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I promise the honourable lady that I will be shorter than I was last year, but I hope that there'll still be enough of interest to keep the honourable lady's attention.
Miss Christine Loh: Yes, thank you Governor. As you know, I've always, in the last two years at least, taken a particular interest in your policy address. I'm obviously interested in what you might do in future. But, from what you are saying, when you're putting together your final address, as you said, since you can't map out in the same way as you have in the past, what role will this Council have? Because of course in the past your Officers have also taken the trouble to sound out the feelings of this Council and the follow-up question is also, do you expect the future Chief Executive Designate to be putting forward his or her policy address before the transfer of sovereignty in 1997?
Governor: First of all, can I say that I'm sure that there will be enough in my own policy address to warrant the preparation, it's become one of the more pleasant rituals of Hong Kong politics, the preparation of a shadow address by the Honourable Lady. I'm sure that the community will look forward to that as much as it always does.
It is the case that my officials and indeed I've done it myself have discussed before my policy address with honourable members what they want to see in it and what they think our priorities will be. I'll still want to consult honourable members as much as possible but as I said, we're moving into a situation where I imagine the Chief Executive designate will be wanting to consult the community about what he is going to say and he is going to do for the future, or she.
I don't think that anybody can reasonably expect the policy address this year to be exactly the same sort of animal that it's been in the past, but I hope that there will still be plenty to discuss and I hope that it will at least in a general way point ahead to a number of the important challenges which Hong Kong still has to face.
Mr James Tien: Thank you Mr President. Governor, the business community has always been very supportive of an executive-led Government, especially in areas dealing with labour policy. As we all well know that on labour policy, businesses always will voice their concern, it's tough to make a living, rents are high and so forth, difficult to get people and on the employees side it's always complaining about unscrupulous employers not paying their wages, skipping town and everything. So all along, all this is under the Labour Advisory Board advising Government and under the good management of SEM. Government have been able to strike a right balance between the interests of the employer and the employee for long-term benefit of Hong Kong.
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