The Democratic Party
2008 Legislative Council
Election Platform

China-Hong Kong relations

1. To strive to strengthen communications between the Central Government and various sectors of the Hong Kong society to eliminate confrontation and social division.

2. To strive to develop a mechanism in which the Central Government and the Hong Kong Legislative Council can have regular communication and co-operation.

3. To demand that the Central Government protects the rights of Hong Kong Chinese returning to their home country. It should issue home-return permits to those whose applications have previously been rejected so as to enable all Chinese citizens in Hong Kong to enter freely to their motherland.

Constitutional Affairs

4. To implement universal suffrage as fast as possible. For the Chief Executive election of 2012, 400 directly elected District Councillors shall be added to the existing 800-member Election Committee, making up to a total of approximately 1200 members to form an Election Committee. The number of subscribers required shall be 50 regardless of the sector they belong to. The Chief Executive shall be elected by universal suffrage. For the Legislative Council election, a mixed election model shall be adopted in 2012, whereby half of the seats shall be returned through geographical constituency elections by the “single seat single vote” simple majority system. Under this system, the whole of Hong Kong will be divided into a certain number of constituencies. The other half of the seats shall be returned through elections by the “proportional representation system”, whereby the whole of Hong Kong will form a single constituency. Under this system, each voter shall cast two votes.

5. To reform the District Council by abolishing appointed and ex-official seats. All seats of the District Council should be returned by the methods of universal suffrage.

6. To establish a convention that the Chief Executive and the Chiefs of Bureau are accountable to the Legislative Council. Thus, the Legislative Council can monitor the Administration effectively.

Human Rights

7. To monitor the implementation of local laws by the government, including the enactment of Art. 23 of the Basic Law, to ensure that they are in line with human rights and freedom in Hong Kong and to safeguard “one country, two systems" with "a high degree of autonomy".

8. To set up an independent statutory Human Rights Commission as soon as possible to deal with cases of infringement on human rights, to monitor and to improve the human rights condition in Hong Kong.

9. To legislate against discrimination on the basis of age and sexual orientation.

Economy

10. Infrastructure projects

• To build the Hong Kong-Zuhai-Macau Bridge; the Bridge is favourable to businesses in the Pearl River Delta, and stimulates Hong Kong’s economy.
• To carry out the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link project in order to reduce travel time from Hong Kong to Guangzhou.
• To build the third airport runway in light of the existing two runways having reached its full capacity. This ensures the Hong Kong Airport can accommodate more visitors and encourages tourism.

11. To develop the tourism and safeguard industry’s quality. 

• The government should make use of the natural environment of the Lantau Island and develop it into an eco-tourist attraction.
• With the environmental protection and conservation policies, we should protect the natural landscapes, local buildings with characteristics and the intangible cultural heritage to attract the tourists.
• To improve the corporate governance of Travel Industry Council of Hong Kong (TIC).  Government should put more effort to urge the TIC to be more transparent and building up its credibility.  We propose to add 8 more independent members of TIC Board to be named and appointed by government, by which to make TIC more representative and break in the barrier of small circle’s supervision.  For long term, to reform TIC as the independent and statutory Institution based on the model of Estate Agents Authority to supervise the travel agency and guide.

12. Financial Services

• The Securities and Futures Commission and the Financial Reporting Council should refer to the manner in which the ICAC’s Operations Review Committee reviews all cases that are not investigated or prosecuted, in order to ensure that those cases are handled farily and maintain the reputation of Hong Kong’s monitoring system.
• To tackle the problem arising from overseas companies listed in Hong Kong: To ensure that local listed companies comply with the laws; to strengthen cooperation with mainland China; to urge the mainland government to extradite suspects to be tried in Hong Kong, so as to ensure that mainland companies listed in Hong Kong are under scrutinization.

13. Competition Law

• To put forward the comprehensive competition law with setting up the detergent penalty and independent arbitrary institution, so as to keep the competitiveness of the market and to protect the consumer’s rights.

Public finance

14. In the case of a surplus, it must be partially reserved for fast-growing medical and welfare expenditure in relation to the aging population in the future. The government should also annually reserve half of the revenue from exchange fund as a recurrent revenue.

