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Mr Tam Yiu-chung (through interpreter): Thank you for allowing me to ask a supplementary question. First of all I thank the Governor for paying so much attention to my speech on the 9th November, I hope I can share the same view with you on many occasions but many a time I'm disappointed. I think if you give us the details of the plan Members here will not object to it because of the details attached. With details it will facilitate our expression of opinion on the Scheme and it is not the case that all the views expressed by the Administration will be accepted. Difference in opinion, in my view, is all right because difference in views will enable the Administration to take a more global view on the issue.
If the Governor attaches a great amount of importance to consensus then you should pay attention to this consensus, I don't think anyone in this Council will object to this idea. We would like to implement a plan to increase CSSA payment to $2,500 per month. I hope the Governor will implement this as soon as possible.
Governor: On the first question, of course I will pay a great deal of attention to what the Honourable gentleman says during the next debate on retirement protection, just as I always pay attention to what he says. I hope I'm not blighting his career by these complements but of course I always take what he says very seriously and of course some of our detailed proposals will come out in the speeches from the Administration during the debate, but we won't have every issue, every detail hammered down by that debate. We hope that we can get consultants to work after that debate if the Council points us in the right direction and I hope that there will be enough detail in what we say to secure a good majority in the Council for dealing with this question for once and for all and not having to put it on the shelf for a later date.
The Honourable Member referred, and I think it's a point that we'll hear about frequently over the coming weeks and months, the Honourable Member referred to CSSA rates and to the desirability of establishing a rate for the elderly of $2,500. I assume that $2,500 is arrived at by taking the figure that was proposed in our pension scheme of $2,300 and making an adjustment for inflation. It would be wrong of me to get too much involved in detail about this before the Budget and before the debate on the 8th March, and that's not meant as anything other than a statement of the obvious. But perhaps I can just make one or two cautionary remarks without once again repeating what I said earlier about the increase in CSSA rates over the last three years.
First of all, I am a little surprised that those who used to criticise us for mixing up, in their words, welfare and pensions and retirement protection, are doing precisely the same by applying the figure that we proposed for our pension scheme to the correct, in their view, benefit level for CSSA.
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