Public engagement exercise's initial findings on the West Kowloon Cultural District core arts & cultural facilities consultative committee's recommendations indicate that the stakeholders and the community are generally supportive of the recommendations, and would like to see the early implementation of the project, Secretary for Home Affairs Tsang Tak-sing says.

The three-month public engagement exercise comes to a close today. Mr Tsang said the Government will proceed with drawing up the legislation for establishing a statutory body to take forward the project as quickly as possible. 

"We are planning to introduce a bill on the establishment of the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority into the Legislative Council in February next year. If the bill is passed by mid-2008, the authority would be set up later in the year," he said.

The Government is planning to seek LegCo's approval in mid-2008 for an upfront endowment of $21.6 billion for the authority upon its establishment to finance the project's capital costs.

This one-off upfront endowment signifies the Government's clear commitment to long-term culture and arts development, Mr Tsang said, adding that funding certainty would be crucial in enabling the authority to proceed with the formulation of the master plan, as well as the planning, design and content development of the various integrated clusters of facilities within the district.

Telephone poll incident

As for the alleged professional misconduct in the telephone polls conducted by the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Public Policy Research Institute, the Home Affairs Bureau said the poll was only one of the many channels to solicit public opinion on the project.

The bureau said the deficiency in the exercise was regretted, but the institute has taken immediate steps to rectify the problem in the first week of December.