9.
Governor: As I said in my earlier reply, I would very much have liked to have legislated on right of abode as we legislated on the Court of Final Appeal with the approval of this Council and with the agreement of Chinese officials. I think that would have been incomparably the best way forward and to suggest somehow that this legislature or this Government has no role in determining these matters is an absurdity. We're not talking about definitions of Chinese nationality, definitions of Chinese nationality are matters, quite properly for the National Peoples' Congress. What we're talking about is the right of abode here in Hong Kong and it's perfectly within the powers of this Council to deal with that issue. The fact that it was a legitimate issue in the JLG is perhaps best recognised by the fact that it's been discussed in every JLG meeting since JLG XX and has been I think mentioned in every communique of the JLG since JLG XX. However, our proposals that we should legislate, even our proposals that we should legislate partly for foreign nationals for example, were rejected by China.
So the position we find ourselves in today is one in which we could only go ahead with legislation at the risk of a, I imagine, a major argument and at this stage within a few weeks of the transition, I'm anxious to have fewer arguments rather than more. The situation would I concede to the Honourable lady be totally different if we were obliged to have legislation on the statute book before the transition, as we're obliged to have legislation on the statute book before the public holidays on July 1 and 2, but we're not obliged for the reasons which I mentioned earlier, Article 24 of the Basic Law.
In those circumstances the proposal I think that we've put which I still hope will be taken up, the proposal that we've put is to publish a white bill but to delay legislation until the legislature of the day takes office on July 1.
Now the Honourable lady raises the questions of legality of that operation. There are, I suppose, two sorts of legal challenge that people might make to the provisional legislature. The first one which is of direct concern to me because I'm at present head of the Hong Kong Administration, is a challenge against any legislation which appears on the statute book after 1st July, at the end of a process which began on Saturday mornings in Shenzhen before June 30, before July 1. Now every, or most of the lawyers that I've seen commenting on this seem to think that it's very likely that there will be legal challenges to legislation produced in that way.
The second area in which there may be legal challenges is I imagine, in the relationship between the provisional legislature and the commitment to a legislative council made in the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law. Those will continue. I would judge, to be questions of international argument whatever happens here in Hong Kong. But those questions of legal validity, those questions are not ones that I can as it were take up at this time. What I have to deal with are those matters which as it were affect Hong Kong while I am directly responsible for it. But I don't doubt as the Honourable lady says that there will be some who raise legal challenges to the provisional legislature, not because of what it's done before June 30, but for what it's done after July 1.