One hundred and fifty years ago, there were many who believed that government had no business looking after anything other than security - law, order and national defence. But two additional tasks soon came to be seen as integral responsibilities of government, whether national or local.
One was education, as the right to literacy was acknowledged. The second was public health. A combination of rapid economic expansion, new technologies and engineering skills raised demands for government action against rampant disease - through safe water supplies and sewage systems.
Hong Kong's colonial regime, backward in many respects, acknowledged this duty of government to the common good. The treatment of illness might be left to private doctors and hospitals or those funded by charitable institutions. But preventive medicine, clean water, the sewers, standards of hygiene - even the provision of vaccinations against virulent communicable diseases - became expected of government. Only government could lay down standards and, in many cases, only government could carry out the work.
Yet today's top government officials appear to have forgotten these principles. It is obvious to most of the population that the provision of clean air is as important to citizens today as provision of clean water was 100 years ago. The dangers to public health from breathing filthy air may take longer to become apparent than drinking contaminated water, but they are no less real. It has been made clear time and again that poor air quality is already causing many premature deaths, and that the numbers will rise exponentially as the years of breathing them rise from 10 to 20 and beyond.
The administration's leaders are guilty of gross negligence and dereliction of public duty. If they were a private concern in jurisdictions such as the United States, they would be the subject of overwhelming class-action lawsuits that would bury their expectations of early retirement on fat pensions. Some combination of sloth, timidity, ignorance, miserliness or susceptibility to business interests is at work, and while the outcome is plain to see, the health damage is mostly invisible.
Investment in new, non-polluting public transport - be it trolley buses or the latest, cleanest gas or diesel - is just as much a need as investment in safe water supplies.