bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

hooksAmpRedirectArticle

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

paywallTypes

createdDate

publishedDate

urlAlias

moreOnThisArticles

sponsorType

commentCount

authorLocations

authors

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

articleSpeeches

socialHeadline

headline

images

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

sponsor

pdfFiles

seriesReverseOrder

series

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

readingTime

customTimezone

liveContents

Jake Van Der Kamp

'9. Effective Land Policies - Demand the SAR government to take effective measures to modulate land prices; increase the supply of land; supply more land for public sale with more flexibility; and set up an effective land reserve system; and announce, annually, its land auction plans for the next five years.'

Party platform

Democratic Alliance for the  Betterment of Hong Kong

IT WOULD NOT be fair to pick on the Democratic Party alone for fuzzy thinking on property matters and so today it is time for a go at the DAB.

I shall have to spare the Liberal Party. It does not yet seem to have a formal platform at all, other I suppose than a faint hope of winning a seat at general election rather than through that form of rotten borough we call the functional constituency.

However, let us try the DAB's idea of effective land policies. What does it mean by 'effective measures to modulate land prices'? I give you a range of synonyms for modulate - adapt, adjust, alter, change, amend, vary, transform, revise - and that is just what the cheap thesaurus on my copy of Microsoft Word shows me.

But how adapt, how adjust, how alter? It is a rather pointless word if that question is not answered.

Okay, okay, I know. It has to be a translation of the Chinese  text and it would not be fair to mock it purely for awkward translation into English. This is a criticism I would accept if the Chinese text were more precise but I have checked and it is not. The word 'modulate' is a reasonably accurate rendition of the Chinese original.

What we seem to have here is just the same muddle from which the Democrats suffer. What both parties would  like is property prices that are lower than at present but not too much lower as there would then be an element of homeowner dissatisfaction, even within their ranks.  They would also like prices to increase steadily  but only by a small and consistent amount each year and certainly no more than the overall rate of inflation.

I am guessing of course but that is all I can do as both parties have been no more explicit themselves. They are thus broadly in line with Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa's thinking on housing policies and that also amounts to very little thought.

But it will do no good for either party to appeal to Mr Tung on the matter. The only viable course of action they have is to go to the very top and take it up with God. What they want is a heavenly miracle, not a down-to-earth property market that functions as property markets do.

My preference is for that down-to-earth property market with all the warts and bumps. It has a better chance than the miracle of supplying the greatest number of people possible with the best housing they can afford - that is, if Mr Tung leaves it alone and neither of these two parties is given an opportunity to trammel with it.

The DAB's idea of trammelling is to 'increase the supply of land' and, just to get the point across, to 'supply more land'. Trouble is God has not supplied it and we are running out of reclamation prospects.

We could, of course, make better use of what we have for housing if we did not devote  so much of it to Cyberports, Science Parks, Disney Parks and, most of all, roadways from nowhere to nowhere. Did you know that the government's own figures show roadways occupying almost as much public land as all urban residential developments in Hong Kong?

But to make a statement like this on specific land-use policies would be tantamount to drafting real policy proposals and did I say we had policy statements here? My pardons.

I leave you with that last DAB proposal that the government every year announce its land auction plans for the next five years. I can just imagine it - 'On February 12, 2009 we will hold an auction in the Tuen Mun town hall for the following lots. Their reserve prices will be as follows...'

Perhaps these people do not want it to be quite so specific, but then what do they want if they are not satisfied that the government should auction as much land in five years' time as Hong Kong's housing circumstances then appear to require, and at as good a price as it can get from developers for the public coffers?

I shall tell you what they want. They want the public rental housing vote and they will pander to it shamelessly to get their seats in Legco, hang the consequences for effective or equitable land-use policies in Hong Kong.



DAB panders to rental vote on property