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LCQ7: Nomination of representatives of arts interests for appointment as members of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council
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     Following is a question by the Hon Ma Fung-kwok and a written reply by the Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Lau Kong-wah, in the Legislative Council today (February 15):
         
Question:
 
     According to the Hong Kong Arts Development Council Ordinance (Cap. 472), the Chief Executive may appoint up to a total of ten persons nominated by ten specified arts interests as members of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) for a term not exceeding three years.  The exercise to nominate representatives of arts interests (nomination exercise) is to be conducted in four phases. In Phase 1, eligible arts organisations and individual arts workers may apply for registration to take part in the nomination exercise. In Phase 2, members and the relevant employees of registered arts organisations may apply for registration as voters, while registered individual arts workers become voters automatically. Registered voters may seek candidature in Phase 3 and elect representatives for the Chief Executive's appointment in Phase 4. The nomination exercise for the new term of HKADC, which commenced on January 1 this year, was held from May to November last year. In order to ensure that the organisation applicants were closely associated with the specified arts interests, the authorities implemented two new criteria (new criteria) in Phase 1 of that nomination exercise, requiring organisation applicants to meet the following conditions in 2016: (i) their principal business/work must fall within one of the ten specified arts interests, and (ii) they must have conducted works or activities related to the relevant arts interests during the three years preceding the commencement of the nomination exercise. In this connection, will the Government inform this Council:

(1) whether it has assessed the reasons why there was a significant drop in the number of arts organisations registered in the nomination exercise last year as compared with that of 2013; of the number of arts organisations registered in the 2013 nomination exercise which did not reapply for registration in the nomination exercise last year and the reasons for that; the measures in place to boost the number in the next nomination exercise;

(2) of the number of arts organisations newly registered in the nomination exercise last year; the respective numbers of arts organisations which were unsuccessful in registration due to (i) their failure to substantiate that they had conducted works or activities related to the relevant arts interests during the preceding three years, and (ii) other reasons (please specify);

(3) of the measures taken by the Home Affairs Bureau (HAB) in the past three years and the publicity work undertaken by the nomination agent after being appointed in December of the preceding year to enable the arts organisations to have a clear understanding of the new criteria;

(4) of the publicity work undertaken by HAB and the nomination agent during Phase 2 of the nomination exercise to enable members and the relevant employees of registered arts organisations to have a clear understanding of the related procedure for voter registration, and encourage them to register as voters;

(5) whether HAB will consider extending the applicability of the new criteria to individual arts workers in future nomination exercises, or consider abolishing the requirement that organisation applicants must fulfil the new criteria, so as to ensure consistency between the application conditions to be met by arts organisations and those by individual arts workers;

(6) whether HAB will consider allowing winners of overseas or Mainland honours or awards and graduates having equivalent qualifications conferred by recognised overseas or Mainland institutions to register as individual arts workers in future; if HAB will not, of the reasons for that; and

(7) as there are views that the coverage of the current ten specified arts interests is not comprehensive, for example, not including stage design and technology, whether HAB will consider reviewing the need to expand the scope of the arts interests; if HAB will not, of the reasons for that?

Reply:

President,

     Established in 1995, the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC) is a statutory body set up to promote the development of arts in Hong Kong.  Under section 3 of the HKADC Ordinance (Cap. 472), the HKADC comprises 27 members, of which a Chairman, a Vice-chairman and not more than 22 other members shall be appointed by the Chief Executive (CE) (Note 1).  Pursuant to section 3 (4) and (5) under the Ordinance, of the 22 other members, the CE may appoint up to ten members nominated by the specified arts interests (viz. arts administration, arts criticism, arts education, Chinese opera (Xiqu), dance, drama, film arts, literary arts, music and visual arts).

     The CE may by notice in the Gazette specify organisations or individuals for the ten specified arts interests to participate in the nomination of representatives for the arts interests concerned.  The organisations or individuals representing the specified arts interests shall be, in the opinion of the CE, representative of that arts interest.

     The Home Affairs Bureau (HAB) has been assisting the arts sector in conducting an exercise to nominate representatives of the specified arts interests (the Nomination Exercise) by administrative arrangements for the CE's consideration of appointment as members for the new term of the HKADC pursuant to the HKADC Ordinance.  The Nomination Exercise is conducted every three years.

Eligibility criteria for arts organisations

     For Nomination Exercises conducted in 2010 and earlier, in applying for participation in the exercise concerned, arts organisations would be eligible provided that they were registered with the aim of promoting the development of arts (Note 2), and they had been set up for at least one year prior to the commencement of the Nomination Exercise concerned. Arts organisations successfully registered in the Nomination Exercises before 2010 were automatically eligible for subsequent exercises without the need to submit application afresh.
      
     In response to the recommendations made by the HKADC on the review of the 2013 Nomination Exercise, the HAB has implemented new measures from the 2013 Nomination Exercise onwards to adjust the eligibility criteria applicable to arts organisations gradually, in order to remove arts organisations registered in previous Nomination Exercises but are no longer active in their respective arts interests.  These measures include:
 
(a) from the 2013 Nomination Exercise onwards, arts organisations already registered in previous exercises are required to submit a declaration in each exercise to reaffirm that their organisations continue to "aim at promoting the development of arts"; and
 
(b) implementing new criteria from the 2016 Nomination Exercise to require that the principal business/work of the arts organisations must be related to their respective arts interest(s), and that the organisations must have conducted works or activities related to the respective arts interest(s) during the three years preceding the commencement of the Nomination Exercise, in order to ensure that the organisations are more closely related to the arts interest(s) concerned and that they are, to a certain extent, representative of such arts interest(s).
 
