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Hong Kong Society ¡V Free, but fair?
Hong Kong people enjoy many freedoms, but how fair is our society?Some people say the rich are getting richer and the lives of poor people are also improving and will improve further as the economy improves. This is putting the problem in a way only to dismiss it.Substantial inequality is a social injustice and a symptom of many ills in our society. It can only be addressed by a coordinated approach at the highest level of government. Half-hearted, piecemeal improvement in social welfare programme will get nowhere. My proposal is that a special unit should be established at the highest levels of government to study and develop territory-wide policy and legal measures to help the disadvantaged and socially excluded.
Social and economic inequality can be connected with our politics. Those who have greater political power can seek to protect certain interests over the public interest so as to preserve their privileges.
Vested interests protected by political privilege will, in time, undermine social harmony and stability
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Universal Suffrage: the Key to Good Governance
I consider it the responsibility of the Chief Executive to personally promote the cause of universal suffrage for Hong Kong and facilitate its progress no later than 2012. Democracy is not just a slogan or even just a fundamental right. It is the only workable way of making decisions on important public policies involving fundamental rights and freedoms. It is also the means of balancing conflicting interests, facilitating the allocation of public resources, and determining questions such as what problems should be left to the market and what should be solved by public policy.
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Competitive Markets, Enabling Policies
Competitive Markets
Hong Kong's place in the world is as a global financial centre which serves China and the world. It is critical to our future to strengthen this role by becoming more open and competitive, providing more information and an efficient legal framework. This is our most important contribution to China's modernisation and we can make our greatest contribution by doing it in ways that will ensure Hong Kong's lasting prosperity. My proposal is that the government should tackle a series of policy reforms, including promoting better market information, greater transparency of share registers in listed companies and better investor protection. We need to review and update the Companies Ordinance and introduce a fair competition law as a matter of priority.
Public Policy Solutions
An improved economy will ease stress, but leaving everything to the market is not the whole answer. We need public policies to safeguard fundamental needs and redress imbalances.
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Empower the People: Education and Job Opportunities
Education Opportunities
Education is the most fundamental equipment for a person to realise their life opportunities.¡@ Give our children a good, early start. Make kindergarten education compulsory.
Extend compulsory post-kindergarten education to 12 years. Reduce class sizes to enable teachers to give each child the attention they need.
Ensure that our young people are happy and able to compete in a global environment by emphasising the humanities and sciences. We need to put the brain and soul back in education.
Job Opportunities
To tackle the shortfall of some 100,000 high skilled jobs, we should encourage qualified workers from the mainland and overseas to come and work here and free up latent manpower by removing sexual, racial and age discrimination.
For the 230,000 workers at the low-skilled end, we should improve re-training programmes, create well-considered public sector-led jobs such as cleaning and construction jobs taking public health, urban planning and environmental sustainability into account. The feasibility of introducing an employment policy that encourages private sector jobs should be studied. |
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Functional Constituencies: Inequality in Voting Power
The current functional constituencies system benefits certain people over others. Over 3 million geographical constituencies voters elect half of the legislature while about 200,000 Functional Constituencies voters elect the remaining half.
Corporate electors vs. individual electors. 10 Functional Constituencies are composed of purely individual voters; 10 Functional Constituencies are a mixture of corporate electors and individual voters; 8 Functional Constituencies only consist of corporate electors. Not all preconditions for voting that apply to individual electors apply to corporate electors.
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Discrimination
Sex Discrimination Ordinance and Disability Discrimination Ordinance came into force in 1996. Family Status Discrimination Ordinance came into force in 1997. But nothing has been done to age, sexual orientation and race discrimination¡C
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Income Disparity
417,600 households (18.33% of all households) earned below 50% of the median income in Q2 of 2005. (Median for all households in Q2 of 2005 was HK$15,600)
170,400 households in Q2 of 2005 belonged to working-poor households (7.48% of all households)
Monthly household income less than HK$4,000 a month (i.e. low-income households) rose from 89,100 in Q3 in 1995 to 192,900 in Q3 in 2005, representing an increase of 7.7% in money terms. (197,400 in Q2 in 2006)
The City as Habitat: Air Quality and Urban Planning
Air Quality and Public Health
Hong Kong's air pollution is presenting us with a public health crisis that is beginning to impact on our ability to be an international financial centre. I will present a 5-year plan to turn this most urgent matter around.
Planning and Building the Hong Kong We Want to Live in
Hong Kong is a beautiful city with a famous harbour and a rich cultural heritage, housing a multitude of communities each with its own character. Infrastructure projects well-designed to promote good planning, architecture and heritage protection will help to bring this out. Such a move will open up the scope for architects, engineers, town-planners and other professionals to use their expertise creatively; encourage the creative industries, as well as fostering more job opportunities for the low-skilled. A culturally vibrant Hong Kong will be more competitive as a preferred location for international business and tourism, a happier place for us to live in, and create a proud legacy to bequeath to our children.
Public Finance
This is not the time to push through a Goods and Services Tax. However, we have to consider as matters of urgency making provision for a medical health scheme and a better pension scheme for our aging population. Hong Kong needs to reassess and review its public finances to provide for these needs in ways that do not discourage enterprise or detract from our high work ethics.
| Justice and Fairness: Institutional Protection
Legal protection
Low skilled workers are one of the most disadvantaged groups. About 200,000 households have earnings below $4,000 per month which is not enough to provide a minimum decent life. Seven per cent of workers do not get their legally entitled holidays. The law should protect minimum wage and holiday entitlement must be enforced to give workers their due. I also propose that an anti-racial discrimination law should be introduced without delay. We cannot advocate social harmony while denying social justice to the disadvantaged.
Social Welfare
A decent society takes care of its handicapped, its young and its poor. But many social problems cannot be dealt with by ad hoc welfare measures, e.g. domestic violence, women in poverty. These are symptoms of weaknesses in mainstream policies, and must be tackled by new thinking.
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