XN000022-1995-04-27 — Page 16

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Governor: Well to be fair, which I know the Honourable Member would want to be. Her Royal Highness spent the first morning that she was in Hong Kong with several groups of cancer patients talking to them about their problems and the way they were trying to work together, and then went on to Youth Outreach which is one of the best projects that we have in the community, I think, trying to help young people and take young people off the streets and get them back into their homes and she spent a good deal of time with them too. She then managed to raise in the course of 36 hours a large amount of money for cancer, for Youth Outreach and for the Red Cross; and, as well, on the Sunday saw some of the work that is being doing with drug-abusers. So she had what by most standards would have been regarded, I think, as a rather busy weekend. And admirable as it always is to watch Michael Chang winning a game of tennis, doing so in the temperature of the centre court at Victoria Park on Sunday afternoon wasn't all a bunch of roses.

Just now Mr Mr Albert Chan (through interpreter): Thank you Mr President. Governor talked about the silence of civil servants. I think he has a new interpretation of the term "silence is golden". The success of parliamentary democracy depends on debates. If "silence is golden" is the new motto for parliamentary politics, I'm sure this means the end of parliamentary democracy. I'm sure you don't want to see that.

So my question is concerning the infrastructure co-ordination with China. In 1989 when the Hong Kong Administration worked out a plan for port development, at that time there were no detailed plans relating to planning in South China and recently there were some new plans. Recently I talked to the Planning Department officials about port development. Very often Hong Kong Government officials do not have details of harbour planning in China. Because of the lack of information this may affect the long-term planning of Hong Kong ports and harbours. In view of such difficulties, does the Administration has any plans to overcome such difficulties and in terms of planning I hope the lack of such information will not hamper the long-term planning of the Administration and will not result in mistakes being made by the Administration?

Governor: I can assure the Honourable Member on his first point, that he will usually find members of the Administration in this chamber convincingly articulate rather than silent. I'm sure that he'll find members of the Administration convincingly articulate next week when the Council debates a motion on the Court of Final Appeal, if it does, and just to make the point clear in advance, I hope Honourable Members won't be surprised if we listen very carefully to what they say in that debate. Some Honourable Members seem to be surprised when we listened to what they said on pensions very carefully. We'll be listening very carefully to what Honourable Members say in that debate on a subject which I think is of considerable importance. But we'll be replying too, and replying with golden and silver tongues.