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In some ways, the least demanding thing for the community to do is to provide better facilities - residential places, training, day care. We set ourselves 2 and a half years ago to meet the targets for better services that had already been agreed. We can easily afford to do this. We live in a prosperous community. Most of us are much better off these days. Without any threat that we might be about to break the bank, we can give our fellow citizens with a disability a much better deal.
It's not entirely straightforward, and we're not going as quickly as I would like, because we've often had trouble in getting the homes, the hostels, the work- shops, bought, built and up and running as fast as we wanted. But we are keeping up the pressure. Because every missed target is days, weeks, months of more disappointment, more patience, more hard work, for all those brave families and all those determined individuals who have a disability.
One reason - not a very wholesome reason - for delay has been the hostility in some areas to building facilities for people with a disability in their midst. "Not in my neighbourhood", is sometimes the cry. That's a prejudice that we've got, quite simply, to bury in the goodwill and understanding of the overwhelming majority of the people of Hong Kong. We're going to pass a Bill to make discrimination against those with a disability unlawful. That's an important mark of society's views on behaviour which all should know is totally unacceptable. But you can't really win hearts and minds with laws. Greater understanding, a broader sense of responsibility, and a sense, too, of everyone's worth, are the best ways of overwhelming narrow-minded and short- sighted prejudices.
We need those qualities elsewhere too as well, if we are going to tackle successfully the most difficult areas of all - giving people with a disability the chance to live their lives to the full, to contribute, to excel.
Just think what that means.
There's an excellent coffee bar in Central near the law courts. It's run by a group of people with a disability. Ask yourself - how did they get the job? And then ask - having got it, how do they get to work to do it?
Those are two areas that we've been looking at - jobs and transport. And with ' transport, we're really starting to make some progress. The MTRC, the KCR and the LRT are making it easier for people with a disability to use their rail services. And we're starting to get somewhere too with our ferries, ships and even though it's tougher - with our buses.
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It's a start, the result of a sensible, civilised dialogue between the transport operators and concern groups.