XN000022-1995-02-14 — Page 12

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First a community is unlikely to be as well housed and as appropriately housed as all of us would like, if people only pay a tiny fraction of their incomes for having a decent roof over their head that is likely to distort housing provision, it is likely to be that there is perhaps less money for good housing than one would like. Secondly I'm always surprise when an argument about housing concentrates on have's rather than have-nots. I'm not saying that one area where I want to achieve as much as possible before I leave Hong Kong is in the elimination of temporary housing areas, but when I go to temporary housing areas, I went without the attentions of friends from the press the other day to three in the eastern district. When I go to temporary areas and see the pretty bad conditions in which people live. When there others living in worse housing and paying more for it, and paying more out of a lower income, so I don't think that lobbying on public housing should avoid those rather difficult questions, I also think that, something I feel very strongly about, the increasing involvement of people who live in public housing estates in the management of their estates, and the decision that are taken about their estates doesn't mean that those decisions can always avoid taking any account of financial implications or implications for our social programmes, so I commend all those who argue for and fight for better public housing, I commend those who argue and fought for better public housing in the past, and I very much hope that in arguing for better public housing in the future we won't avoid noting that Hong Kong now has a per capita GDP higher than most OECD countries and that the profile of its housing needs has changed over the years and that the last Colonial Government speech without hat. One more.

Question 8 (In Chinese); I would like to ask the Governor, we, the Hong Kong elderly had fought for the public assistance money for three years. In 1993, according to Mr MacPherson's study, old people should get HK$2,300 monthly allowances. The Legislative Council had already approved it, but you, the Hong Kong Governor had retrieved the proposal. Everyone knows that the elderly have been working industriously in Hong Kong for years. Now the inflation is so high, housing and everything are very expensive, even vegetables are sold at $HK10 per catty. Several hundred thousand Hong Kong people are now living miserably. The elderly in Hong Kong are not better dealt with as compared with the two dogs living in Government House. I believe the Governor's two dogs are better treated and fed. The elderly have been either directly or indirectly taxed for years. Now the Government should pay back to them. But the Government only allows one thousand and a few hundred dollars for the elderly. It is just insufficient. That's all I want to say.

Governor. I'll leave my dogs out of it because they always get me in trouble.