1
Background
References
B
A AU AE
C
Camberra telno 66
FCO telno 133 to Canberra
Canberra telno 256
D FCO telno 605 to Hong Kong
Canberra telno 274
CONFIDENTIAL
1. The Australian Government are sympathetic to the problems Hong Kong faces. They are one of the major trading partners of Hong Kong and they realise that it is in their own national interests to keep
Hong Kong prosperous.
2. The Australian community in Hong Kong is 10,000 strong and there are 300 Australian companies based there. Hong Kong is Australia's fourth largest market for exports, their third largest source of migrants and their largest source of business migrants.
3.
We are hopeful that the Australians, who are conducting a policy review on Hong Kong at this time, which will include immigration, will find some way to help. We suspect, however, that hardliners in the Immigration Department are maintaining, wrongly we think, that the existing arrangements are sufficient; these enable investors to obtain residence visas but to defer emigration for three years. As this applies only to investors, it is irrelevant to most people in Hong Kong and will not act as an incentive to keep people in the territory. Main aim is to encourage emigration to Australia, ie
"cherry picking" of the best people.
4. One of the considerations which the Australians may look at is a secondment scheme. For your own information, although an approved secondment scheme was included in the statement by the Foreign Secretary announcing our own package of measures, it is unlikely that this will be included in the Bill when it goes before Parliament. It was thought that this issue was too complicated to include in the main Bill but we are looking at ways to implement
such a scheme through the immigration rules.
TOYACE
CONFIDENTIAL
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