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Governor: When you lose any senior officers or senior civil servants ahead of time. it is obviously a matter for regret. But I thought that the figures that are revealed by the survey while no grounds for complacency are quite encouraging. They didn't show a huge exodus from our very fine police force. What they did show is some wastage. But they showed overall massive commitment by our middle-ranking and senior officers to the careers which they've taken up. We've got just about the best police force in Asia by common consent and I am delighted that morale is so high and that most of the senior ranks are staying.
Question: Has the way of introduction and passage of the MPF make the bill politicised?
Governor: No.
Question: Governor, if you do not lack faith in the in-coming legislature, why so many major bills all ... at the end of this session?
Governor: Bills do tend to crowd up at the end of sessions as you may have noticed in the past. It's particularly so at this stage because normally and if you haven't got a bill through by the end of a session you can let it run into the next session, unlike actually the position in the United Kingdom. But because we've got Legislative Council elections this September and everything has to be completed by the end of July. We can't carry legislation through.
There are several reasons why we wanted to get legislation through. Sometimes, as in the case of the Court of Final Appeal, because we want to put ourselves in the position where we can start to make the practical arrangements and we've been saying since last Autumn I think that we wanted to get that bill through during this Legislative Council session. There are other reasons for wanting to get legislation through speedily. Again on the Mandatory Provident Fund, we wanted to bring to an end what I think has become a debilitating argument and get ahead with the practical implementation of the scheme and in the interests of the people of Hong Kong.
So there are umpteen reasons. I don't think that anybody would have welcomed it if we dragged our feet on all those measures which were required in order to ensure that legislation on the press was in line with the Bill of Rights. You and others have been pressing us to get ahead with that legislation. You and others have quite properly been pressing us to get ahead with the legislation on discrimination against the disabled, with the legislation on data protection. That all shows an administration and the Legislative Council are determined to do their job as rapidly and quickly as possible. But, if from now on you main line of questioning is going to be that we are doing things too rapidly, there may be times when I welcome it.