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Following is a transcript of remarks by the Chief Secretary for Administration, Chairman of Board of West Kowloon Cultural District (WKCD) Authority, Mr Stephen Lam, at a media session after a tour of the Proposed Development Plan exhibition at Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre today (October 3):
Reporter: How's your first day at work as the Chief Secretary? And quite a lot of people are organising protests against you becoming the Chief Secretary. What's your view on that?
Chief Secretary for Administration, Chairman of Board of WKCD Authority: Well, my day today has been pretty busy. This is not the first day of my work as Chief Secretary. Actually, since assuming appointment last Friday I had already started work. Today I spent part of the morning with the Chief Executive and various policy bureaux to deal with aspects of the Policy Address. In the afternoon I dealt with some paperwork in the office and by dusk I have come to the West Kowloon Authority office to gain a better understanding first-hand of how things are progressing. And I must say I've been very encouraged. We now have Michael [Lynch] as the Chief Executive Officer, things are shaping up, and as far as I'm concerned as Chief Secretary, there are three particular strands of work that I have to focus on.
Firstly, I have to ensure that the Government and members of the West Kowloon Authority work very closely together, hand in glove.
Secondly, we have to ensure that the stage three of the public engagement exercise is followed through, and that we will commence the process of putting this set of plans to the Town Planning Board for approval. And we also need to ensure that the $21.6 billion voted by the Legislative Council to promote the development of West Kowloon will be put to good use and will be put to optimal funding purposes. I have every confidence that we can do so through co-operation between the Authority and Government departments.
And thirdly, we have to ensure that in developing West Kowloon we leave enough room for local talents to be groomed and that we also attract international performing groups to come to Hong Kong so that this will collectively enhance Hong Kong's position as Asia's World City.
To finish off with the second part of your question, in Hong Kong, this being a pluralistic society, there are always views for and against any particular issue or appointment. So far as I'm concerned, I have accepted this appointment on the basis that I will put in my very best to serve the people of Hong Kong and our community.
We have had to deal with quite a number of contentious issues since the establishment of the HKSAR in 1997, and I would say that however contentious the issues are, provided that we seek to build consensus, we can make progress, much in the same way as we did in 2007 when we established a universal suffrage timetable for implementation for Chief Executive in 2017 and for the Legislative Council in 2020. Likewise, last year we also secured consensus on the way forward for 2012 constitutional development, "one person, two votes". Every one of you will cast two votes in September 2012, which has been made possible because we had cross-party support among pro-establishment parties and pan-democratic parties.
So, as Chief Secretary, I will continue to do my very best in building cross-party consensus to deal with whatever issues that come our way, be this political development, West Kowloon development or Community Care Fund. I think we have the basis of doing that. If you look at the West Kowloon Authority and the Community Care Fund, we have all sorts of people involved. We have people who are pro-establishment and people who are pan-democratic by way of political background.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Monday, October 3, 2011
Issued at HKT 21:22
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