XN000022-1996-10-03 — Page 3

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There is one point I want to make in addition. We will be aiming to provide older rental blocks as mainstream interim housing and we want to improve the quality of the remaining temporary housing areas. We've got a pilot project on new design which will be ready by 1997. I totally accept the priority which the Honourable gentleman attaches to clearing the temporary housing areas. I would have wished to have cleared them all by 1997 or as soon thereafter as possible. We've kept the pledges we did make. In some respects I think we will be able to say that we more than kept those pledges, but the number of people still coming into Hong Kong makes it difficult to go farther than I've described.

Mr Cheung Hon-chung (in Chinese): Mr Governor, according to opinion polls the public support that you get is dropping and many members of the public are complaining that you have spent too much time on political controversy and you haven't done enough in order to improve their lot and their livelihood. In your remaining days in Hong Kong will you change your style, spend more time on peoples' livelihood and spend less time on political controversy?

Governor: Well, that's an interesting make-up question, but the premise on which it's based is rather far from the truth. I don't know whether the Honourable gentleman goes to bed early, but if he'd stayed up last night to see a programme in which the Honourable Member Mr Szeto Wah starred on TVB, he would have seen an opinion poll which showed that the Governor's approval rating had gone up by 5 per cent since last year.

I'm sure that would have given the Honourable Member as much unrestrained pleasure as it gave the Governor.

I'd also like to point out to the Honourable Member that when the transition project's survey of public opinion was produced the other day it showed a 67 per cent approval rating for the Government. Now that's obviously because of the talents and qualities of my senior colleagues in the Administration rather than because of the Governor. But it's the sort of record, on the whole, which Governments elsewhere in the world would be rather pleased with and it, of course, reflects the fact that we have done a great deal over the last four and a half years on livelihood issues. So much in fact that some of the Honourable Member's friends accuse us of welfarism and socialism and other terrible sins.

Miss Margaret Ng: A question of justice. One of the policy commitments is the use of Chinese at all levels of courts up to the High Court in criminal and civil proceedings by March 1997. However, little is said about preparation of the transition, such as training of lawyers to use Chinese or the translation of the Law Reports and the learned texts and authorities. Does the Governor agree that the emphasis on the use of Chinese rather than bilingualism, resulting in non-Chinese speaking lawyers and judges being rapidly excluded among other matters, will damage the international confidence in Hong Kong's legal system and indeed the quality of justice in our courts when we are so ill-prepared for the transition to Chinese?