Debate on President's Address

Order read for the Resumption of Debate on Question [31 August 2020].

"That the following Address in reply to the Speech of the President be agreed to:

'We, the Parliament of the Republic of Singapore, express our thanks to the President for the Speech which she delivered on behalf of the Government at the Opening of the First Session of this Parliament.'." – [Mr Patrick Tay Teck Guan]

Question again proposed.

Mr Speaker: Minister Chan.

1.06 pm

The Minister for Trade and Industry (Mr Chan Chun Sing): Mr Speaker, a point of clarification. On Monday, during the Debate on the Motion of Thanks to the President, Mr Dennis Tan stated that he had to rectify the position of his posters, arising from two complaints about his campaign posters to the Elections Department or ELD during the recent General Election or GE. He said that both complaints related to his posters being below the 2.2 m minimum height requirement which is meant to prevent posters from obstructing the line of sight for motorists. Mr Dennis Tan further said that and I quote, "One resident told me that she had witnessed the PAP team pulling down our posters from the original height. She showed me where they allegedly took place and I have no reason to doubt what she said."

Mr Speaker, Sir, this is a serious allegation. When challenged in this House by Mr Murali, Mr Tan acknowledged that ELD has been even-handed in handling complaints received from all political parties and candidates. ELD has not received any report from Mr Tan on his allegations that his posters were pulled down from the original height. In its Press Statement on 31 August 2020, ELD invited him to file a report so that it can investigate the matter. ELD also explained its enforcement approach when it receives such complaints, which is to ask the Election Agent to rectify the posters in breach of the rules within three hours.

Mr Tan has replied to ELD on 2 September 2020 that he did not make a report to ELD during the GE as he was focusing on his election campaign and he has no plans to do so now.

Mr Speaker, Sir, anyone who makes such allegations publicly should substantiate their allegations with evidence; more so when such allegations are made in this House. And in the spirit of constructive politics that we discussed in recent days in this House, it cannot be that a Member stands up to raise doubts and does not follow through to substantiate his allegations.

ELD takes such allegations seriously and will investigate them thoroughly and impartially. This is to be fair to all parties involved, protect the integrity of the election processes and continue to uphold trust in our elections.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I wish to have the Press Statement issued by ELD and the correspondence between Mr Tan and ELD brought to the attention of Members and entered into Parliamentary records.

Mr Speaker: Noted. Would any of Mr Dennis Tan's colleagues like to respond? If not, let us proceed.

1.09 pm

The Minister of State for Education and Social and Family Development (Ms Sun Xueling): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Motion.

In my walks around Punggol, I meet many young families. A young mother shared with me that both she and her husband are essential services workers and as such, she needed a childcare near her home so that she can pick up her young child easily. A stay-home mum spoke for an hour with me, worried that her daughter would not qualify via Direct School Admission or DSA to her preferred school as she did not have a certificate to prove her daughter’s talent. A young father whose Primary 1 son was diagnosed with mild intellectual disability told me his son is not slow, just relatively slower than his classmates and just needs more time to catch up.

These stories are diverse and varied, but they all carry a common thread of hope, struggles and dreams that all of us as parents have for our children. As parents, we want our children to have the best shot in life, to grow up happy, to have the confidence to chase their dreams and to be successful in life and their profession, whatever that may be.

As a people, we aspire towards a fair, just and inclusive society where everyone has equal opportunities to develop to their fullest potential, regardless their backgrounds. But this is not a straightforward task. Many advanced economies have found that social mobility gets harder to sustain as society progresses and as more well-off parents pass down their resources to their children. At the same time, technological displacement to jobs and increasing competition from other markets are demanding a new set of traits for individuals to succeed in life.

Amidst this shifting landscape, what might we expect of our education system? I ask this as a mother, and now as an office holder in MOE.

My hope is that our education system will always remain a social enabler so that everyone, especially those who may have started with less, has the hope and confidence that in Singapore they have equal access to opportunities to do well, achieve their aspirations and find happiness.

I believe that our social conscience tells us that we do not want to create a self-fulfilling class system in Singapore that is entrenched and segregates individuals, limiting them in their endeavours, and stifling hopes and dreams.

I also hope that our education system provides the space for our children to discover their passion and allows them to grow, confidently, in their own time. Different children flourish at different stages, in different environments and in different realms. I hope that there are multiple pathways available to them, that schools and parents recognise their diverse strengths and interests and that there is porosity between the pathways to support our children’s varied endeavours.

And lastly, I hope that our education system serves a wider social purpose of building a sense of solidarity among Singaporeans. Where our children from diverse backgrounds can learn from one another, interact with each other comfortably and respectfully and through these interactions, find a shared destiny which they continue to believe in even after they grow up.

Globally, research has shown that what happens in the early years is critical in determining how children turn out and how they subsequently fare in life. The MOE and MSF are therefore intervening earlier, from the pre-schooling years, so that our children regardless their backgrounds, have a good start from which to find fulfilment and joy in life.

The Government has announced that it is ramping up the provision of Government-supported preschool places, from just over 50% of the market today to 80% by 2025. Since January this year, many families are now paying less for preschool given enhanced subsidies. The Government is also investing significantly in the software aspects of teacher recruitment, progression and professional development. Taken together, this sends a strong signal that the Government prioritises the early learning years and wants to give every child a good starting point from which they can chart their future paths.

While the vast majority of each cohort has attended pre-school prior to Primary 1, there is nonetheless a group of children whose attendance is irregular in pre-school and a few who are not even enrolled in pre-school. We should examine how we can further enable pre-school participation, as the formative years play a critical role in a child’s development.

They say it takes a village to raise a child. I hope that with the scale-up of programmes such as KidSTART, which provides holistic support to lower income families and focus on the health, nutrition and education of their children, more of these children and their families can benefit. With Growing Together with KidSTART, I also hope that more community partners can come forward to partner lower income families in their parenting journey.

My second point is about expanding educational pathways. Different children bloom at different stages, in different environments and in different ways. To give our children a fair chance to develop and shine, there must be varied educational pathways to better recognise a fuller range of talents and strengths, beyond academic achievements.

Our education system has been making big moves to bring about a mindset shift to look beyond academic achievements, by reducing school-based assessments and making changes to the PSLE scoring system. But to do this successfully, we all need to move away from an overemphasis on grades, not just within the school system but a broader mindset shift in society, including from among employers and parents. And we need to make real changes to some of the current ways of doing things, such as a greater recognition of skills when evaluating someone for a job.

DSA is one way of expanding pathways by providing students an opportunity to progress to their next stage of education through recognition of their diverse talents – in sports, performing arts and so forth. But even as we do so, we must be careful not to rely solely on tried-and-tested methods, such as assessing students based on certificates which show demonstrated achievements. This would only serve to transfer the competition for results from the academic arena to the non-academic arena, with better off parents being more likely to send their children for extra training in DSA areas. We want to avoid such unhealthy competition. Instead, we have started making changes to DSA over the past few years, and parents and children can be assured that our schools are adopting a much more holistic assessment, looking beyond past achievements.

Our children come from a diverse range of backgrounds and bring with them different experiences, different opportunities that they have had and different personal traits. We are therefore encouraging schools to dig deeper for potential. We recognise that the process in trying to identify students’ potential in a particular DSA area is inevitably less straightforward than simply checking if they have demonstrated achievements in the past. But if we truly believe in expanding opportunities for all, then we have to try.

