Transcript of remarks by CS at media session
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Reporter: …may be published to the public? And then during hours of deliberations today, did the Board actually discuss the criticisms that are voiced by the public?
Chief Secretary for Administration: We will go for full transparency. In fact, the full report will be uploaded on the (West Kowloon Cultural District) Authority Board's website tonight. You will have access to it. And even all the submissions will be available for inspection in the office of the Authority, on the website as well. So all the submissions can be seen on the website – everything, everything that we received. So we believe in full transparency and accountability.
We will continue our dialogue with the community. We'll continue to listen carefully to the views of the community as we progress, as we take forward the project. We keep our minds open and communication channel open all the time. And Mr Duncan Pescod later will sit down with consultants to take you through the findings of the report, so you can have time to ask detailed questions. OK?
Reporter: Can you tell us the reason for why you're interpreting that 33 per cent as supporting the project instead, because they don't have a concrete answer?
Chief Secretary for Administration: Precisely. That's what I'm saying. It's 52 per cent categorically "yes", 14.7 per cent say "no". So if you count the "yes" against the "no", it's 52 versus 14.7. Thirty three per cent (should be 31.9 per cent) is "half-half". OK?
Reporter: Isn't that playing with numbers?
Chief Secretary for Administration: No, I'm not playing with numbers. We don't just count the numbers. Quality also is important. So both quantity and quality do come into play here. But it's very important we base on three factors that we go forward. One is actually that the presence of this project, advent of this project, it's fulfilling our vision to develop the (West Kowloon Cultural) District itself as a world-class integrated arts and cultural hub with local, traditional, international elements – point one. Point two is it will bring tremendous benefits to the (West Kowloon Cultural) District as a whole, enhancing its quality and also Hong Kong as a whole in economic, social, cultural terms. I'm sure that it'll give a big boost for tourism. Remember that the Beijing Palace Museum attracted 16 million visitors last year, and it's actually more than the sum total of Louvre and also British Museum put together, so you can imagine the attraction of the Beijing museum itself. And we talk about exhibits which have never been displayed outside and in the Palace Museum even up to now. So we talk about pretty rare exhibition in Hong Kong for pretty long time. And finally, of course, the public feedback is overwhelmingly for the project to go forward. So on three factors did we make our decision today. OK?
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript.)
Ends/Tuesday, May 9, 2017
Issued at HKT 22:01
Issued at HKT 22:01
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