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Question: Given what you've said in your speech about the difficulties private members' bills pose to the Administration, weren't you tempted by the suggestion that's been floated... that the Letters Patent should be changed so that private members' bills can't be introduced without your consent?
Governor: No, if I'd been tempted by it, I guess I'd have done it.
Question: ... the Administration would have done that?
Governor: No, I think that it would have produced a constitutional argument where I don't think a constitutional argument is necessary or desirable.
Question: Governor Patten, you've ... to more or less scrap the Labour Importation Scheme as it stands at the moment, do you think you have averted the threat of a threatened private members' Bill on completely revamping that system?
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Governor: We've put forward a sensible policy and I'm sure it will I hope it will - carry a broad measure of consent in the Legislative Council and the community. Joseph Wong is going to brief the Legislative Council on it tomorrow, go into all the details - we've got a written document that we'll be discussing with them - and I'm sure that he will be as convincing with the Legislative Council as he was with me when he first set out his conclusions at the end of our review.
Question: (Hong Kong Economic Times) You will put an end to the general Labour Importation Scheme but you didn't mention the imported labour for the ACP projects. Will you keep the quotas for the imported labour on these Airport projects?
Governor: Yes, though we have to keep the quotas under review the whole time.
Question: So they won't be changed?
Governor: I can certainly say, hand on heart, that when people came to see me over the recent weeks about the importation of labour, the question of quotas for the ACP wasn't raised with me on one occasion.
Question: (RTHK) Governor, in your speech you said that legislators should be allowed to go through their full four-year term. You immediately then said: of course you will carry heavy responsibilities. Is the sub-text there what you are trying to say to the legislature: if you have any hope of serving your full four years, you had better act in a particularly responsible manner?
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