Conjuring trick with most valuable asset

OUR GOVERNMENT HAS a new sleight of hand that it wants to try out on us on an ever bigger scale. This dodge is championed by the Secretary for the Environment Transport and Works, Sarah Liao Sau-tung, who would like us to believe that money can be made to grow on trees.

It goes by the name of public-private partnership model. The idea is that government makes land available for a community centre or a sewage treatment plant or a West Kowloon reclamation and then gets a private sector partner to pay for, build and operate the facility under general government guidelines.

The private partner pockets the profits from running the facility and, if this is not enough to bring it to the party, it gets further development rights, which it can turn into residential or commercial property to sell or lease.

It is simple, you see. Just pluck that money off the money tree. We get community facilities or needed infrastructure and we pay not a cent for these things. They all come for free. The developer picks up all the costs and the public gets the services it wants.

Ahem ... We shall leave aside for the moment that one key attraction to the government of proceeding by this route is that it does not have to get approval from the Legislative Council. Legco gets involved when funding is required but, as there is no funding, there need be no Legco.

What a relief to government officials who would rather do entirely without Legco anyway.