It's time to get real, folks. Hope and change ain't working. Hope and change is not a solution. Hope and change is not a job.

Hope and Change has become Divide and Conquer.

I would hope that anybody involved in this change would be very thoughtful about it. We would want some time to think about how it will impact our district.

The election could lead to a change for the better, which is everybody's hope, but it might be a step toward crisis and toward all-out civil war.

There is little scope for me to change [the proposals]. But I hope that within what little scope I have, I will see what I can do to perfect the package. But it will be of limited scale and it will not affect the timetable for resolution of this matter in the Legislative Council [on December 21]. Nor will it itself produce quickly a timetable that is not achievable.

If these trends do not change, there is little hope that the great biodiversity of this unique ecosystem, discovered just 35 years ago, will survive another decade.