Lai See | Where is the vision in CY Leung's so-called 'policy' address?

If ever there was a misnomer, calling Chief Executive CY Leung's address yesterday a "policy" address was it. Paragraph after tedious paragraph of things the government says it is going to do. It's as if the various heads of departments instructed their subordinates to produce 300 words on whatever they were involved in.

So under Logistics we learn that the government will continue to support the building of a third runway, and development of the airport's North Commercial District. Hard to believe logistics used to be considered a pillar industry.

There is no vision in this document, nothing inspirational or uplifting. There is no sense of where Hong Kong is heading and how we are going to get there. There is nothing here to inspire our disaffected youth. Hong Kong needed something like this particularly as there is so much evident dissatisfaction with the government among people young and old.

There are big questions that need to be addressed. What should be done with the trillions of dollars that Financial Secretary John Tsang Chun-wah sits on? Every year the budget reveals an embarrassment of riches, and every year he is always warning of some looming crisis which prevents him from funding a proper welfare system or pension system, or prevents him from taking so much out of people's pockets in the first place. This is not all the fault of the chief executive, it has to be said, but has a lot to do with a lacklustre civil service.

Increasingly the sense is that the government runs for the benefit of the civil service. They keep their heads down, don't say anything controversial, avoid criticism, serve out their time and collect their pension - thank you very much. Policy, ideas, initiatives - forget it. The civil service is running on empty. That's largely why we end up with a policy address like this.