To solve the problem of land and housing, why should the Financial Secretary wait for further research?

Financial Secretary Paul Chan attended a radio program and was asked if he would reintroduce the "vacancy tax on first-hand properties" abandoned by the previous government. He responded that he would not rule out "doing what should be done when necessary."

In addition, he published another blog article this past weekend, stating that the "Land and Housing Supply Coordination Group" and "Public Housing Project Action Working Group" will hold their first meeting this week, and stressed that the current government will "take a pragmatic approach". With a promising attitude, we will strive to improve people's livelihood" and "strive for the realization of citizens' yearning for a better life."

The formation of these two groups to deal with land and housing issues was proposed by Chief Executive Li Jiachao in his election platform at the end of April.

The SAR Government announced last Wednesday (July 6) the specific terms of reference and member lists of the two groups. The "Coordination Group" is chaired by the Financial Secretary, Mr Chan Mao-po, and the "Working Group" is chaired by Deputy Financial Secretary Wong Wai Lun. It will replace the previous work of the "Land Supply Steering Committee".

Chen Maobo attended the symposium on "The Spirit of the President's Important Speech".

(Information Services Department)

Co-ordinating housing policy has been standing still for many years

The predecessor of the "Land Supply Association" was the "Housing Land Supply Steering Group" established in November 2010. It is responsible for coordinating the work of various policy bureaux and government departments in land supply in order to achieve the government's goal of housing supply; to In February 2013, it was reorganized into the "Land Supply Association", which also plans to comprehensively coordinate the development and supply of land for different purposes, and adjust the supply of land to respond to changes in demand.

It can be seen that, in the past, the scope of its work has not only highlighted the housing problem, but at the same time it has covered various land uses.

Chen Maobo, who served as the Secretary for Development from 2012 to 2017, was undoubtedly a key member of the "Housing Supply Team" and "Land Supply Association".

Strangely, recently, he has been serious about emphasizing that the "coordinator team" has a broader scope of work, supervising land, housing supply and reviewing the needs of the economy, government, community and various facilities land. The scope of responsibility of the "Supply Group" and "Soil Supply Association" is not a sudden addition of the current "Coordination Group".

In addition, officials said that the "Coordinator Group" should adopt the development principles of "infrastructure first" and "capacity creation", as well as the implementation of work related to streamlining development procedures, all of which follow the actions of previous governments.

At the beginning of 2016, Leung Chun-ying pointed out at the Q&A meeting of the "Policy Address" that "infrastructure first" in housing construction. In October 2008, Carrie Lam also announced the establishment of a Steering Group for Streamlining Development Control, so all of these are not new.

The housing issue requires systemic reforms. Only by redesigning and reconfiguring the entire land planning system in Hong Kong and making sweeping reforms at the policy level can the substantive problems be resolved.

Old wine in new bottle won't solve the problem

From the "Housing Supply Team" and "Earth Supply Association" to the "Coordination Team", the changes in the overall planning organization over the past ten years did not help to resolve the shortage of housing and land, on the contrary, the situation even worsened during this period.

Although the new government officials are mostly old people, if they really want to deal with land and housing issues "pragmatically", they must abandon the existing policy measures and restrictions on governance thinking, and come up with a series of bold innovations reforms to reverse this situation.

For example, it has been suggested to use public power extensively to expropriate undeveloped private land. Although the previous government did expand the introduction of the "Land Resumption Ordinance", its strength still falls far short of the expectations of various circles.

At the same time, many opinions also advocate that the Urban Renewal Authority should play a bigger role in building public housing, but the authorities seem to have not paid enough attention to this, and now may be the time to make a change.

To go further, the Hong Kong government may wish to consider referring to Singapore's "HDB" policy or Canada's "speculation and vacancy tax" design. The former is equivalent to upgrading public housing as a measure to meet basic housing rights, while the latter is to directly suppress any form of speculation. houses.

In the final analysis, "doing what should be done when necessary", "being pragmatic and doing something", or "developing efforts to improve people's livelihood" are actually not unique requirements, but things that any administrator should do as a matter of course.

However, in recent years, the Hong Kong rulers have been unable to solve problems such as the shortage of real estate, and they have continued to throw out new bottles of old wine-style measures to deal with them perfunctorily.

I hope this change of government will bring about real change.

Since the new government has already "hidden the shift", the reform work should be implemented immediately. The new government should come up with a five-year plan as soon as possible. Fanling Golf Course is controversial.