Government 'hurt by its failure to read Hong Kong'
Remote officials and their failure to understand a sophisticated public have led Hong Kong down the path of dysfunctional government, according to the last man to head a government think tank before the handover.
In spite of limited resources, Hongkongers were sensible politically and had made the city's public services among the best in the world, Leo Goodstadt said.
Goodstadt, who headed the Central Policy Unit from its inception in 1989 until the 1997 handover, said: 'Why don't we have people protesting that it's gross that average household income goes up HK$500 since 1998 but productivity rises year on year? Why don't we have this mood of destructive despair as we do in Europe over the budget?
'By some miracle to do with our culture, our public services are extraordinarily good and they've improved since 1998 in many ways.'
Goodstadt was speaking to a packed University of Hong Kong lecture theatre yesterday at a seminar titled 'Is Hong Kong still governable?'
The former deputy editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review sat on eight statutory bodies and advisory committees to the government - the first appointment coming when he was 28 - before becoming its chief policy adviser.
Goodstadt called this year's budget surplus of HK$71 billion an 'unbelievable figure' that could keep the government operating for two years even if it did not take in a penny more in tax. Yet the city's social services were still mishandled.
Goodstadt said that by not formulating policy on lunch breaks and rest days properly, nor ensuring 16,000 outsourced government workers would be paid the minimum wage, 'the minimum wage law is discredited before it begins'.
The problems extended to the Community Care Fund, and the fact the public knew few details of its management was 'crippling of the government'.
Of the HK$6,000 budget handout, Goodstadt said it was 5 per cent of annual income and 'even at restaurants you tip 10 per cent'.
The government believed the free-market idea that if pressure was not put on society's poor, they would go on social security rather than work, Goodstadt said.
But 'this is an astonishing community where the unemployed and underpaid do not turn to the state even when they have every qualification to do so', he said.
In the face of barely rising average household incomes and limited public spending, ground-level workers - such as polite police and immigration officials and vigilant doctors during Sars - proved their maturity.
'One of the things that made it possible was that Hong Kong officers replaced expatriates as heads of policy branches,' he said. 'The increase in efficiency and competence is extraordinary.'
But the view of Beijing and the city's top-ranking officials was that the more political Hong Kong became, the more it would distract from economic growth.
'I don't know of any modern city in which economic growth is not the priority,' Goodstadt said. 'Why we need constantly to be reminded that economic growth is the priority I've never understood.
'This is one of the most peaceful, successful, sophisticated cities in the world. How can there be any discussion of the fitness of men and women here to participate in the public realm?'
