'Land Options Need Public Support To Get Govt Nod'

The chairman of the government's Task Force on Land Supply, Stanley Wong, said on Friday that he believes the government will not go ahead with any option if there is not enough public support for it.

The task force has proposed a total of 18 suggestions to boost land supply to meet Hong Kong's housing needs, including reclamation outside Victoria Harbour, and building subsidised homes on the fringes of country parks.

People's opinions about these options will be collected over the next five months before the panel submits the findings to the government.

Wong said he believes some options for land supply put forward by his panel will be supported by more than 50 percent of the Hong Kong people.

He said if the proposals do not have the public's backing, the government may not act on them. "There is no reason to believe that the government will do it otherwise," Wong said.

"What we lack at this point of time is really a community consensus," he said. "We have no lack of land supply options. What we lack, as of today, is really a consensus among the community on where and how we are going forward in tackling the land supply shortage."

Earlier, talking to RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, Wong again rejected concerns about underhand deals between the government and private developers. He said there will be an independent mechanism to keep any such deals transparent.

On Thursday, an independent platform of researchers claimed the task force mostly favours property developers. The Liber Research Community said if 1,000 hectares of private farmland held by developers is used for building private flats, it will earn the developers some HK$5 trillion.

But the task force head said a mechanism to oversee the public-private partnership will include experts including environmentalists and engineers. Wong also told RTHK's Mike Weeks that it would not be easy to convert many of the brownfield sites put forward by Liber into plots for housing developments.