15. Under a balanced financial condition, the government should make use of the surplus and adopt measures to soothe the society from financial pressure. Such measures should base on a principle of favouring the grassroots, and of reducing individuals’ expenditure, e.g., to implement rates allowance.

16. To abolish levy on domestic helper wages.

Planning and Lands

17. To review the lands policy to achieve a sustainable city development and to study the feasibility of reducing development density gradually and to require public and private development projects to conduct air ventilation assessment to reduce screen-walled effect, thus to ensure that public health would not be adversely affected, and to restrict building heights to preserve ridgelines and harbour views.

18. To set up a heritage conservation fund and an independent statutory body for heritage conservation whereby the body has financial power to manage and revitalize heritage and historical buildings and other related functions such as promoting education on heritage protection.

19. To review the formation and functions of the Town Planning Board and to set up an independent secretariat for the Board to enhance its independence and credibility and allow for more public consultation and participation in early planning stages.

Housing Policy

20. To resume HOS and TPS Schemes to allow for middle and lower class to purchase their own homes, thus to improve their living quality and surrender more public rental housing units for others in need.

21. To allocate young families to old estates and to relax the restrictions on Flat Transfer Schemes to assist young families to live with/near their parents in old estates, thus to facilitate the taking care of old aged parents and to enhance vitality in the community.

22. To legislate the proposed Mandatory Building Inspection Scheme to ensure building quality and safeguard public safety as well as setting up a data base for building inspection and maintenance information to facilitate public access to such information when pursuing building maintenance works.

Transport Policy

23. To urge the government to establish an open bidding system for all bus routes to let interested parties to bid for their operation.  The fare should be charged according to the distance traveled and sectional fares for individual routes should be established. `The franchised bus companies should extend the transfer discount scheme to all routes.

24. To urge the MTR to preserve the existing monthly ticket system (East Rail Line and West Rail Line), to offer fare reduction in the Light Rail Line, to speed up the completion of the Shatin Central Link, Northern Link, Western and Southern Hong Kong Island Line, and to charge fares for these railway routes reasonably.

25. To introduce half-fare concessions on MTR and franchised buses for full time students and people with disabilities, and to designate Sundays and public holidays as free-ride days for the elderly.

Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene

26. To enact a comprehensive food safety law by setting up a framework from food production to recalling system to protect food safety in Hong Kong.

27. To improve the business environment and to maintain competiveness of public markets to avoid the monopoly of super markets and to allow consumers to have more choices.

28. To review comprehensively and to amend the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance, including refining the definition of cruelty to animals and making abandonment of animals an offence of animal cruelty; to improve the licensing and regulatory system for the sale and breeding of pets, requiring that all such animals should come from licensed breeding farms, and stepping up enforcement actions against unlicensed breeding, so as to stop the entry of animals from unknown sources into the pet market.  We will also urge the government to cooperate with community organizations in jointly promoting the "Trap-Neuter-Return" programme, and using humane means to deal with the problem of stray dogs and cats, with a view to reducing their number in the community and to set up "animal police" teams specially tasked to investigate cases of animal cruelty and abandonment, and rigorously enforcing the law to curb the situation of animal cruelty and abandonment from becoming prevalent.

Education

29. To urge the Government to implement small-class teaching in secondary schools, and progressively reduce the number of students in each form one class from 38 to 26 from 2009/10 academic year onwards, such that secondary school students can benefit from small-class teaching immediately.

30. To further the education opportunities of associate degree graduates by increasing the annual quota of 14 500 publicly-funded university first degree places to meet the demand of associate degree graduates, or providing interest-free loan for local young people in the appropriate age group to study accredited foreign top-up degree programmes.

31. To reform the Non-means-tested Loan Schemes, and to cancel 1.5% risk disbursed rate from the NLS interest rate, so as to ease the financial burden of graduates.

Employment and labour rights

32. To provide working allowarance to low income workers to reduce their cost of living at the beginning of work, and to integrate the various employment support services under the Labour Department, the Employment Retraining Board and the Social Welfare Department, e.g. Job Matching Service and Support for Self-reliance (SFS) Scheme, so as to make effective use of resources to help the unemployed to re-entered the labour market.

