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Following is the transcript of the Chief Executive's Question and Answer Session on the Policy Address in the Legislative Council today (January 16):
Hon Abraham Shek: Thank you, Mr President. Mr CE, in this Council's fight for the equal opportunity for minority race and the special education needs for children, I sincerely thank you for your genuine but modest contribution towards their fight for equal opportunity. I'm sure that they will benefit from your very generous contributions towards the $200 million for their education.
Secondly, I applaud you for taking a revolutionary stance against the archaic, colonial and arbitrary system of the Lands Department in assessing premium by introducing a pilot scheme of arbitration. That would surely help to bring about more supply of private housing to the people of Hong Kong. Thank you. I will support you in your, this year, Chief Executive report.
Chief Executive: President, I thank the Honourable Shek for his remarks. I and my government place a great deal of emphasis on helping ethnic minority groups, who are very much part of the big Hong Kong family, to integrate into the society. There are certain obstacles that they face on a day-to-day basis that can be dealt with through the initiatives on the part of the Government and also the work of many community organisations out there. I hope members of the ethnic minority groups will be forthcoming to work with the Government to allow, for example, their children to learn better Chinese, and it will take the joint efforts of the schools, the community organisations concerned and also the Government to actually achieve this goal. It is our determination to move forward, to actually do it. While I'm speaking on this subject, perhaps I could just highlight the fact that I chose two children, who are Hong Kong children, they are as much Hong Kong children as ethnic Chinese children of Hong Kong, two ethnic minority children in the photograph on the cover of my last year's Policy Address, that ...
Mr President, on the question of the use of modification as a mechanism to determine the level of modification premium in the process of lease modification, which is the point that I think the honourable member referred to. Yes, it is a new initiative on the part of the Government. It doesn't occupy a huge paragraph in the Policy Address, but I think it is important. And again, it is important for the development industry to be forthcoming to actually initiate the modification application process, because the Government can't initiate the process for developers, and if the two sides cannot come eye to eye on the question of the level of premium payable, then we'll use arbitrators to determine that figure.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Thursday, January 16, 2014
Issued at HKT 16:52
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