     My reply to the questions raised by the Hon Ma Fung-kwok is as follows:

(1) and (2) A total of 679 arts organisations have successfully registered under Phase 1 (Registration of Arts Organisations and Individual Arts Workers) of the 2016 Nomination Exercise (a 7 per cent decrease from 730 organisations in 2013), including 210 newly registered arts organisations.  Another 61 applications made by new arts organisations were not approved, including 11 organisations which failed to substantiate that they had conducted works or activities related to the relevant arts interest(s) during the preceding three years.  Other major reasons for unsuccessful registration by organisations include failure to substantiate their principal business/work of the arts organisation in relation to the specified arts interest(s); not being a statutory arts organisation, or not registered under the Societies Ordinance, the Companies Ordinance, the Business Registration Ordinance or the Trade Unions Ordinance in Hong Kong operating under a constitution or articles of association; set up for less than one year and late application, etc.

     For the 2016 Nomination Exercise, the application results of arts organisations previously registered in the 2013 Nomination Exercise are as follows:
 
Application result Number of organisations
Successfully registered again 469 (64%)
Did not apply for registration 227 (31%)
Failed to register due to reasons such as late applications or failure to meet the eligibility criteria (Note 3) 34 (5%)
Total 730 (100%)

 
(3) In the past, we have facilitated arts organisations in gaining a clear understanding of the new criteria mentioned above through different channels, and arranged publicity for the Nomination Exercise:

(a)  The new eligibility criteria to be implemented from the 2016 Nomination Exercise onwards was announced in January 2013 when the HAB briefed the Panel on Home Affairs of the Legislative Council on the arrangements for the 2013 Nomination Exercise.  Moreover, the Nomination Agent had issued letters to arts organisations participated in the past exercise to inform them that the above new criteria would be implemented starting from the 2016 Nomination Exercise;

(b)  The HKADC conducted a one-month public consultation in August 2015 on the arrangements for the 2016 Nomination Exercise. The consultation document has included a reminder to arts organisations about the new criteria to be implemented;

(c)  A month prior to the commencement of the 2016 Nomination Exercise (i.e. February 2016), the Nomination Agent issued letters to all arts organisations registered to participate in the 2013 Nomination Exercise to inform them of the arrangements and eligibility criteria for the 2016 Nomination Exercise, invite them to attend briefing sessions and register for the Nomination Exercise.  The letter clearly indicated that all arts organisations participated in the previous exercises must register again and provide documentary proof; and

(d)  As in past exercises, we had implemented various publicity measures during the 2016 Nomination Exercise to enable arts organisations and individual arts workers to take note of the arrangement and eligibility criteria for the Nomination Exercise.  These measures include dissemination of up-to-date information of the exercise through a dedicated website; organising briefing sessions to introduce the arrangements for the exercise; publicising the exercise and disseminating latest messages through press releases, radio announcements, mails, electronic mails and SMS messages, placing advertisements at a number of newspapers and magazines; and putting up posters and leaflets on the exercise at major arts and cultural venues.  In fact, among the arts organisations successfully registered in the 2016 Nomination Exercise, over 200 are newly registered arts organisations.

(4) During the phase of voter registration by arts organisations, the Nomination Agent had issued letters, application guidelines and voter registration forms to all eligible arts organisations successfully registered under Phase 1.  Through press releases, the dedicated website for the exercise, publicity posters, advertisements on newspapers and magazines and radio announcements, eligible arts organisations were encouraged to register their members/employees as voters.  Among the 5 863 registered voters for the 2016 Nomination Exercise, around 3 600 voters were registered through arts organisations.

(5), (6) and (7) The HKADC will consult the arts sector and the public on the arrangements for the Nomination Exercise around one year before the commencement of the exercise, and make recommendations to the Government.

     The HKADC has consulted its ten art-form groups on the recommendation of adding a new arts interest on "Theatre and Entertainment Arts/Technical Arts" and different views were received.  After discussion, the HKADC considers that it has to further study the justifications for adding the new arts interest, it also has to review HKADC's long term development direction and examine how the development of the relevant sector can be facilitated, in order to facilitate further discussion.  We will keep in view the progress of HKADC's work in respect of the addition of a new arts interest.

     We will consider whether adjustment should be made to the respective eligibility criteria currently applicable to arts organisations and individual arts workers in the light of the review to be carried out by the HKADC in preparation for the next Nomination Exercise and HKADC's comments.

     Thank you, President.

Notes:

1. The remaining three members are ex-officio members, i.e. the Secretary for Home Affairs or his representative; the Permanent Secretary for Education or his representative; and the Director of Leisure and Cultural Services or her representative.

2. The organisation shall be a statutory arts organisation in Hong Kong, or have registered under the Societies Ordinance, the Companies Ordinance or the Trade Unions Ordinance in Hong Kong; and be formed and operated under a constitution or a memorandum and articles of association.

3. For example, the activity records provided by arts organisation failed to demonstrate their direct relationship with the arts interests under application, no activities related to the relevant arts interests were conducted during the three years preceding the commencement of the exercise, etc.
 
Ends/Wednesday, February 15, 2017
Issued at HKT 12:00
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