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Governor: I think there are two areas which are of real concern. First of all, I think that everybody talks about in the media, everybody talks about a growth in self- censorship and I think that is a worry and should be resisted. It does not come naturally, frankly, in Hong Kong, and I think that most people still put their dollars on the news-stand to purchase newspapers that tell things as they really are. I think that has been pretty clear with the Chinese language press, particularly over the last year. So I think self-censorship is something to watch out for. It is a pretty feeble response and a pretty unprincipled response to events.
Secondly, I think there have been one or two very disturbing cases where the media have, or parts of the media - not all the media, not all the media - but parts of the media have overstepped the line, making stories up, being intrusive in the way they poke their notebooks and cameras into the corners of people's lives, and I think the media must recognise - and it has got to come from proprietors down - must recognise their responsibilities to be fair as well as fearless.
Question: My question relates to the industrial safety issue and all the hype in the newspapers at the present time. I am a safety professional and I think you have heard from me anyway so I shan't mention my name over the air. My concern is that the immediate reaction by government at the present spate of accidents in no way relates to the actual problem and I would urge you to ask the government to set up a consultative body with the industry. At the present time I do assist in many of the initiatives that go forward but there is no proper link to the industry itself on matters of industrial health and safety. Perhaps if something could be set up similar to CONIAC in the UK - the Construction Industry Advisory Council
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Governor: You had better explain to people that is not brandy.
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Question:... CONIAC is the Construction Industry Advisory Council and it contains a number of safety professionals of the construction industry who sit together with government and industry leaders and discuss the safety issues properly and thoroughly and come up with measures which actually do work, as opposed to what we see in Hong Kong repeatedly is a knee-jerk reaction to the problem whereby a bunch of experts are wheeled out from somewhere - I don't know where where the experts did not exist before, and then they put in place measures which relate largely to traffic- warden duties where they go out and stick a lot of tickets on and then create a myth that they have tackled the problem. It is a very great concern to those safety professionals in the industry and I have written to the Secretary for Education and Manpower on this point and whilst I got a very polite letter back, it was just repeating the rhetoric we hear daily.
Rather than take up any more of your time, perhaps you would make a brief comment and then I can get off.