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All I can say to the honourable gentleman is that I very much hope that there won't be similar incidents like this because they not only raise concerns in this community but they raise concerns outside this community about issues like freedom of travel for people in Hong Kong in the future. And those are concerns which it's in nobody's interest to raise.
Mr Edward Ho (in Chinese): Thank you Mr President. Mr Governor I would like to ask you a question about the Western Corridor Railway.
Now recently we had quite some meetings on the Western Corridor Railway and yesterday we had a motion debate on this. So I don't want to dwell on the details, but of course we all find it very regrettable that to this day it seems like the completion date of the Western Corridor Railway is about to be delayed and we don't know when and we don't even know the commencement date of the construction.
So I would like to know, now originally the Chinese Government seemed to be in favour of this project but all along the Chinese Government has expressed its dissatisfaction about the information provided by the Hong Kong Government. It's lacking and you seem to be unwilling to provide information to the Chinese side, including the study report. And actually now recently there was a report about 2,000 pages and you furnished a report to LegCo and I think that report can be published to the public. Now if you are to co-operate with the Chinese Government, if you want to strike a dialogue with the Chinese Government so that these major infrastructural projects could be constructed, or could be studied further, but if at the same time you do not provide such details to the Government, of course I must add that such information needs to be further looked into because you haven't made a final decision on this project, but anyhow such information has already been published. So strategically speaking, or tactically speaking, if you do not provide such information to the Chinese side what benefits can we get? Of course, I understand that next week the Secretary for Transport is going to visit Beijing but I'd like to know, strategically speaking, why was it that in the past you did not provide such information to the Chinese side?
Governor: But we did. We briefed the Chinese side in the Joint Liaison Group consistently and I think the honourable gentleman is raising a very large red herring. On the one hand he says that he wants us to get on with the Western Corridor Railway. On the other hand he stirs up again an argument about whether somehow we're failing to inform the preparatory committee or Chinese officials and must do so and get their chop before we take any further steps.
I think things have been said in the context of the preparatory committee discussions in the last few weeks which have been extremely unfortunate and unhelpful and perhaps have more to do with the dynamics of the preparatory committee than they do with the dynamics of public transport in Hong Kong.