MR CHAN KIN-POR (in Cantonese): Thank you, Deputy President. With the implementation of “patriots administering Hong Kong” in Hong Kong, the team administering Hong Kong made up by patriots is striving hard to remove barriers and capitalize on Hong Kong’s advantages. The Central Authorities and the people of Hong Kong have high hopes. In fact, Hong Kong has experienced a long period of chaos caused by the opposition camp, and there remain a lot of problems in society that need to be resolved. The new-term Government advocates high administrative efficiency and seeks to achieve various performance indicators. Therefore, I am very grateful to Ms YUNG Hoi-yan for proposing today’s motion for us to explore it in depth.
The new Government has in fact made a good start, particularly in proposing ways to address the root causes of the problems in various aspects. Take turning “primitive land” into “spade-ready sites” as an example, they dare make changes, including amending the laws, simplifying the outdated and repetitive procedures, as well as revising the environmental impact assessment process. These will shorten the time of land-production procedures by almost half, which can definitely expedite housing supply. Such kind of new approach to governance is rarely seen in recent years. I hope that similar policies will be introduced one after another in a bid to completely overcome the deep-rooted problems that have plagued Hong Kong over many years.
Good governance hinges on the quality of the officials, and such quality covers the method of thinking, determination to get the job done, ways of doing the job and their capabilities. We have seen many real-life examples that the performance of some government departments has improved dramatically subsequent to the replacement of key officials, but there are also cases where the performance has become sluggish. These have to do with the quality of the officials, and the same also happens to mid-level officials. As such, it is necessary to put in place a comprehensive performance evaluation system and a reward and punishment system, and this is the only way to improve performance. Officials who are incompetent or unmotivated must be replaced, and those who are capable and performing well must be promoted to take up more important tasks. Only by maintaining a proper reward and punishment system can we boost morale and retain talents.
I wish to talk about how the Legislative Council should assist the Government in achieving good administration. Under the overarching principle of “patriots administering Hong Kong”, the Legislative Council should not adopt the confrontational approach in monitoring which is commonly used by the opposition camp. This is because it is not really monitoring but a tactic with the sole purpose of bringing down the Government. We can take a look at the examples of the West. There is always fierce struggle under a democratic two-party system in the West. The two parties are no longer working to monitor the government, but to pull down the other party. In fact, Hong Kong people know full well about these situations, and I believe that no one wish to see these happen in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s legislature should not turn back to the old rut of the opposition camp.
I believe that the Legislative Council is made up of patriots, and Members are also part of Hong Kong’s governing team. Therefore, the best executive-legislature relationship certainly includes monitoring in a rational manner. However, the ultimate goal is to urge the Government to do its job properly, and to prevent it from making mistakes, instead of always making criticizing. We should also take up the role of counselling the Government and dovetailing with its work, helping the Government to understand public opinion and gain people’s support, as well as explaining to the public the reasons for encountering difficulties in administration in a timely manner. Under this new style, the Legislative Council can make greater contribution to improving the Government’s governance.
In addition, the Legislative Council can make greater contribution when the Government is formulating its policies. Members and officials can be partners under the new executive-legislature relationship, with directly-elected Members of the Legislative Council representing the districts, Members returned by functional constituencies representing the business, professional and labour sectors, and Members returned from the Election Committee being broadly representative. Policies can be as flawless as possible if the Government can take into account Members’ views at an early stage in the policy drafting process. Of course, the finalizing stage, which is the last step, should still be handled in confidence by the officials to avoid conflict of interest. I hope the Government will consider this.
Thank you, Deputy President.