Carrie Lam’s policy address 2018: land development to maternity leave, five key takeaways from city leader’s blueprint for Hong Kong

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor presented her second policy address in the Legislative Council on Wednesday. Her speech was short, lasting about 40 minutes, unlike her predecessor Leung Chun-ying’s preference for a long address. She unveiled 244 new initiatives on pressing issues such as land shortage, health care, elderly care and welfare.

Policy address brings good news for working mothers and house-hunters

Measures to ease Hong Kong’s housing problems were the major focus of her policy blueprint. She put land and housing policy initiatives at the forefront of her address, as a stand-alone chapter, ahead of economy and livelihood issues.

Here are five key takeaways of note on Lam’s 2018 policy address:

1. Land and housing

More land will be allocated for public housing development and the government will increase the ratio of public to private housing.

A new project, dubbed “Lantau Tomorrow Vision”, will develop an area of about 1,700 hectares, including an artificial island to the east of Lantau, and off other coastal areas such as Tuen Mun and Lung Kwu Tan. The project will provide 260,000 to 400,000 residential units, 70 per cent of which will be public housing. The new land will accommodate 700,000 to 1.1 million people and create 340,000 jobs in the next 20 to 30 years.

Lam said the government will speed up studies on using brownfield sites, damaged agricultural land now used as scrapyards and open storage space, to facilitate housing.

2. Banning e-cigarettes and fighting cancer

In a sudden move, Lam said she would impose a complete ban on e-cigarettes and other new tobacco products, such as heat-not-burn products and herbal cigarettes. It was a U-turn from a legislative proposal that came out in June this year aiming to regulate such products the same way as conventional tobacco products.

Also, a free cervical cancer vaccination scheme will be introduced in 2019/20 for schoolgirls of particular age groups to help prevent cervical cancer.