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Let me just add one other point. We have heard a lot about the importance of consensus and co-operation and I welcome what we've heard. Perhaps the best example we've seen of consensus and co-operation was the work led by the Secretary for Education and Manpower to find a way of dealing with the problems associated with labour importation which could have the support, however reluctant, of employers and employees. We had summit's, we had meeting after meeting. We worked and talked and eventually we came up with proposals which got the endorsement of unions, which got the endorsement, whatever their reservations, of employers, which got the support I think of the majority of the community for dealing with labour importation. What is to be said for simply ignoring that, for driving a coach and horses through that as though all that work, all that consensus building was for nothing. I don't think that's an approach which the community would welcome and I very much hope that people will think again, just as I hope they'll think again about issues like fees and charges.
This is, I repeat, what I've said a thousand times before, an incredibly moderate community. It wants a more responsive Government, it wants a more accountable Government, but it doesn't want Government turned on its head and it doesn't want, with great respect, confrontation day after day. So I hope that we'll actually respond to the sort of community which Hong Kong has been and wishes to be in the way we develop all of our institutions.
Mr James Tien: Governor, for once I fully agree with what you have said on your views on labour relations, but unfortunately the union leaders in this Legislature plus the Democrats do not seem to agree with you. I fully agree with you that the hard work of the Labour Advisory Board members on both the employer and employee side should be well respected but based on what happened yesterday, you can see that this is not happening.
So would the Governor agree that on labour issues, since the Government cannot be executive-led, is it time to dissolve the LAB and let the manpower panel of this Legislature decide everything?
Governor: I certainly don't think that there's a case for dissolving the LAB, but I do very much agree with what the Secretary has been arguing for, that is, ways in which we can associate the work of the LAB more with the work of this Legislative Council. I think that yesterday's vote was most unfortunate. I think that it will have made a lot of employers, actually quite a lot of employee representatives as well, think 'what on earth is the point?". What's the point of us making these commitments at meetings, if we're going to see people simply walk away from them. I think it's a way in which Hong Kong would start to import some of the worrying labour practices which have