Lam Hits Out at Leung's Housing Plan

Lam (centre) was on a radio show today blasting Leung's plan

The knives are out between former chief executive Leung Chun-ying and incumbent Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor.

Leung, a vice chairman of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference, recently re-pitched his idea of building flats on the edge of country parks much to the horror of environmentalists, but to be honest, her idea of building a series of giant artificial islands attached to Lantau is just as terrifying.

Will Leung and Lam battle for the CE job?

On a radio show today, Lam took a shot at Leung, saying if his idea of building those flats was so good, it would have been done long ago. She said the government has strong reservations about such a "controversial proposal".

"Frankly, if developing the edges of country parts is so attractive and easy, the government would've done it long ago. The last administration wouldn't have waited until the final months of its term to bring up the idea," she said.

"I was already away from the government at the time, I had resigned [to run for CE]."

She said developing the peripheries of country parks would take quite some time, so her administration has gone with other options.

Lantau Tomorrow Vision is environmental crisis

Like her Lantau Tomorrow Vision is a better idea?

The plan is to construct artificial islands that will create 1,700 hectares of land through massive reclamation and is expected to cost HK$500 billion (US$63.8 billion) -- amounting to half the government's coffers and serious environmental concerns.

Both Leung and Lam have terrible ideas of how to create more land for housing when they have not even exhausted other possibilities for land redevelopment such as brown sites dotted all over the city. While they are not giant swathes of land, they are empty or vacant nonetheless and why not use them?