refrain from laying all the blame for this on the Standing Commission, but will say that if the Government sets up a committee on any subject, it is futile to appoint as members of that committee, persons who know little or nothing about workers, and to exclude the representatives of the workers who know the picture from the workers' side.
From experience I know that committees set up by the Government are always fed information by the Government, and their findings are therefore doomed to be wrong or inadequate. The same can be said of committees like the Housing Authority, the Transport Advisory Committee and other Government-appointed bodies. They all make policies for people they do not know and are not willing to see. The Government has not yet learned the lesson of history that there can be no willing acceptance of a system of taxation without representation. Unrest is bound to continue as the gap between rich and poor widens. Yet the Government insists on following its usual way of waiting until a simple problem becomes a crisis, and when the crisis comes it acts hastily and in piecemeal fashion, each move triggering off further unrest.
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An example of this hasty and piecemeal action was seen in the events leading to the amnesty in 1977; another example was seen in the senseless use of teargas on desperate people attempting to save their homes; in the use of the Public Order Ordinance to cover up rather than tackle a problem, and in the mishandling of the Yaumati boat people and the Ma Chai Hang and lackadaisical method of dealing with the general outcry about rents in fire victims. An even more recent example was the Government's delayed response to the private sector. Even while the issue was raging, the Government's spokesmen, living contentedly in their mansions paid for by the public, assured everyone that there was no problem and therefore no action was necessary. The men who live well on our taxes lull themselves to sleep in their luxuries, and they are deplorably lacking in historical sense and in commonsense.
Any Government today that continues to withhold representation of the people in order to maintain the status quo is playing with fire. The Hong Kong authorities can see this quite well in other Asian countries where people are denied their political rights, but they are remarkably blind about the similar situation here. There is no conceivable reason why the now better-educated Hong Kong people should continue to be treated as backward and uneducated people, incapable of choosing their own representatives on councils and committees. It is an insult to the people for the Government to appoint Council or committee members who know little about the people and who are frequently self-seeking.
The majority of our elected Urban Councillors, those who have not allied themselves with the appointed side, know what frustration means. There are times when we know that certain policies need to be changed because they cause anger and resentment on the part of the people. But policies are invariably decided by those on the Council who have least contact with the people.
One further frustration now facing those who feel aggrieved is the lack of freedom of the press here. Many issues are misrepresented to the public in the press because the press often prints Government releases on controversial issues, but fails to understand those issues as they affect the people. I need only mention the case of the Sai Lau Kok flat-owners to indicate how time after time their case was misrepresented in the press, while the Government had its twisted version of the incident published in every detail.
I am not hitting out at reporters, many of whom have told me about their own frustrations. Some have told me of the pressures brought on them by influential people, who insist on having their version of a story printed, on the grounds that they are shareholders of such-and-such a newspaper. If press coverage can be influenced by shareholders, or perhaps advertisers, where is freedom? There are more subtle ways of censoring the press than by outright, clumsy suppression of news as practised in some of our neighbouring countries. Where there is open censorship, at least the public is aware that it is being misinformed. But the public is more easily gulled by the