THE Government's ability to miss the point of its own most controversial policies never ceases to amaze. Here is an administration at loggerheads with China over its principled refusal to hand over personal files on senior civil servants, ostensibly because to do so would be an infringement of their privacy; yet it has no qualms about demanding the identities and salaries of Legislative Councillors' staff and publishing them.
Legislator David Li Kwok-po, who raised the matter this week in an oral question to Michael Leung Man-kin, the acting Chief Secretary, was right to point out that Councillors' assistants are private citizens, neither appointed nor elected to public office nor members of the civil service. Why should such people have less right to the Government's consideration than Executive Councillors who are allowed to keep their shareholdings and financial dealings a matter between themselves and the Governor? Why should the aides' privacy and, conceivably their personal safety, be put at risk? Mr Leung's obtuse response was indicative of the administration's total lack of sensitivity in the matter. He argued, quite properly, that the public has the right to know how legislators are using the allowances provided to them out of public funds and that the approach should be one of 'accountability, credibility and transparency'. There is no reason why staff costs should be exempted from this public scrutiny. But that is no excuse for publishing names.
Legislative assistants frequently work for risible salaries, often out of political conviction and usually with a sense of performing a public service. Unlike the politicians who employ them, they are seeking neither the limelight nor public acclaim. Assistants in the democratic camp sometimes worry out loud that their subsequent employment chances may be damaged by their association with politicians regarded with suspicion by Beijing. Mr Leung claimed he could not see how assistants' personal safety might be threatened by the publication of their names. Can he really not imagine the possible consequences after 1997 for a person associated so publicly with politicians Beijing may regard - openly or otherwise - as seditious? Instead of forcing legislators to hire staff on the cheap and then publishing their names, the Government should consider paying staff salaries at a fixed rate out of public funds and then leaving it to individual members to decide whom to employ in those positions. The need for disclosure would be removed at a stroke.