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of broadcasting which I repeat, just in case anybody did not get the point yesterday. We are totally committed to putting into legislation as reasonably soon as we can after the Law Reform Commission have looked as they are at the moment at the Telecommunication Ordinance. They are due to report within the next few weeks and then we will be dealing with Section 13 of the Telecommunication Ordinance which deals with the ability of the government to pre-censor television programmes as well as with other matters. I repeat, there is no question at all of us having backed off on those matters. One or two people have also questioned where we stand on cross-media ownership and foreign ownership of newspapers and media organisations and on that our position is equally clear, straight forward and sensible. There is a Consumer Council report on the subject. We have committed to replying to the Consumer Council within six months on that subject and we'll do so and hope that our proposals can carry the support of the community and the legislators. But I repeat, there is no question whatsoever of us having been back sliding on our commitment to ensure that all that legislation touching freedom of speech which needs to be brought in line with the Bill of Rights will be brought in line with the Bill of Rights before 1997. That is what I've said before. We've accomplished 80 per cent of the task and we intend to finish the rest as soon as we reasonably can. So I hope that's entirely clear. And just one other matter for the record. We've had no communication whatsoever from the Chinese side about our intentions on the broadcasting front. OK.

Question: Can you give us an example of how Mrs Wong will be affected by this freeze?

Governor: If Mrs Wong is, as she's likely to be, paying some sort of tax, she'll be finding some of her tax in effect going to pay to subsidise Mrs Lee next door who may be using more of a service or more of a product than she is. The point about not allowing charges to rise in line with costs is you fetch up completely distorting prices for utilities. You fetch up completely distorting fares so that some people who don't use the service in effect subsidise it through their taxes and help somebody else who is using more of the service than they do. That's never been the Hong Kong way of doing things. Of course we need and must continue to fight inflation as vigorously as possible. That's what we've been doing. But I don't think that a blanket freeze right across the board of all charges is a sensible way of doing that. And we're discussing with the Legislative Council, some of whom take a different point of view how we can resolve the present impasse. And I hope we'll be able to do so. It's in everybody's interest that we do. But it's part of the normal dialogue of politics in an open society like Hong Kong. And I don't think anybody should get too desperate about it. Thanks very much.

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