33. The Democratic Party supports in principle to legislate for minimum wage, and yet minimum wage should not be applied indiscriminately. In selecting the individual occupations and their respective minimum wage level, we should consider:

• the price elasticity of demand: minimum wage may substantially reduce the the number of jobs in occupations with high price elasticity.
• the existing actual minimum wage level in the occupation: if the statutory minimum wage is substantially higher than the existing actual minimum wage, the impact on the occupation would be difficult to estimate.
• Minimize negative impact on the elderly workers and the vulnerable groups.
• Enhance measures to crack down illegal workers.

34. We urge the Government to legislate for the standard working hour 44 hours per week and overtime payment not less than 125 percent of the basic wage, and to exempt certain occupations in the light of their special nature, so as to protect the employees’ rights.

Health Policy

35. To promote the development of “healthy city” through the collaboration of the government and NGOs in various districts via better coordination of transportation, environmental health, town planning, health services and social services.

36. to urge the government to improve the health services for the elderly including: dental health services, influenza inoculation, health check services, and 50% discount medical fees for the elderly.

37. To urge the government to remove the expensive drugs and appliances from the list of itemized charges, and to review the drug list on the basis of clinical evaluation so that all drugs that are considered to be necessary for treatment should be subsidized and patients are only required to pay the standard drug fees.

Information technology

38. Public Services: Public organizations should more widely adopt information technology to improve the quality and efficiency of their services. These technologies and applications may include electronic patient record, telemedicine, intelligent transport system, instant traffic information, tracking food source, enhancing food safety with wireless technology, etc. Hence, the Government should encourage public organizations to formulate an information technology strategy, to explore more ways to serve by electronic means, and to integrate their services with information technology.

39. Information Security: Information security and privacy protection are critical issues in digital age. However, the Government has long been lacking a long term and comprehensive information security strategy. To protect citizens from the dangers of privacy leak brought by new technology, the Government should escalate information security to a higher policy level. The Government should first review existing legislations and should provide Hong Kong Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Centre with regular and sufficient funding. In addition, the Government should support public organizations to formulate, execute solutions and best practices for information security and privacy protection, and promote the awareness of information security to the public in a greater effort.  All these can help preventing cyber crimes and data leaks, avoiding loss due to network errors or human errors.

40. Digital Inclusion: One of the Government’s responsibilities is supporting under-privileged groups. The current Comprehensive Social Security Assistance (CSSA) Scheme only provides assistance to low income family for their daily needs. However, to eliminate intergenerational poverty, it is of equal importance to equip them with basic information technology competency, so that their competitiveness is strengthened and they will be included with the mainstream society.  The Government should increase its funding to the Digital Solidarity Fund to reduce the digital divide faced by under-privileged groups such as the elderly, homemakers, and people with disability. In addition, the Government should review current measures for supporting children from low income family. More measures for digital inclusion should be implemented, for example, providing subsidy to children from CSSA recipient family for internet access charge, initiating projects to provide each student a computer. These measures provide the children equal learning opportunities and the opportunities to leave poverty.

Broadcasting policy

41. To urge the Government to review the role and future developments of RTHK as soon as possible, probe into the feasibility of transforming RTHK into the “Hong Kong Public Broadcasting Company”, and to put forward the review findings for public consultation.

42. To develop a concrete timetable for introducing digital audio broadcasting; provide resources for RTHK to implement digital audio broadcasting, and to allocate a portion of digital or analog radio band for public and community radio stations broadcasting public created contents.

43. To cope with technological advancement and the blurring boundary of the media, the administration should review the cross-media ownership restriction, probe into the possibility of relaxing such restrictions, liberalize the media market, attract more investors, and providei more choices for the public.

Administration of Justice and Public Security

44. To detach the Legal Aid Department from the Government and to establish an independent body for granting legal aids

45. To review the existing statutory standard of assessing economic status of legal aids applicants, and to ensure that the poor are entitled to legal services.

46. To cut off drug supply to Hong Kong,  to combat local drugs trades; and to prevent youth drug abuse.

Social welfare

47.  To widely consult social services agencies and their staff, service users, the business sector and the general public, to forumulate a 10-year blue print  for the development of social welfare policy to cope with the economic and social changes and the needs of the society.

