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MR. LAWRENCE H. L. FUNG (in English):—Mr. Chairman, since the Statement of Aims has been scrutinized by the various select committees and the Standing Committee of the Whole Council, I certainly have much pleasure in supporting the motion before Council. My apologies to everybody that I do not have prepared text for what I have to say because much of what I had said had already been written and recorded in this Council Chamber and much of what I have to say, in fact, have been inspired by all of you in the last two afternoons.
We traditionally dispensed with Standing Order once a year in order to discuss any subject under the sun and it has been an interesting exercise this year as well. I would like to suggest that we should have more frequent and more spontaneous debate whether we should have it monthly, quarterly, bi-monthly or half-yearly, we really should start using the rifle approach rather than the shot-gun approach and why not, because in the last two years, we had debated on the subject of the draft Joint Declaration and many other subjects other than the Annual Conventional Debate. The purpose of this is, first of all, if we have more debates and therefore shorter debates, it will save many of us the agony of having to face many of these spotlights for six hours in two afternoons. Secondly, I think will also lead to more and better accountability to the public of what we do. We all believe in open Government but open Government does not mean that we just open the meeting to the public, it is more than that. We should be candid and frank with the public, we should see and tell the public what we do and we intend to do and the reasons behind the things that we have done.
The second subject is privatization, I, at this point in time, have a very open mind and I will maintain an open mind on the subject. I know it is a very catchy phrase in terms of politics. Some privatization have been very successful, others have not. This is a very emotive issue, if it is going to be a very political one and if pursued to the ultimate, one may ask the question why have Government at all or how much or how little Government we should have, perhaps another question we should ask is why it is that Government organization cannot be as efficient as private enterprise. As a proponent of privatization maybe this would be a good one for us to have a debate on. Now turning to the family of Urban Council and to put it simply rather than as eloquently as Mr. Marvin CHEUNG, I think we need to have a close hard look at ourselves, who are we, what are we doing here, where are we going from here? We need to particularly take a very close look at the new Urban Council and Urban Services Department relationship. There have been very close cooperation but perhaps not quite close enough and one of the reasons that have been mentioned many times in this Council chamber is the dichotomy of the Urban Services Department of having to serve two masters, the Urban Council and the Central Government of which they owe their employment to. I think this is the point that Mr. CHEUNG has been alluding to as well. We also have to look at our committee structure, are we having too many committees or too few? On the whole, I think our committee structure and our sub-committee structure have been successful, but in the light of rapid political changes, and also some of our fellow Councillors' power base,
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perhaps the working of the Urban Council itself should be looked at as soon as possible and I wholly endorse the suggestion that we should perhaps employ another outside management consultant to give us an impartial and third party's point of view. In that connection, I would like to suggest that we consider giving ourselves more staff support in order for us to be more effective Councillors. This is nothing new, many parliamentarians, congressmen and senators all around the world have extensive staff support. This is not to belittle the very effective services now being provided by the S.U.C. and his staff, but just the political facts of life, that the public expects more from us and therefore I think we should have more support.
Finally, I think, as a politician whether elected or appointed, the time has come for us to be more responsive, to be more sensitive to the needs of the society and the rapidly changing political scene, and to do that we all have to work very closely together, I hope that we will continue what we have been doing the last few years.
I like to close by thanking my Vice-chairman of the Culture Select Committee, Mr. K. K. FUNG and also the Chairman of Cultural Activities Sub-Committee Mr. Lo King-man for the very valuable help they have given me, and also their contribution to the cultural scene in Hong Kong. I would also like to thank the staff of the Urban Services Department, although we do disagree, sometimes even violently at meetings I think this disagreement are all good and healthy and are in fact in the interest of the public.
Now as far as the elected members are concerned, Mr. FORSGATE said something about that, Mr. LEE Chik-yuet also touched on the subject and I would like to wish all of them the best of luck and success in the re-election campaign. Even though they will not all be with us after 1 April, I can assure you that they have made substantial contribution to Hong Kong and I hope that the friendship they have cultivated in this Council will be a long lasting one.
Thank you very much.
(Mr. B. A. BERNACCHI left at this point--5.15 p.m.)
DR. THE HONOURABLE KIM Y. S. CHAM (in Cantonese):—Mr. Chairman, the past year marked another year of progress in the development of this Council. A salient piece of its many-faceted achievements is the introduction of new financial and management tools in its decision making process. This exercise entails the initiation of new budgetary procedures consisting of three main components, namely, policy review, five year forecast and budgeting for the ensuing year. As a major step towards responsibility accounting, this mechanism not only helps ensure that sufficient data is provided to the relevant select committee before the decision is made but also enables the latter to assess the financial implications for those purposes which they have been designed for.
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