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Following is the transcript (English portion) of the media session by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Mr Donald Tsang, at Central Government Offices New Annexe this (June 20) afternoon:

Reporter: It appears that the political appointee in charge of housing will have quite a heavy workload. Could you elaborate his roles and responsibilities, and how his roles will be different from the existing Secretary for Housing?

Chief Secretary for Administration: The future Principal Official for housing will be responsible for land policy and for planning. He will be in charge of housing, not only for public housing, but for private housing policy. Our intention is that he should become the Chairman of the Housing Authority as well. He will be ably assisted by Permanent Secretaries respectively responsible for housing policy on the one hand, and dealing with planning and for land administration on the other. Under them, they will have quite a large number of people helping them. Through the merging of the Housing Department and Housing Bureau, I'm sure that the uppermost level of the new organization will be capable of giving sufficient help to the new principal officials in discharging these range of responsibilities. It will be a more efficient organization. It will be a more effective organisation. It will be one person solely responsible and accountable for housing policy.

Reporter: Mr Tsang, is this another attempt by the Government to centralize authority in the hands of the Secretary?

Chief Secretary for Administration: It is part and parcel of the accountability system that the Principal Official should be responsible both for policy implementation and policy formulation. It is in fact a modern concept to ensure that the person is in charge of a full range of public duties. It is not a question of centralization. I think it is an effort of making the system far more efficient and far more effective.

Reporter: Could you elaborate on the statement you made earlier about the Housing Authority? You said that we should enhance the advisory function, reduce the executive function of the Housing Authority. It seems to be downgrading the role of the Housing Authority.

Chief Secretary for Administration: One of the objectives of this exercise is to ensure that there will be one spokesman, one person responsible for housing policy, one person accountable for the failure and success of the housing policy. This cannot be achieved if there are too many executive authorities in policy making and in policy implementation. Hence we believe that, in the longer term, the executive functions of the Housing Authority will diminish. And, indeed, the way in which we are producing less Home Ownership Scheme flats, the Housing Authority will be facing up to the problem of financial viability in three or four years' time, by which time it would be necessary for the HKSAR Government to be directly involved in the financing and organisation of the Housing Authority matters. For this purpose we believe, over time, we should look at ways in which the Housing Authority would be able to discharge a wider range of advisory role. For instance, advising on private housing policy instead of concentrating on a whole narrow range of executive functions which might come into conflict in a wider policy framework. So for that reason we believe, at the second stage of reform, and subject to the approval of the Legislative Council, we should try to consider ways to widen the advisory function of the Housing Authority and perhaps in that process, I would reduce its executive function.

(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)

End/Thursday, June 20, 2002

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