For example, in sports selection, we encourage schools to look beyond sports-specific competencies, such as the ability to dribble or serve a ball, but to also look for natural abilities such as agility, coordination and speed. Our children can also bring character and personal qualities to a sport or performing art. Qualities such as resilience, compassion and leadership which help reflect the spirit of the DSA area.

We should also look hard for students that come from a wider range of schools, keep a lookout for them and for talent amongst them. This will truly expand opportunities for more children and offer them more pathways to succeed.

I also mentioned earlier that the changing global operating context is demanding a new set of traits for our children to thrive. We want our children to develop into global citizens, to be able to seize opportunities in the global marketplace, and have the disposition and ability to work with people from different cultures.

We are therefore refreshing our humanities curriculum to deepen our students’ understanding of the histories, cultures and economies of our regional neighbours, and our connections to them. When the situation allows, we will also expose our students to more global opportunities, through more overseas student exchanges and internships, to strengthen our cross-cultural skills and develop the global perspective to seize opportunities both at home and abroad.

Speaker, Sir, I will like to make a final point about children with special educational needs or SEN in Singapore.

I visited Grace Orchard School about a month back. It is a Special Education or SPED school catering to students with mild intellectual disability and those with mild Autism Spectrum Disorder.

At the school, students were learning daily living skills, such as personal health and grooming, and picking up work-ready skills such as horticulture. But what left an indelible impression on me was how the students interacted with their teachers.

As I walked through the corridors and in the canteen, I heard students spontaneously greeting their teachers with exuberance. Individual voices rang out, one shouting, "Hello, Mrs Goh"; another one, "Good morning, Ms Low". Excited happy voices. These were not greetings in unison, they were random, all over the place but full of joy. The positive energy and love the students have for their teachers was palpable.

And I thought to myself, "Isn’t this what the education system is about?"

For our children with special educational needs, we will make sure they can access quality and affordable SEN support provisions in both mainstream and SPED schools.

We recently worked with six SPED schools to reduce their fees by at least 25% for Singapore Citizens since the start of this year, and will be building more SPED schools over the next few years. Yesterday, I had also announced a new Human Resource package to support our SPED teachers in their career and professional development aspirations.

We are also intervening earlier through early intervention programmes in pre-schools and for those with moderate to severe developmental needs, through the Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children.

We will also actively look for ways to foster purposeful interaction between students with and without SEN to create a truly inclusive environment. Some examples include satellite partnerships between the mainstream and SPED schools, combined teams at the National School Games and joint OBS camps.

But over and above all that, our children at Grace Orchard School taught me something and reminded me of what education really is about. Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself, where our children grow up feeling loved, treasured and supported; where they grow up confident and passionate about learning and life; where they are seen for who they are and not what they can or cannot do. We ourselves hold the keys to building a fair, just and inclusive society – through our efforts in our children’s education. Mr Speaker, Sir, I would now like to speak in Chinese.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] I have just shared with you how MOE will work to ensure that our children have opportunities to develop their potential and succeed in many ways, and how we will work to create a more equal and inclusive education environment. However, for children, family support may be more important for their physical and mental development.

The family is not only a haven for children, but also a basic unit of society, and a cornerstone of national stability.

However, COVID-19 has resulted in significant pressures to families. These are not limited to economic and employment pressures, but also psychological and emotional pressures, which may lead to family conflicts and even family violence.

Some couples are worried about financial difficulties, while others are parents working from home but still need to manage their children’s home-based learning, resulting in strained relationship with their children. Teenagers may be in low spirits as they must stay at home for long periods and are unable to meet their friends as and when they like. We saw an increase in family violence related enquiries during the circuit breaker period; the queries received by MSF increased by about 10% during the circuit breaker period as compared to the period before circuit breaker in March.

At the same time, we note that COVID-19 has also impacted the formation of new families. The total number of marriages registered from January to July this year dropped by 23% as compared to the same period last year. This will have a negative impact on the number of newborns in Singapore.

MSF is aware of the challenges faced by families and has taken various measures to help affected Singaporeans and families.

In terms of financial assistance, we introduced the Temporary Relief Fund to help lower and middle-income Singaporeans and families. We also introduced the COVID-19 Support Grant, for Singaporeans who are unemployed or suffered significant income loss, and the application window for the grant has been extended to December this year. At the same time, MSF is reviewing other grants and assistance for families, to extend our social safety net.

To combat the psychological effects of COVID-19, we launched the National CARE Hotline in April this year to help Singaporeans who need emotional or psychological support during the pandemic. It is worth noting that since its launch more than four months ago, the hotline has received about 28,000 calls for help.

Besides the Government's efforts, we need more people to look out for those who need help and those who face difficulties but do not know who to turn to for help.

It is heartening to see the strength of the community and volunteers. I am part of the Youth Mental Well-being Network, which is a collaborative effort with community partners and concerned individuals, involving more than 1,000 volunteers and experts. Through the Singapore Together Action Network, they are working together on issues concerning youth mental well-being.

The Inter-Agency Task Force on Family Violence, which I co-chair with Minister of State Faishal, is also pleased to see the participation of many social service agencies, providing their views and helping families in need.

In the area of family formation, we will continue to render assistance to minimise delays caused by COVID-19, so that the newlyweds can collect the keys to their new homes as soon as possible. For those whose new flats have been delayed, we will assist them with interim rental housing. To mitigate the impact of COVID-19 measures on marriages, MSF has introduced solemnisations via video-link in May and has recently relaxed the guidelines to allow up to 50 persons to attend in-person solemnisations. We will also continue to monitor the situation and explore ways for couples to have memorable weddings despite the pandemic. We do not wish to see people’s lives come to a standstill because of COVID-19.

I know that young couples when considering whether to start a family can be concerned about the costs of raising a child. We will review our policies to see how we can lower the costs for young families in times of crisis.

Looking at the history of mankind, some countries have seen a decline in the wake of a crisis, while others have shown greater social cohesion and vitality.

In the 55 years since Singapore’s independence, we have gone through several crises, such as the social turmoil in the 1960s, the Asian financial crisis in 1997, SARS in 2003, and the global financial crisis in 2008. But we become more united after each crisis and emerge stronger after going through a rough patch.

I believe that the resilience of Singaporeans will enable us to ride out the current economic crisis. Singaporeans' compassion will also enable us to stay together and watch out for one another.

Everyone will face challenges and there will be clear skies for those who ride through the storms.

The family is our haven. We will do our best to protect it. I believe that with the strong corporate and community ties that Singapore has built over the years, and the efforts of our government, community volunteers, community organisations and volunteers, we will take good care of our families, overcome the pandemic and give all Singaporeans and our children a healthy, prosperous and bright future. Thank you!

1.30 pm

Mr Zhulkarnain Abdul Rahim (Chua Chu Kang): Mr Speaker, I rise in support for the Motion of Thanks to the President for her Address.

Before I begin, I would like to declare that I am a practising lawyer and a member of the board of an Institute of Public Character providing crisis shelter for domestic violence survivors.

President Halimah Yacob highlighted that we will have to strengthen our safety nets and support every Singaporean. I fully agree. Like many other Singaporean parents, I dream of building a stronger and more cohesive society for our children.

My speech is inspired by my six-year old son and his love for Lego blocks. Each block is important. But, if you do not connect them properly, then the entire structure may be unstable.

To me, each Singaporean family represents that building block of our society. These blocks may come in different shapes or colours but when connected together they are stronger and more beautiful. In order for us to build a more cohesive society, I submit that we will have to continue doing three things. Firstly, support each building block; secondly, strengthen the connections and thirdly, provide the space for continuous rebuilding.

