15
Wednesday, October 17, 1973
To those of us who are urban in our habits this programme may
seen peripheral but to my mind it is central. The mountains and the
beaches are for the many what the golf course and the yacht are for the few.
And if these magnificent natural facilities are to be enjoyed to the full
and not to be destroyed by misuse, they must be catered for and administered
just as much as, say, the playgrounds and swimming complexes in the
urban areas.
Traffic and Transport, Land Policy and Pollution
Another wide field to which we must now address ourselves with
even greater effort and I do not decry what has already been done and is
being done - is that which might be described under the heading of Traffic,
Transport, Land Policy and Pollution. They are inter-related and intractible
subjects which are as hard to solve in Hong Kong as in any other of the
great conurbations, and rendered more difficult by the great concentration
of population and the limitations of space. I am sure that the drafting of
sound and comprehensive policies will be greatly facilitated by the appointment
of a single senior officer, the Secretary for Environment, to evolve and
co-ordinate programmes. He is, I am satisfied, undaunted by this daunting
responsibility. He will be outlining his approach himself at a later stage
in this debate.
The most dramatic single item in this group of subject, though by
no means necessarily the most important, is the mass transit project, which
I confess I prefer to call the Underground Railway. The negotiation of the
contract is in the hands of the Financial Secretary and the Steering Group
under the direction of the Executive Council and I have nothing to add about
the course of the negotiations today.
/Even when...............