XN000022-1995-09-21 — Page 4

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I suppose that the extraordinary and extraordinarily successful role of the Jockey Club here in Hong Kong, is in a sense an example of the philosophy that I have enunciated. In a lot of other communities I guess the success of the Jockey Club and the resources which it deploys, it makes decisions about, in support of community endeavours, would have encouraged governments to bump-up tax on gambling and simply wipe out the enterprise which was doing what some centralists think government should do. Well, we haven't done that. Gambling makes a huge contribution to Hong Kong's revenues but thank God, we still have an autonomous Jockey Club providing a great deal of support to community organisations, to community endeavours right across the board, from ensuring that more people can play golf without having to shell out a fortune, to the most important and pioneering sorts of social work in the community.

I'm sorry it's not a very comfortable message, maybe, for corporate donors that once you've got something off the ground you can't stand back from it but it reflects my own observations on the scene.

Question: Governor Patten, what is your personal attitude towards the AIDS problem that we face in Asia, and is Hong Kong prepared to really do something to fight it? My name is Vichai (phonetic) from Thailand.

Governor: From 1986 to 1989 I was Britain's Aid Overseas Development Minister and quite centrally involved in the development of WHO programmes to cope with the pandemic of AIDS in Africa, programmes that were largely the inspiration of an extraordinary American doctor of great originality and drive called Jonathan Man. And in those days there were quite a lot of people who used to say, "Well, you know AIDS is a problem in the developed countries and we know that AIDS is a huge problem in Africa, but Asia is okay." Well, we know that AIDS is a problem for the whole world, that there is no part of it which is okay and I just hope that we can ensure that AIDS doesn't become as horrendous a problem as I've seen in African countries, like for example Uganda, like Zambia, like parts of Kenya. It's important that we support the World Health Organisation and other efforts. And if I may just add a parenthesis to that: one of the best ways we can help those international organisations is by standing back from the politicisation or nationalisation of appointments and promotions in them. I think one of the smaller but more damaging scandals in international politics is the extent to which some of those really important appointments in international organisations are the subject of political trade.