Supporting families is crucial given the financial and emotional stresses that they now face. The economic crisis of today may give rise to the social crisis of tomorrow. I propose two specific areas of support in healthcare and housing.

For many families I have met in Keat Hong, their common fear is to lose a job or worse, suffer a major illness.

One of my residents, Mr Tan, suffers from kidney failure and now, a drop in income. He is concerned that if the costs of dialysis treatment keep on going up, he would have to dip further into his life savings. For families like Mr Tan's, we must continue to review how our healthcare safety nets work. But we must do this in a fiscally responsible manner. How do we review and increase the limits from MediSave and MediShield Life to help the financial burden now; perhaps we can increase the limit on an interim basis at least during this pandemic period. Senior Minister of State Heng Chee How has also mentioned such review in his speech. I have filed a Parliamentary Question related to this.

Next, on housing. According to HDB, from April to June this year, there has been a threefold increase of households facing financial difficulty to make their monthly mortgage payments, compared to the same period last year. To address this, besides various repayment solutions offered by HDB, late payment charges have been suspended until the end of this month. I would suggest that HDB consider extending this until the end of this year. This will be consistent with the intent behind MAS' relief package initiative which allows residential owners to defer repayment of commercial bank loans up to 31 December 2020.

Besides financial help, we need to explore other ways and frameworks to ease the mental and emotional strains on families to make it easier for family members to share the load and ensure the family stays strong through this crisis. Especially for those who may need more help. However, the family or the building block is very different now than what it was 30 years ago.

Blended families, unwed mothers, single working adults, taking care of their elderly parents, all make up our building blocks of society. We must not leave anyone behind especially the vulnerable or what Ms Carrie Tan referenced in her speech yesterday as the "challenged families".

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link. We need an ecosystem of stronger connections within our community. In this respect, I submit that we have to do two things. First, we have to work together and then we have to stay together. To illustrate this, I will refer to the work in ending domestic violence and working with families.

Since the circuit breaker, there is a concern in the rise of domestic violence cases. The police reported an increase of 22% reports of family violence since the beginning of the circuit breaker period. According to MSF, adult and child protection services saw a 14% increase in inquiries related to domestic conflicts and violence in the first two weeks of the circuit breaker period alone.

However, I would caution that these are only the reported cases. The tip of the iceberg. According to an Ipsos study in 2019, a third of Singaporeans said that they or someone close to them had experienced domestic violence. Another survey by the International Violence against Women in Singapore found that less than a quarter of victims actually report domestic violence cases to the police.

I am using the term "domestic violence" because it encompasses more than just violence between family members. Under the current legislation, only family violence is specifically defined. Perhaps it is time to broaden the definition beyond family to domestic violence or revisit the approach in the Family Violence Bill previously proposed in 1995.

Having said that, I am also heartened that the Inter-Agency Task Force on Domestic Violence has been formed, headed by Minister of State Sun Xueling and Minister of State Faishal Ibrahim. It has connected Government agencies, the judiciary and strategic community partners to address domestic violence issue. This is an ongoing process. This consultative method is the way forward. Not everything has to be legislated.

I hope the Task Force can look at how we can make it easier for the discrete reporting of domestic violence in the case of elderly abuse and immigrant wives. In Australia, the Department of Home Affairs provide information to immigrant wives on domestic abuse and how to get help upon their entry into the country. Perhaps we can adopt a similar approach for immigrant wives, so that they too, can understand their rights and protection afforded to them under our laws.

Even after working closely together, we need to ensure that we stay together as one. One of my residents in Keat Hong, has been running a foster home in her jumbo flat for the past 15 years. Currently, she has eight children under her care. Most of the children have incarcerated parents. People like her create a more stable and supportive environment for these children. How do we attract and retain more such partners?

Some jurisdictions have built up a pool of licensed, temporary foster care-givers who can step in and offer relief for current foster parents so that they can recharge and not now, but in the long-term, the flexibility and short-term nature may even attract more to be temporary foster care-givers before they decide to be full-time.

We need to find ways to not only incentivise but to also take care of our community partners and volunteers, so that more will be encouraged to step forward. The broader point I am making is this – we need to see beyond the lens of the beneficiary or recipient. We need to look at it from the perspective of the provider also. This is in line with the spirit of togetherness that Mr Yip Hon Weng stated in his speech yesterday as well.

With all of these ingredients, we can make it work. As Henry Ford said, "Coming together is the beginning, staying together is progress and working together is success". At this inflection point for our country, we must embark on our journey together – one of reflection and rebuilding. Mr Speaker, Sir, in Malay please.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] The process of self-reflection and co-creating solutions is nothing new to the Malay/Muslim community. I think we should be bold enough to evaluate what is available, revamp what is obvious to us and proceed to build it.

Here I would like to suggest that the Administration of Muslim Law Act (AMLA) can be amended to widen the Syariah Court's jurisdiction limits to not only handle divorce cases but also disputes involving faraid, wakaf and inheritance issues. Now, although the faraid Certificate of Inheritance is issued by the Syariah Court and wakaf administration is under Muis' purview, any dispute related to it should be tried by the Civil Court.

I am proposing for a dispute resolution framework in faraidh and wakaf cases, which can include mediation or arbitration at the Syariah Court. At the same time, this can help build expertise in the Syariah Court and sensitive issues related to wakaf can be looked into from the lens of the community. With the existence of the Committee on Future Asatizah (COFA) and the Singapore Community Wakaf initiative, we can build a legal framework that can develop the expertise of religious teachers and meet the needs of the community in the future. My hope is that we can make this a success together.

The oft-mentioned spirit of mutual cooperation can change a person's life and unite the community. Our Malay/Muslim community's sacrifices during the past Ramadan amidst the COVID-19 pandemic gives me hope that we can weather this economic crisis and address the problems faced by our community.

Issues such as drug abuse, divorce and domestic violence are affecting all levels of society and do not differentiate between race or religion. Therefore, our approach to these issues has changed and should continue to change.

For example, by fully leveraging on Government resources and relooking issues from the national lens, the M³ approach has enabled professionals and volunteers, regardless of race, to work together, combine their efforts and generate new constructive ideas. M³ strategies and approaches should be looked into, not only for our Malay/Muslim community, but also because it can potentially be harnessed by all the communities in our country.

We now face an unparalleled economic crisis and face a single enemy in dealing with COVID-19. As we embrace the diversity of recommendations and opinions, we must uphold the core values that were championed by our nation’s pioneers, that is, to place importance on unity in society and diversity.

When the storm hits the wharf,

The anchor is dropped by the seasoned captain,

When a crisis hits our shores,

Prioritise unity in our nation.

(In English): Mr Speaker, Sir, none of us knows for sure how Singapore will look like after this crisis right now. But storms draw something out of us that calm seas do not. If we take care of the building blocks of our society, strengthen the connections and co-create and build together, I believe we can ride through this storm not just surviving but thriving.

What makes Singapore special is that we embrace and celebrate diversity, including the political diversity that makes up this current Parliament. Political diversity is not the monopoly of any party. We have seen from the speeches made this week of the diverse views held among all of us. Yet, we still respect and must hold on to our common values that make us uniquely Singaporean.