48.To increase the Old Age Allowance to $1,000 to help releasing  the financial burden of the elderly.

49. To encourage the CSSA recipient to earn more, we purpose to save up the surplus earning (disregarded earning: max 4,200) of CSSA recipient, and when the amount exceeds to the double of the income limit of the family, it will be  returned to the recipient, so as to enable the family to leave the CSSA safety net.

Youth

50. To form elected “District Youth Councils” to increase the opportunities for youth to take part in community affairs and to develop their ability to participate in the legislation and monitoring of the government.

51. To allocate more resources for installing computers with internet functions at libraries, community centers and youth centers to enhance young people’s use of information technology to ensure their access to international information and to broaden their visions.

52. To provide venues and opportunities, including the setting up public channels for young people to express themselves and develop pluralism as well as creativity.    

Women

53. To allocate resources to promote and implement the “Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Woman”.

54. To set up a maintenance council to collect, deliver and recover unpaid maintenance to ensure that divorced women and their children will receive the maintenance that they are entitled.

55. To monitor the work of the government in implementing the gender mainstreaming policy, and to ensure that the women’s perspective will not be neglected in formulating and implementing public policies and ordinances to make certain that women and men have equal opportunities and share social resources fairly.

Environmental Policy

56. To increase the recycling rate, to provide job opportunities by promoting the Source Separation of Domestic Waste Scheme and recycling industries, and to enact the Producer Responsibility Scheme legislation on tires, electrical instruments, packaging materials as soon as possible.

57. To set up low emission zone in those highly polluted urban areas and restrict the entry of vehicles with high emission. To set up policy to regulate the pre-Euro and Euro I vehicles, and to charge the annual license fees according to vehicles’ emission level.

58. To set up the long term greenhouse gases reduction target, and  to regulate the greenhouse gases emission level form local power plants.

Culture and arts

59. To establish scholarships  to encourage devoted individuals interested in arts and culturecs to go abroad to further studies of arts administration and venue management.  This measure will nurture local talents for Hong Kong and will match up the demand of such talentss after the completion of West Kowloon Cultural District.

60. To invest more resources in cultural venues and artistic institutions, and to integrate past experience of promoting arts education in schools and the community, like School Arts Animateur Scheme, Artist-in-Residence Scheme, Community Cultural Ambassador Scheme, so as to promote arts activities to more citizens and schools, in order to cultivate public interests and capability to enjoy arts.

61. To urge the government to use simplified procedures to manage street performances, and set up special performing zone in public areas, especially those public open spaces, so as to encourage street artists to perform legally in public areas.

Consumer Rights Protection

62. To strengthen the regulation of the business practices of providers of pay television, and  to extend the section 7M of the Telecommunications Ordinance, which regulates misleading or deceptive conduct of telecommunications operators, to cover pay television.  Moreover, the Government should consider including an objective code of practice into the conditions of pay television licence renewal.

63. In view of the misrepresentation of advertisement and unscrupulous practices by sales persons regarding to the cosmetic industry, plastic surgery and pay television companies, we propose that a one-month cooling-off period be provided.  Within this one-month cooling-off period, even if the contract is signed, the effective date can still be deferred to a month later, thus consumers will still have the opportunity to revoke the contract without penalty.  That can prevent the unnecessary disputes between the consumers and the service providers.

64. To set up an energy authority to formulate long-term energy policy for opening up the power market by shortening the expected 10 years process.  Government should  formulating the mechanism to regulate the market and table it in the Legislative Council  as soon as possible to  prepare for greater competition in the market.

Population Policy

65. To advocate for the Hong Kong SAR Government to assume the authority of approving one-way visa for new-arrivals from the mainland to Hong Kong.

66. To urge the government to formulate mid-term financial strategy and to establish an “Ageing Population Reserve” to deal with the future financial impact due to the ageing population.

67. To urge the government to extent the statutory maternity leave to 14 weeks and to allow female employees of public services to take at most one year of no pay leave to take care of new born babies, and to increase the tax allowance for children and subsidies to child care services.