The supreme irony of Paul Zimmerman's life is his passion to protect the harbour and against building too many roads - and his job selling luxury vehicles.
His first foray into public life was in February 2004 as convenor of Designing Hong Kong Harbour District, a forum to bring together businesspeople and professionals to discuss the fate of Victoria Harbour in the face of reclamation and proposals for a waterfront that would be unfriendly to pedestrians.
'We decided we had to act and do something,' he said. The anti-reclamation wave quickly made its way to the top of the agenda for many such groups.
In less than three years, the 48-year-old senior executive running travel, automotive and airline marketing companies has become one of the best-known harbour activists and town planning critics. He has been vocal about the West Kowloon Cultural District, Tamar, Kai Tak and heritage issues - and, recently, the campaign to preserve Central's Star Ferry pier and Queen's Pier.
He has been a member of the Harbour Business Forum, a coalition of the city's leading companies on harbour planning issues and he represented the business community on the government's Harbourfront Enhancement Committee (HEC) until he resigned last summer in protest against the government's 'insincerity'. A founding member of the Civic Party, he stood for an Election Committee post last month, but was narrowly defeated - by one vote - in the tourism sector.
And yet, he says he never planned to get into politics. 'The Harbourfront Enhancement Committee made me politically active and more an activist. There was a lot of push-back from the government. The harder I pushed, they pushed back, which made me increasingly aggressive. After realising the HEC was not the platform, I started going to the Legislative Council to express my views. Then the Election Committee came up and I decided to try.