I reflected upon what Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in his speech yesterday, about our future and our political discourse. In Parliament, every word we say here is recorded forever. I urge and have full confidence that Members of this House will prioritise people over polarising politics. It must be for the cause, not the applause; the intention and not attention. We have to set the tone in this House for the discourse of our politics. It will ring loud here and outside, in our constituencies, in our communities, in our homes. We have to set the example, history will judge us, our children and their children will judge us as well. They will either look up to us or look away.

The crisis we face will not define us. It is our responses as a people that would shape our collective future. Let us continue to play our part to rebuild a more resilient, more inclusive, more vibrant society and economy than ever before. Together we are greater than the sum of our parts. But if one part is not connected, then everything else may fall apart. Mr Speaker, I support the Motion. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: Mr Vikram Nair.

1.45 pm

Mr Vikram Nair (Sembawang): Mr Speaker, I rise in support of the Motion.

Singapore’s journey in the last 60 years has been remarkable. At the time of our Independence, we were very much a developing country. In 1960, our GDP per capita was US$449. By 1990, at the time Mr Lee Kuan Yew handed over to Mr Goh Chok Tong, it had risen to US$11,862 per capita. If we look at the numbers, it is a remarkable growth. The multiple is more than 25 times. So, of course, the growth that that generation experienced would have been remarkable. By 2006, when Mr Goh Chok Tong handed over, GDP per capita had risen to US$33,769. This, again, by any standard, is a big number. But in proportion, it is three times the growth. This clearly put us very much amongst the First World nations. In 2019, when the last figures were available from the World Bank, the GDP stood at around US$65,233 – again, a very big number, a little under double from 2006.

Singapore has been criticised for focusing too much on GDP. But I think this is a luxury we have after we have achieved that growth, a luxury that has given us many opportunities.

For comparison, if we compare these figures to, say, the UK – which was also not a very successful country and was our former colonial masters – we actually see how remarkable this achievement is. In 1960, the UK’s GDP per capita was about US$1,398, about three times ours. In 1990, the same second timeframe, it was US$19,095, still more than 60% higher than ours – no longer triple but still significantly more. In 2006, its GDP was about US$44,600, again, higher than ours, but only about 25% higher. As of last year, the UK’s GDP per capita was $42,300, according to the World Bank figures, and this is actually slightly lower than it was in 2006, and, now, 30% below ours.

This is not meant to be a criticism of the UK but just to show how difficult it is to achieve growth once you have become a developed nation and the UK has been maintaining its GDP for the last 14 years but it has been difficult to achieve growth. So, if you compare that as the benchmark, I think the current term of government has done incredibly well. It has grown GDP from a high benchmark to an even higher benchmark. This is why, in many ways, we are in no-man's land. There is an old saying in Tamil which goes: “இக்கரைக்கு அக்கரை பச்சை”. In English, you will be familiar with this. It means, “The grass is greener on the other side”. So, for many of us, we may look at other developed countries and think we are inferior and then say, "Look, we have to replicate them".

But I think this sometimes understates how good things are over here. This is not to say we are perfect and this is not to say we cannot learn. We have to always learn, we always have to look outwards. But at the same time, we also cannot let go of things that have worked for us and which we have been doing right.

In this speech, I want to touch on three themes that I think are important for this. The first is openness; the second, equality; and the third is fairness.

The first topic I am touching on is openness. Openness has been one of the most important themes for Singapore's economy since its founding. When the British set up Singapore and planted their flag in Singapore about 200 years ago, the population was less than 1,000. But at that time, Raffles saw Singapore as a place where the region and perhaps even larger parts of the world could come to trade. As Singapore grew as a trading port, as part of a bigger global empire, more and more people moved here, including from the Malay peninsular, China and India, where many of our ancestors are from. So, it was, in fact, Singapore's openness from inception that brought many of us here.

At the time of Independence, Singapore had a choice. Many countries that won independence from colonial masters sometimes cut roots altogether. They said "We want nothing more to do with the rest of the world. We will do everything ourselves". Singapore did not. Singapore went a different way. We kept it open to the world. We did not burn bridges with our colonial masters. In fact, we maintained the relationship. The British continued to provide for our defence for some years after our Independence. We played a part in the Commonwealth, we joined international organisations. We brought new industries and new businesses here and this is what actually helped Singapore grow during the early years.

In the earlier speeches, Minister Ong Ye Kung talked about the financial sector – one area where many Singaporeans are feeling angst about foreigners taking their jobs. But he highlighted that this sector really started again as an entrepreneurial venture in a little over 50 years ago when Singapore decided to open up as a currency trading hub. This slowly evolved into having more and more high-quality jobs here and we now have a sector that employs 170,000 people, of which 70% are Singaporeans. Our senior management, I think, could do better but the numbers still stand at 44% Singaporean and these are jobs that would not have been here if we were not open.

Yesterday, in his speech, Prime Minister Lee talked about many sectors, including oil and gas and pharmaceuticals. Other sectors not mentioned include areas like manufacturing. But many of these areas grew on the back of our being open and allowing people to come in and build a base here. I am also heartened that, during this difficult time, Singapore remains open. I think the Prime Minister mentioned in his speech yesterday that EDB has a longer pipeline of projects this year than last year, including companies looking to develop treatments for COVID-19. This is good news for Singaporeans and jobs. But in order to benefit from this, we have to remain open.

The second theme though is equality. Equality is something that I think every society strives for. But equality has many different meanings. During the Cold War, there were two very different conceptions of equality. On the one hand, you can say the US perhaps epitomises it. It talked very heavily about equality of opportunity – whoever you are, wherever you are, you must have a chance to succeed. But equality of opportunity almost always creates inequality of outcomes. You cannot run away from that. If everyone is given the same chance, some people will do better than others; the outcomes will be different. Why do they do better? There can be many reasons. It can be hard work, it can be luck. Or it can also be privilege – you had a better starting position. But if you focus on giving everyone equal opportunities, your outcomes will not be equal.

The second side, you might say, is the ideal of communism – equality of outcome. So, the ideal world, in that conception, was that whatever you do, it did not matter. As long as you did your best, everyone will get the same outcome. But no society has been able to achieve that. Even in the more strongly socialist countries, outcomes were still different. It is just that those differences were less.

But one big problem with that conception of equality was that the human desire to do your best to achieve was significantly dampened. And George Orwell and many other commentators observed that the only way you could have complete equality of outcome is in a totalitarian state and that was undesirable because, ultimately, the state has to take control of everything, tell people what to do and everyone one outcome.

So, where we are after the Cold War is that everyone more or less said, okay, equality of opportunity is the way to go. But, of course, 20 years down, we realised that equality of opportunity also has problems. One of the biggest problems is the entrenchment of privilege. This is why I think governments still have a role to play to ensure that the playing field remains fair and that everyone will still have a chance to do well, even if we focus on equality of opportunity.

This actually brings me to my point on fairness, which is the third pillar in what I think is important.

Fairness is something which Singapore has worked very hard to achieve. One policy that I commend and which I think we should be very slow to release on is actually equality for the different races and religions. This is something that we enshrine in our Constitution and with express policies to promote. Some of these include racial quotas in HDB blocks as well as the GRC system that ensures minority representation in Parliament.

Earlier in the debate, Ms Sylvia Lim mentioned we should relook at these. I am happy. It is okay to relook at these policies. But I would firmly say that I think these policies are important.

