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We ought to support all the publicity and this so-called lime light that is being shown on District Boards at the moment because that is good for the community.
Now the last thing I see that could happen if we have opened Standing Committee meetings is that our meetings would become longer. In fact, I believe Mr. BERNACCHI in his speech mentioned in three different paragraphs that we would have much longer meetings. I am totally against prolonging meetings just for the sake of prolonging them, even if it does mean that we have refreshment in between. Apart from the point that it might be extremely embarrassing for some people with the habit of arriving late and leaving early, I don't believe that we should take 'making meetings longer' as an objective. In fact, the more efficient way of doing things is to have shorter meetings, not longer ones.
Having expressed my views on that, Mr. Chairman, I believe that the best course of action to take is to adopt Miss Maria TAM's proposal, i.e. the whole matter ought to be referred to the Standing Committee before we come to a decision on whether or not in principle, Standing Committee meetings ought to be opened to the public.
MR. JOSEPH CHAN (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, I agree with what Mr. BERNACCHI and Mr. Frederick FUNG had said, i.e. we should pay more attention to public accountability, but I think open meetings may not necessarily improve the situation or bridge the communication gap, for example, today we have an Open Meeting, we can look around and see how many members of the public have come. I honestly admit that I have not attended Urban Council Open Meetings for a long time, but I honestly believe that we should improve the procedure of questioning and answering, i.e. we prepared our questions and answers beforehand. I think some modification should be made about this. I personally come from a school and as for school meetings, we never open them to the parents, but they know what is happening in our school and they are very much concerned about what is happening in our school. If the members of the public are not particularly concerned with what is done in the Urban Council, then we should look at different fields and see how we can improve this. We can see whether the District Relations Select Committee should re-enforce their work and set up a Public Relations Select Committee to let the public know what is happening through the press, so that members of the public would be more concerned with the Urban Council's business. I think this is a better way than to open all the Standing Committee meetings to the public.
MR. CHUNG (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, we have two motions. One was raised by Mr. BERNACCHI of deciding in principle on this matter, the second motion was to put the whole thing to the Standing Committee. I think we should have a definite understanding of the whole matter. From my observation, matters discussed at the Standing Committee were mostly discussions arrived from the Select Committees, some of them were confidential. We always meet the problem that some can be opened but some cannot. I don't know whether we have to leave for another room and continue our discussion or to ask members of the public or the press to withdraw from the venue. In doing so, the meetings will be very complicated and there will be embarrassment. I think the whole matter should be looked into in detail. Another thing is that if our aim is to make the public more aware of what the Councillors do in each purpose meeting, there are other means to do so. Since every meeting will have its minutes, we can leave open those that can be open and not disclose those that are confidential. In this way, those who are interested in Council's matters can come to get the minutes, but there is no need for us to distribute them to the public. We are not putting on a show for the public by calling meetings. It is not to tell them whether we have strong arguments. If they are interested in what we discussed, they can find out from the minutes which exclude the confidential matters. Under such circumstances, some people suggested that we should let the public know more about what we have done because the public may not know that we have done many things. I believe that what people are concerned with is not how we are arguing, but whether we have taken specific action. If we are going to have a park, we have special construction, in other words, the Urban Council projects can be seen and felt by the public. I believe there are many details that we have to look into before we can make a decision. I support the motion moved by Miss Maria TAM, i.e. to bring the matter back to the Standing Committee for detailed discussion as it is difficult for us to approve in principle the motion moved by Mr. BERNACCHI. There are many big and small problems that we have to discuss in detail. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MR. LEE (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, I would like to say a few words on whether the Standing Committee should be opened to the public. When I received the motion by Mr. BERNACCHI, it has been the major theme for me to solve for two nights. I have tried to ask the other Councillors' opinion. What I got was that nobody opposed the disclosure of what we discussed to the public in principle. However, what we heard today is that we all agree that in principle, but worry that we cannot do it well technically. We are to give up our principles because we are afraid that we have a technical problem. It seems that we are putting things in the wrong order, the order of principle and technical difficulty is reversed. If we agree in principle but cannot do it in practice, then, in my view, we have tried our best. However, if we say that we agree in principle but are afraid that we cannot do well technically, then we disagree with the principle, I think it is putting things in the reverse order. The main point of the motion is the spirit, i.e. whether we support the motion in principle, whether the Standing Committee should be opened to the public and that I support 100%. Another suggestion was made that the motion should be put to the Standing Committee for further discussion. In this way, it means that we agree to open the meeting, but then we have to close the door to discuss whether we should open certain matters, so in other words, we agree, but with some reservations. If we are afraid of the leakage of confidential matters, I think it is totally a technical matter. Mr. FUNG gave an example of the British Parliament. I can put up more examples of the other parliaments. If they can solve the technical problems, why
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