Members of the Legislative Council have begun to take a clause-by-clause look at the government's competition bill. The deputy minister responsible, Greg So Kam-leung, extolled the merits of the bill in these columns just last week.
No doubt the deliberations will quickly get bogged down in a lot of detail, and public interest may wane. But we should try not to lose sight of the main issues, which are whether we need such legislation, and - if we do - whether the draft as presented takes the right approach and is adequate for the job.
Different people will have different views on these matters, but there is one issue on which we can reach a unanimous view fairly quickly: the clauses that exempt the government and its statutory bodies from the law, unless the chief executive decides otherwise, are a major omission and surely wrong.
Now, there is a constitutional argument that legislation cannot bind the government unless it chooses to opt in, as it were. But whether the government should have hidden behind that principle is arguable in this case. Some government departments are engaged in commercial or quasi-commercial activities where the private sector is also active - for example, vehicle repair work by the Electrical and Mechanical Services Department.
And what is true for the government is even more true in respect of statutory bodies, many of which are up to their elbows, and in some cases their necks, in the business world. For example, the Trade Development Council gets some 80 per cent of its revenue from commercial activities. As de facto owner of the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, it gets a percentage of gross revenue from the operator, and is a competitor of other exhibition facilities such as AsiaWorld-Expo, the International Trade and Exhibition Centre in Kowloon Bay and, to some extent, the major hotels. As an owner of many shows, it competes directly with other exhibition organisers. It also provides exhibition services and publishes marketing magazines, all in direct competition with other service providers.
There are many other examples. The Hong Kong Mortgage Corporation offers mortgage insurance to some privately owned finance houses. The Productivity Council undertakes consultancy studies in competition with private companies. The Urban Renewal Authority is, to all intents and purposes, a property developer. The MTR Corporation competes in both transport and property development.