FIRST, FINANCIAL Secretary Donald Tsang Yam-kuen spoke out strongly against mortgage tax relief. Shortly after the 1997 handover, he denounced it as 'wrong in principle'.
But as the Asian financial crisis triggered the start of the property market's prolonged slide, he was forced to eat his words in the March 1998 Budget and introduce such a measure for the first time in Hong Kong's history.
Only a few months later, he had to execute an even more rapid U-turn. Just days after insisting there was absolutely no possibility of doing this, in June 1998 he froze government land sales in another desperate attempt to shore up falling property prices. It was, as Mr Tsang admitted at the time, a move which had caused him 'much soul-searching'.
But that was not enough to dissuade him from taking such an interventionist step on that occasion - nor is it likely to stop he or his colleagues from doing so whenever a similar situation arises in future.
So it would be wrong to regard his equally outspoken opposition to last week's calls for measures to help those owning flats worth less than their outstanding mortgages as the Government's last word on the subject.
After all, Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa has gone out of his way to express sympathy in previous policy addresses for 'the heavy financial burden on those citizens whose properties have become negative assets'. And now that he is running for a second term in next year's Chief Executive election it has clearly become his aim to revive the property market as quickly as possible.
Any doubts on that score have been dispelled by his administration taking two steps in this direction within just four days - not only limiting land sales to just five hectares but also relaxing many of the remaining anti-speculation measures.