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Question: How do you find yesterday's civil aviation expert group can expedite the plenary for the ...JLG?
:
Chief Secretary: I think they are still in the discussion stage. Of course, air services agreements, the whole network of the air services agreements is extremely important in terms of maintaining Hong Kong's position as the regional aviation centre. I think this view is fully shared by the Chinese and we very much hope that through expert group meetings and eventually at JLG discussions we can secure Chinese agreement to more ASAS being concluded with our aviation partners.
Question: Is there's no agreement on the Court of Final Appeal ....in the Joint Liaison Group meeting, will the Government...... introduce the bill?
Chief Secretary: Let me state our position. We have an agreement with the Chinese which was reached in 1991 about the establishment of the Court of Final Appeal. Both sides have stated on many occasions their commitment to see this Court of Final Appeal established before 1997. We have already said that in order to go through the necessary procedures in terms of setting up this court, and there are many procedures such as for example, securing a building, fitting out, getting the necessary rules and regulations drawn up including staff etc., etc. This will take about a year. So, the latest we need to set up the court would be mid-1996 at the latest. The first thing obviously is to get the necessary legislation enacted by the Legislative Council. We have a bill which is ready to go before the Legislative Council but we do want to secure Chinese agreement to this bill. The Chinese have had this bill since May last year, so about 10 months. They have raised a number of questions. We've answered all these questions. So we very much hope that the Chinese will feel able to give us a positive response to the draft bill which would then enable us to table the bill in the Legislative Council and hopefully to enact this bill before the end of this current session. But I'll be saying more about the Court of Final Appeal at the speech to the Federation of Hong Kong Industries this evening. Thank you.
End/Thursday, March 16, 1995
Greener and cleaner environment benefits Hong Kong
The Chief Secretary, Mrs Anson Chan, today (Thursday) called on the public to change their environmentally unfriendly habits and practices so as to protect the environment.
"To engender the change of attitudes and habits, we must increase the community's environmental awareness and sense of responsibility," she added.