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Mr Andrew Cheng Kar-foo (in Chinese): All right. Thank you Mr President. I would like to switch to another topic. I would like to talk about fund raising. The Democratic Party has been on a fund raising trip and then concerning this consultative document on civil liberties and social order, it says that political organisations should not get financial assistance from aliens. The commentary says that this is unreasonable. We support this stand. In fact in 1992, Mr Tung Chee Hwa in his personal capacity donated 50,000 pounds to the Conservative Party and we in fact support the Government's stand on this. But then Mr Tung refused to give a direct explanation as to why he made a donation. Now the donation may be rather sensitive.
Now Mr Governor, you were one of those responsible for raising funds for the Tories overseas at that time. Now I agree that it's unreasonable to ban local political parties getting a sort of financial assistance from overseas. So Mr Governor, I just want to know about your stand on this matter Mr Governor?
President (in Chinese): Now Mr Governor is giving his reply in his capacity as the Governor, not as the former conservative leader.
Governor: A short tour of the constitution of the Conservative Party. As the Chairman of that body when I was young, before I had all this grey hair, as the Chairman of that body I was responsible for spending the money not raising it. There is a constitutional distinction between being a treasurer of the Conservative Party and being Chairman and happily I was in the position as Chairman rather than treasurer. Nevertheless, I read what the newspapers say with interest.
I think my views on this particular issue are much the same as my views on the other matters covered in the consultation document. I can't understand what the purpose of all this is. It's conceded I think by some of the authors of the document that Hong Kong is an incredibly stable, moderate, balanced place, so it's also I think conceded implicitly that none of our laws at present in this area contradict the Basic Law. Does anybody in this Legislative Council, can anybody in this Legislative Council this afternoon tell me anyway in which the Societies Ordinance or the Public Order Ordinance contradict the Basic Law? Well, I'm glad we've got agreement on that.
So, there were some who I'm sure would've spoken up if they could think of any reason. So I ask myself what is the point of all this. It causes a great deal of concern in the community. It causes a lot of bad publicity around the world and it raises inevitably questions about the future commitment to civil liberties. It may be that when people start using expressions like national security, they don't mean some of the things that people think they mean, but they shouldn't be surprised if when you start opening up a debate on issues like that it causes a lot of worry and concem around the community.