Let me share a conversation I had with a politician from a European country. This was about six or seven years ago at a time when ISIS was brewing as a problem for the world. At that time, Singapore was also concerned about this. But my European counterpart was asking me, "How do you deal with this issue of returning fighters? You have a Muslim population that is about the same size as ours but you do not seem to have many people going to the Middle East to fight, whereas we have..." at that time, he said, "...more than a hundred people who were going and there is not much we could do about them because people are free to travel". At that time, he was actually asking us about our Internal Security Act and he thought that that was the main reason we did not have so many people going there to fight.

We had a very interesting conversation because I asked him a little bit more about the Middle East. He said that the Muslim community was about the same size in our two countries. So, I asked him, "You said many of them were going to fight. But how well integrated is your Muslim community with the rest?" He said, "They are not discriminated. They can do whatever they want. But they all like to live together." Then I also asked after that, "Do you have any of them in parliament?" and he mentioned "No, they are not in parliament. There is nothing stopping them. But, yes, they do not run, so they are not in parliament."

So, they have a very laissez faire approach to it. But the outcome of that laissez faire approach was that it looked like you had a community that was not well integrated, not well represented and, therefore, felt like an outsider, whereas one of the things about our community is that all the different communities are very well integrated. And, certainly, when it comes to radicalism and so on, usually, most of our leads come from the community itself, the rehabilitation takes place through the community and everyone sees themselves as part of the same project.

So, this is a very important part of equality and fairness. But this is not natural. This requires at least gentle legislation to put people together and then people can form bonds. So, yes, we can explore this, but it is something that we should be slow to let go.

But there are three things that I do think we can change and these are suggestions along the way. So, when I talk about fairness, what fairness really means is that wherever you are, you should have a fair shot. John Rawls, in his Theory of Justice, said that for any society, the ideal benchmark of fairness is you decide and structure the society without knowing where you will be, so that, wherever you are, you will feel this is a fair society. That is a very useful test. I think, in Singapore, it should be wherever you are, rich, poor, minority, of whatever ethnic group, you should feel you have a fair shot at life.

There are three areas we could look at to improve. One area is pre-schools. I had mentioned very early on, even before I became a father, that I actually thought it was important to socialise pre-school course as well. In our early years of Independence, the Pioneer Generation realised that education was an important leveller. So, Primary education was made free and compulsory. Everyone had to go in for Primary school. This helped one generation. At that time, in Primary school, that was where you learn to read and write. But now, what has happened is that more and more people are starting out at pre-school. And pre-school is not compulsory. It has been made significantly more affordable but it is still more expensive than Primary school. It is not effectively free. And those who can afford it or are deemed to be able to afford it, will have to pay.

The result of this is that pre-school enrolment, while getting better, is still not universal. Standards are variable and parents sometimes have a perception that some pre-schools are significantly better than others and, therefore, there are different starting points.

I acknowledge that the socialising of pre-school to try and make it equally accessible, free and, potentially, even compulsory, will be significantly more than Primary school. So, this is a big prize to get the item and this is something that we should focus on if the Budget allows it. These are things we can do, now that we are a richer country. But, again, it has to be balanced against other priorities. So, this is the pre-school level, the very early starting point.

The second area where we could put a bit more focus on is, once you move to the Secondary level, people diverge between vocational paths and more academic paths. I agree with the focus of the Ministry that different pathways to success should be there and all pathways should lead to success.

But one area where there is significant discrepancy is the salaries that come out from the vocational path and the academic path. Germany is a country in Europe which has the fewest number of graduates per capita but it also has one of the highest GDP per capita. That is because vocational jobs in Germany pay very well. So, I think it is important for us to look into why there is discrepancy between vocational pay as compared to the pay of graduates. This is not something that is natural. If a skilled vocational person is able to add value, they should be able to command a higher salary than graduates.

In most developed countries, vocational pay is higher. The implication for this, of course, is that when you pay for service, you have to pay more as well. But I think if you are talking about progressing fairly, this will be one area that probably requires more careful study.

The third area is what I would call, a workplace discrimination. And here we have had very longstanding debates taking place about whether or not Singaporeans are being discriminated in their workplace. And I think MOM has a very clever lever at the moment. The current lever is that if an employer is deemed to be discriminating against Singaporeans, their access to foreign labour is cut or reduced.

This, of course, is perfectly logical; it is a very effective tool. But the group of people who are left dissatisfied with this process are the people who feel they are victims of the discrimination, because they themselves have no recourse. MOM may take action against the company, if it deems the company is not acting fairly, but the individual who feels he may have lost his job does not feel vindicated. It is here that I think there isroom for legislation on workplace discrimination.

I would also add that workplace discrimination legislation has had a mixed history in different countries. In some places because of anti-discrimination legislation, people actually get more afraid to hire from that discriminated community. Any anti-discrimination legislation has to be careful, but I think if the focus of discrimination is on Singaporeans and foreigners, I think it will be a line that we will be able to maintain.

What this basically means is that, on the one hand, MOM as the regulator will manage the access to work passes, rights to employ more foreigners and so on, if they are deemed not to be fair to Singaporeans; but at the same time, if legislation is there to give the individual aggrieved recourse, I think that would also make Singaporeans feel they have had a fairer hearing. They will know that my specific case was considered, my grievance was considered, and yes, there was an outcome. I think this is an important process that will add to the feeling of fairness.

Mr Speaker, as a country, we have come a very long way and the three principles that have been important for this are openness, equality and fairness. I have laid out three suggestions that I think would help in the fairness aspect which is ultimately important for us to get support for the Government.

2.03 pm

Mr Sitoh Yih Pin (Potong Pasir): Mr Speaker, Sir, many of us are familiar with Maslow's hierarchy of needs, which is often depicted as a triangle. At the base of this triangle are physiological needs. The need for safety is at the next level. Together, these two lowest levels make up what we call basic needs. The next level is relationship and intimacy needs which we derive a lot from interaction with friends and family. This is then followed by esteem needs which we derive often from our work and education. This is a psychological need. At the apex of this triangle, is our self-actualisation need – that feeling of achieving our potential through accomplishing something creative or extraordinary.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is not really just a tool to explain our needs, but really to explain what motivates us. Sir, culture and sports often straddle the two highest levels of needs: esteem and self-actualisation.

As the world is battered by the COVID-19 pandemic, one may be tempted to say we should put culture and sports on the backburner and we focus all our energies on our lower level needs, such as physical safety, economic survival and so on. I think many of us have also realised that our relationships with family and friends are very precious during these last few months, especially during the circuit breaker period. Indeed, many of us are more attuned to our basic and psychological needs than ever before and realise that in the hustle and bustle of the pre-COVID world, we may have taken them somewhat for granted.

But I would like to say that even when the future looks bleak and the world looks more dangerous than ever, we should not neglect higher needs for self-actualisation and esteem. Jobs do not just put food on the table, jobs also give us esteem and a chance to self-actualise. That is why it is so important to keep people engaged through work. That is why there is a saying in occupational medicine – the most dangerous employment is unemployment.

But, Sir, beyond jobs and the economy, which are of paramount importance now, there are also other areas that deserve our attention and resources. It is part of our nation-building process that goes on every day, with or without COVID-19. One may even argue, nation-building is more urgent and important when the nation is faced with great adversity. But these nation-building areas must also include our culture and our sports.

Sir, I am reminded of this when I watched a local documentary movie, "The Songs We Sang", 我们唱着的歌, recently on Netflix. I had watched this movie made by local director Ms Eva Tang when it was first screened more than five years ago in our cinemas and I watched it again when it was made available on Netflix.

