When a financial secretary in his big speech of the year bothers himself with financing arrangements for a tenpin bowling alley in Tseung Kwan O, you can expect you will not be given much in the rest of that speech.
And you were not. On revenue measures, the big item was a pick-your-own-licence-plate scheme, which is forecast to bring in $70 million despite the fact that it is likely to undermine the present licence plate auctions.
Mr Tang must have confused himself on the wording of the old adage: speak softly but carry a big stick. What he did was speak big but carry a soft stick.
He was appropriately irritated that fees and charges for some government services offered to foreigners are so low that taxpayers must provide subsidies. 'This is unfair to them,' he said. 'We should not condone the practice of saying one thing and doing another. We are duty-bound to reduce the amount of subsidies given for various fees and charges.'
But the remedy that such strong words promised consisted only of a pledge to consult the views of legislators. The problem of inordinately low fees and charges is once again to go unresolved.
Similarly, he was almost lyrical on the virtue of a goods and services tax (GST), stressing how much it would do to stabilise revenues in difficult times, how widespread its adoption is elsewhere, how its impact on low-income families could be softened and how it might allow other taxes to be reduced.
