TNAG-0081-FCO40-117-Public-Order-legislation-1968 — Page 81

and third readings that "if the working of the Bill discloses

gaps, or provisions which prove unfair or oppressive then (the)

Government will be ready and willing to consider suitable amend-

ments"

was hardly a sound basis upon which to present such an

unsatisfactory piece of legislation and would do little to console

those who might in the mean time be the victims of unfairness or

oppression.

57 At the same time we draw attention to the fact that

this is not the only Ordinance recently passed in Hong Kong which

omitted from its provisions the traditional requirement that,

save in the most exceptional emergency, Executive action should

be reasonable and should ultimately be open to question in the

courts. On the same day that the Public Order Ordinance, 1967

was passed into law an Ordinance was passed which gave absolute

authority to any police officer or any officer of the Agriculture

and Fisheries Department authorised by the Director of that

Department to destroy any dog or cat which appears to him (whether

upon reasonable grounds or not) to be suffering from any infectious

disease, irrespective of the seriousness of the disease and of

any reasonably apprehended danger to man or beast.

58 Legislation in the Colony is in a language incompre-

hensible to the large majority of the population and they are

entitled to assume that the legislature will take reasonable care

that the statutes it enacts adequately protect them against

possible injustice, while it should be remembered that those who

have sufficient knowledge of the English language to enable them to

submit criticisms do not have unlimited time in which to read Bills

and submit reports thereon, particularly where the reports have to

be of the length of the present. (It will not be forgotten that

it is but a few months since this Branch felt constrained to submit

a report of similar length upon the Commissions of Inquiry Bill,

21.