It chronicles the birth and development of a Singapore genre of Mandarin music called Xinyao that began in the late 1970s and flourished in the 1980s. It was written and performed by Chinese educated students of a transitional generation that faced many difficult challenges. I belong to that generation, although I am not Chinese-educated and I cannot write music or sing. I went to Hwa Chong Junior College between 1980 and 1981 when the Xinyao movement was just starting and gushing with creative energy. In 1981, when Liang Wern Fook, the now famous singer-songwriter and also Xinyao pioneer, was elected President of the Students' Council in Hwa Chong, Xinyao gained even greater prominence.

Sir, these Chinese educated students were taught in Chinese up to Secondary school before they went to junior college where they were uniformly instructed in English together with the English-educated students. Subjects such as math, physics and geography, which they had learnt in Chinese previously, had to be relearnt in English. On top of that, news of the merger of University of Singapore and Nanyang University to form National University of Singapore in 1980 was already circulating strongly in the Junior College community then.

To these Chinese-educated schoolmates in our midst, it was a further blow to some of them as it meant there was effectively no more place for them to pursue their dreams of a Chinese-stream university education. It was also widely reported in the mass media that good job opportunities were far and few between for Chinese-educated students. It was truly a sink or swim, do or die for them in the English-stream Junior Colleges.

Many of them did not despair, but some did. I could see it in their eyes then. Many of them were active in Chinese literary clubs and Xinyao groups that blossomed in many Junior Colleges, even as they struggled on a daily basis in a titanic struggle to master English and wondered what an English-based economy had in store for them. They seemed to feel like strangers in their own land, somewhat marginalised and dislocated even. I felt sorry for them.

As these youths took refuge in their music and writings, many good things happened. Great songs were written, and thousands of students and young adults derived great pride and joy from this uniquely Singapore genre of Chinese music. These Xinyao artistes later mentored younger singers and musicians such as JJ Lin, Kit Chan and Stephanie Sun. Famous Xinyao songs now etched into the consciousness of the Chinese-speaking community include "Voices from the Heart", 小人物的心声, which has been staged in two National Day Parades, and "The Small Stream that Flows Forever", 细水长流, which our Prime Minister sang in the 2014 National Day Rally.

The energy, optimism and purity of spirit of the Xinyao movement and its student performers is exactly what we need now. This is derived from cultural activities such as music and literature. The Xinyao music gave these young people strength to face another day and helped them to forget, for a while, the harsh realities that buffeted them daily. The relationships and camaraderie that were forged during those times by not just the performers but by all who listened to Xinyao in the early 1980s, also undoubtedly helped many Chinese-educated persons to weather the existential questions that they came face to face with.

Sir, I would now like to move on to sports. Sports is like culture in many ways. There is more to sports than just getting fit and deriving the physical health benefits from sports. Sports add to the collective and national consciousness of a country. It can even heal scars and unite a country. The South Africa rugby team helped Nelson Mandela to unite South Africa during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. South Africa was a country that was just emerging from apartheid then. This story was made into the movie "Invictus" in 2009. Invictus means "unconquered" in Latin which sort of sums up the spirit that is needed in adversity and crises. "Invictus" was a poem written by 18th century poet, William Ernest Henley, that Nelson Mandela often recited to inspire himself while he was imprisoned on Robben Island for 18 years.

I gave these two examples of Xinyao and The 1995 South African World Cup Rugby team because they embody the very elements that our society in which MCCY focuses on – the youth, culture and sports.

More than ever now, we need to believe in ourselves. To paraphrase the last two lines of the poem, "Invictus" –

"We are the masters of our fate,

We are the captains of our soul."

Mr Speaker, I will end by saying that it is very tempting to relegate culture and sports to insignificance in times of a public health and economic crisis. But that would clearly be wrong, it would be a mistake. It is time now to invest more, even double down, and harness the good and positive energy that our youth, as well as our cultural and sporting activities can provide – to help us nurture a stronger national identity, forge an unconquerable soul and be a source of hope and unity for Singaporeans even as our nation charts a new course in a COVID-stricken world and prepares itself for a post-COVID-19 one. Mr Speaker Sir, I support the Motion. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Jamus Lim.

2.15 pm

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim (Sengkang): Thank you, Mr Speaker. Through my admittedly brief time interacting with Sengkang residents, an underlying theme that unites them is the aspirations they have for Singapore in the 21st Century. Therefore, I wish to speak today about compassionate policy-making.

What is compassionate policy-making? The word "compassion" refers to a sympathetic concern for others by linking compassion to policy. I am suggesting that the design of our national policies need to be more cognisant of how these policies play out – not just on the aggregate but also how they impact different groups, especially those at the margins of society.

Students of policy learn very early on that the policy-making process comprises two key pillars. The first – efficiency – describes how well policy deploys the resources available at our disposal. The second – equity – speaks to the sense of fairness inherent in resulting policy. Ultimately, policy entails a trade-off between the two.

Traditionally, our policy-makers have prided themselves on being stewards of rational, efficient policy-making. Accordingly, Singaporeans have been called to acquiesce to policies of tough love, sacrificing individual justice on the altar of national progress. To be clear, this has worked well for us over three generations and has brought us from Third World to First.

And so, we as a nation have shied away from the sort of policies that will lend support to certain segments of society if it also meant that we had to compromise our deeply rooted sense of personal responsibility for the economic and social circumstances that we happen to find ourselves in.

This, indeed, has been the cornerstone of our national belief in meritocracy and self-sufficiency. But the truth is, reality is often far more complex than we are willing to allow or admit. Workers do not simply collapse into a state of dependency when offered supportive handouts by Government because most people find a sense of purpose and meaning in work, even when they draw humble salaries.

Children born into poor, broken families leave school early, not merely because they are lazy or lack talent but because when they fall behind, they lack resources to help them catch up and some may be discouraged and question their own abilities. People fall into debt, not just because they have irredeemable penchant to gamble their lives away but because those little bets they place offer them the best hope for escaping what they perceive to be dreary, hopeless situations.

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that we stop rewarding hard work or success or that we squander the fruits of past generations by irresponsible expenditures to prop up undeserving individuals and families in the name of progressive policy. What I am suggesting, Mr Speaker, is that the sort of decisions we make as a society and as a country should no longer privilege efficiency at the sheer expense of equity. Because we are no longer a Third World nation, we cannot continue to operate as if we are blind to the consequences that tough nose policies carry for our people.

This is especially so at the time when we need to help everyone pull in the same direction for our collective future.

In her speech Mdm President spoke about the importance of building a fair and just society, about sharing the benefits of progress with all citizens. The hard truth is though, in as much as we have, indeed, progressed over the past few decades, the gains from this progress have not been equally shared across society.

While we have slowly chipped away at extreme inequality that characterise earnings just prior to the global crisis of 2007, the distribution of our national income, even after accounting for taxes and transfers, remains embarrassing when compared to our high-income peers. The number of poor in our midst informally defined because we have steadfastly refused to define an official poverty line. It is flattered by our very conservative definition of basic needs, and even so it is estimated at as much as as a quarter of the population.

It is, therefore, undeniable that our existing approach to policy-making can benefit from a greater injection of compassion and thoughtfulness. Yet the fear that many policy-makers often hold when they talk about policy reform is that we must not break the system that has worked so well for us. Sure, we recognise a need for change, but let us do it slowly in careful steps.

So, the policies we pursue turn out to be tentative, incremental, "kiasu".

The problem with this approach, Mr Speaker, is that such marginal changes do little to right the boat. As a nation, we have, fortunately, yet to experience the sort of populist pressures for change that have plagued so many other developed nations.

But the people are losing patience. I speak with residents, many who are modest and unassuming who, nevertheless, feel crushed by the dual weight of high costs and low wages, with seemingly little compassion for their plight.

Remarkably, our policy balance has now become so skewed that we could potentially garner significant gains in terms of improving equity and by extension national welfare, with minimal losses in terms of foregone efficiency. All we need is the courage of our convictions. We have a form of Minimum Wage policy via the Progressive Wage Model. Yet until, recently, we had deemed it unwise to make it universal and still dress the policy with so many additional conditions that the incentives for upskilling turn into loopholes the employers use to retain workers on the lowest rung of wages.

We warn against unaffordable costs and lost jobs despite evidence that the majority of Singaporeans would be willing to pay more for essential services and that the employment impact of a Minimum Wage is likely to be very limited.

We propose a form of negative income tax via Workfare, but the nature of Earned Income Tax Credit programmes such as this, is that it compels work. This is wonderful if your view of human nature is that people would otherwise while away their time but unconscionable when it requires our elderly to continue working into their sunset years, or if we wish to provide genuine support for single working mothers.

We talk about the importance of improving the quality of life after retirement, yet we remain overwhelmingly rigid and insist on ensuring the future adequacy of their CPF savings, even when they face extenuating financial circumstances that are causing severe distress today. We excessively constrain the usage of MediSave, leaving seniors with chronic conditions, the tab of paying for their expenses that exceed the annual withdrawal caps.

We remain stubbornly afraid of policies that involve redistribution even when our workers secure some of the lowest share of income in the developed world. We often default to the mindset that equates redistribution with sloth while glossing over the enormous challenge of making a living while being pinched from below by low-cost foreign workers and out-competed from above by high skilled foreign talent. This leaves are blue-collar workers feeling left behind and our PMETs increasingly insecure.

What we need are more policies like ComCare and the Kindergarten Fee Assistance Scheme, both of which have made substantive steps towards bolstering our sense of opportunity and care for others in our society. These policies, and others like these, demonstrate that we are in fact capable of injecting compassion into our policy choices. My contention then is that we are certainly able to do more, much more.

Mr Speaker, may I humbly suggest that the root of these challenges is insufficient compassion in our policy-making process.

So, what again is "compassionate policy-making"? When we pursue policy-making under the umbrella of compassion, we seek to relieve the suffering of others, which is the key component of the definition of compassion. When we prioritise compasssion, we become more willing to err on the side of equity, perhaps at some expense to efficiency. This means a willingness to accept the it may be better to allow for a policy where one or two out of every hundred individuals may end up exploiting or abusing the policy, but at the same time that others clearly benefit from being supported by the expanded social safety net.

But compassionate policy can also be robust policy. Engineers keenly understand that when design becomes too complicated, too involved, too tailored to extract every last ounce of efficiency, it can also be fragile, embedding multiple points of failure. Robust policy is better suited to deal with the sort of high uncertainty post pandemic environment that we find ourselves in. Moreover, when policy is gamed into no longer yielding first-best outcomes, the second best policy is often drastically different in form from the original.

Some may argue that as we face down the worst crisis of our generation, the time is not right for us to pursue such "soft" policies. What we need is a tough nosed policies that require all of us to make sacrifices for the greater good. I would argue to the contrary. When we call on Singaporeans to make such sacrifices – and I believe we are more than willing to come together to do so – we also need to reassure Singaporeans that the fruits of such sacrifice will not only accrue to certain winners after the storm has passed. Not only that, I also believe that improving the social protections we offer to people can be an important path to blunting the sorts of populist, nationalist pressure that has reared its head in so many countries.

I do not believe that Singaporeans are inherently anti-foreigner. After all, we are a nation of immigrants and we have been an open trading society for centuries of our history. But what has inspired recent resistance to foreigners is concern about unmitigated population expansion, a sense that they are not getting a fair shake, of feeling discriminated in their own country. It is a sense that the Government does not appear to have their backs and that their foothold on prosperity is so precarious that once they fall, there is no way back.

Of course, the best time for enacting policies that imply some degree of redistribution and introduction of frictions to unfettered market forces is not when we are in the throes of an unprecedented crisis. But I also believe we should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time – although the latter is admittedly difficult in Singapore.

Let us commit to the principles of compassionate policy-making now and set out plans in the moment. When the crisis has blown over, we will be prepared to implement the policies we commit to today. Besides, policies that emphasise compassion also matter in the immediate term even as we confront the worst economic crisis of our generation. Singaporeans are faced not only with the need to tighten their belts to weather the storm, they are also confronted with the uncomfortable conundrum of facing this unprecedented event without the reassurance of tried and tested social safety nets that are rather commonplace in other advanced economies.

It is imperative, therefore, the our focus is on protecting workers though not necessarily jobs; opportunities and not only businesses; ideas and not ideologies. When we do so, we are exercising the sort of compassionate policy-making that is necessary to help tide us over this crisis and to emerge stronger.

So, what is compassionate policy-making? Compassion is what translates empathy into action. Compassionate policy-making then requires a keen understanding of the plight of others and a recognition that our policies have deep implications for the lived reality of ordinary Singaporeans.

It is understanding that when we fail to adequately allocate schooling spots to nearby schools, we compel hard-working parents to endure additional costs to raising the family – like the Goh family who shared with me about how all their lives, they have always coloured within the lines, live their lives as good citizens and never asked for what they feel is beyond reasonable expectations. Yet they have been informed that their elder daughter is unable to enrol in any Primary school in their neighbourhood and they are now forced to add additional travel to their already taxing daily schedules.

It is understanding that when we insist on the fulfilment of standard feasibility studies before deciding on improvement projects, we impose additional burdens on our elderly – like the case of Mr Tan who has asked for years to no avail that the overhead bridge beside his block install an elevator. Yet, the overwhelmingly young demographic of his neighbourhood means that the two senior blocks have effectively been neglected, resulting in their continued difficulties whenever these elderly residents wish to take a bus.

Ultimately, we should temper majority interest with a concern for the minority as well.

It is understanding that when we asked students to study hard and do well, we have also led them to expect that there are opportunities available for them after they have fulfilled their end of the bargain. So, when we have graduates like Danny or JK, who are unable to secure a decent job after graduation because they feel that they are being displaced by globalisation or foreign talent, we should not be surprised when they become disillusioned and angry. When their educational training has repeatedly assessed them on what to think instead of teaching them how to think. We should be unsurprised, when they feel betrayed by the system that they feel has not adequately prepared them for the jobs of the 21st century.

It is understanding that when foreign workers under our charge gets sick, we owe a moral responsibility to take care of them and nurse them back to health as we have correctly chosen to do. But it is also recognising that the conditions in which they have been enduring are inappropriate for a First World country such as ours. It is about acknowledging that our economic model, which continues to rely on low-wage foreign workers such as these, is a clear blind spot that can stand for more scrutiny.

Let me close with a reiteration of actionable policies that I have suggested in this speech. We can introduce an official poverty line closely linked to ComCare. We can implement a simple across-the-board Minimum Wage, and we can introduce more flexibility to our access to our CPF monies. We can expand coverage of KiFAS. And there are many more and we hope to raise these in this House in the months ahead.

Almost eight centuries ago the Sufi poet and scholar, Jalal ad-Din Rumi, wrote of such empathy in his poem "A Great Wagon". Rumi implored for us to go out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing: where there is a field, I will meet you there.

Politics is the art of compromise. It is inherent on us in this House to find a better balance to the policies we pursue for the future of Singapore.

Mr Speaker, I believe that we can become a better and richer society and country not just in material wealth, but in intellectual, societal and spiritual wealth. We can do so by embracing more compassion in our policy-making. And with that, I support the Motion of Thanks. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: Minister of State Gan Siow Huang.

2.33 pm

The Minister of State for Education and Manpower (Ms Gan Siow Huang): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have a question for Assoc Prof Jamus Lim. I agree that we must exercise and demonstrate compassion in policy-making. And in fact, I think that is what the Government has been trying to do in many of the policies, and as a result, sometimes our policies become very complicated because we understand that there is no one-size-fits-all policy that treats all problems.

I have a specific question and it is about Minimum Wage. I am not sure if I heard correctly. Assoc Prof Jamus Lim seemed to have suggested that Minimum Wage can be implemented with minimal impact on unemployment. I beg to differ. In current times, where businesses are being challenged and we are in a period of recession, there is a very real risk that if we were to introduce a universal Minimum Wage across all sectors, I think many of our lower wage workers may lose their jobs, and from low-wage they become no-wage.

There are unintended consequences of some policies with good intent, but I think we must understand the context and the circumstances that we are in, so that we do not unintentionally cause more distress to our lower wage workers.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: I thank the Minister of State. It actually warms my heart that in this very House, others in the PAP ranks have in fact echoed a lot of these sentiments: Patrick Tay and Henry Kwek spoke more about balance in foreign PMET hiring; Mariam Jafaar about discounting paper qualifications; and Louis Ng, in fact, about compassion. So, in fact, you could even say that they have become PAP-lite. Workers’ Party-lite, excuse me.

The truth is, I would argue that we should be able to think about implementing policies like a Minimum Wage in a time of crisis because this concentrates the mind. If we agree in principle, as I said in my speech, with the idea of a Minimum Wage, which is one step to the left, a half-step perhaps of the Progressive Wage Model; in fact, that Minimum Wage policy, once we agree on that, can be easily rolled out after the storm has passed. So, there is no doubt that at this very moment, such a policy may not be ideal, but let us come together and agree that this is a principle that we want to roll out. So that when we set these plans in place after the storm has passed, we can easily bring them to pass.

Mr Speaker: Senior Minister of State Zaqy Mohamad.

The Senior Minister of State for Manpower (Mr Zaqy Mohamad): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have a clarification to Member Jamus Lim's point about Minimum Wage.

There is a fundamental difference between what the Government has said so far about the Progressive Wage Model or PWM versus the Minimum Wage. This is not a new concept which was thought of just after the General Election.

If you were to talk members of the NTUC, for example, they have talked about the PWM since 2012, and there is in fact a key difference between PWM and Minimum Wage, in that it is differentiated across sectors. These are pains in which the union, the Government and the employers come to a position on, in what is bearable for every sector. So, there is differentiation by sector. And the fact that there is a ladder also tells us that there is recognition that we want to bring workers to different productive levels too, to make sure that workers continue to upgrade and get paid better.

We have seen the impact of the PWM. In the last five years, our low-wage workers have seen wages rise by 30% in real terms. Minister Josephine Teo mentioned that in her speech.

The expansion of PWM is not something new that we just talked about. In this House, in March this year, as part of the Budget, and I too announced that we are looking at expanding PWM. The reason why we have taken a bit of time – and you have seen how PWM has been implemented over the past few years, including the most recent round announced for the lift and escalator sector – is that we have to come to positions that are bearable; that it is not just a blunt tool, a straight line across all sectors, to the point that you will find employment being difficult for some.

Take hawker assistants, for example. Some stalls are family-owned; so some assistants are members of the family helping each other and so, the family businesses are what you have to think about. So, there are different considerations and things that we have to work out across sectors.

But it is not a new position. It is something that we have been working on since 2012 till now. In fact, even before that, the unions have really raised this. It is just that we have implemented them in stages. It is something that we have already announced that we will expand, once times are better.

The second point that the Member raised is that we have to talk about compassion. I think it is easy to talk about compassion when it is just mere talk. If you have got to put money on the table, you have also to consider, as a Government, where that money comes from; and how you manage the Budget, whether you have to raise GST.

I think where the PAP Government has made a difference is that we put the money where our mouth is. If you talk about compassion, we have just put up four Budgets in the space of three months. What does that mean? A hundred billion dollars!

I think many Singaporeans have also felt the impact of the Care and Support Package. The Job Support Scheme, I think, is one of the best forms of unemployment insurance to some extent, where you can see many jobs being saved during this period.

So, to some extent there is a lot of compassion. But I think you have to realise that this is also a whole system put in place.

The last part where the Member talked about 25% of our population are in the low wage group. Can the Member let us know what is his benchmark or basis for saying so? What is the definition of living wage or Minimum Wage that Workers’ Party subscribes to? Let us know what that number is. I would like to ask for clarification from the Member on what that number would be.

As to the part about not recognising what the Government has done, if you are to look at the low-wage workers of today, beyond just wages, how we have helped both the industries as well as the consumers – the people out there – if you discount the fact that the Workfare comes to play where the Government puts in revenues to transfer back to workers of low wages. This translates into up to 30% of extra income for them, so that we – the society – bear the burden, transferring back taxes. You do not push this onto the consumers so that you also manage the level of inflation.

Over time, you have seen wages go up through PWM. We hope as we expand it, we will get more workers on board. What is also important is that you do not just work on the minimum. As you can see for the different sectors, the security sector earns more than the cleaning. So, why work on one level when we can work at different levels, making it relevant to the productivity and the levels of wages that each sector can afford. So, why just keep to a minimum?

And last but not least, if you look at the proof of the pudding. Among our low-wage workers, the bottom 20% of all our workers, about 70% of them own their own homes today. The transfers that the Government gives go beyond just wages, but they encompass the whole system where I think a large part of our low-wage workers are given that shelter, that stability for their children to be able to grow up in stable homes, given the opportunities to rise. And many of us came from those kinds of families too.

To be able to give good shelter, good education systems. All these come to play in how this Government has been compassionate in its policies. Yes, we can do more. I thank the Member for giving us suggestions. And I hope that with our further debates in this House, there is more that can be done.

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Jamus Lim.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: Thank you so much for all those interjections. I thank the Member. Let me just talk about a few of his points because he mentioned quite a few.

One, he talked about how there is a fundamental difference between the PWM and Minimum Wage, in that it is differentiated across sectors. That is in fact true. That is, in part, why I anticipated that point in my speech and mentioned that when you start to over-engineer a system, you run the risk that it can get gamed.

There is a theorem. I do not want to get too technical, but there is a theorem in public policy-making that when you are unable to hit your first best policy, it is very likely that your second best policy is going to be extremely different from the original. So, you want to be careful when you try to over-engineer and try to squeeze out every bit of efficiency when you are working with imperfect knowledge about conditions on the ground.

The other issue with the Minimum Wage is that as long as you have the possibility that another sector has a Minimum Wage that is different from the first, you run the risk that there is going to be substitution between one sector versus another. That is our entire point. You want to shut out this possibility of substituting between workers in one sector and another such that employers end up gaming the system in that fashion. So, that is on that.

With regard to real wages, it is true that median wages have risen in this country and that is in fact a good thing. But unfortunately, national income has risen much faster, and as a result, in spite of this progress — Think of it this way, imagine that there is a pie. And the pie has gotten bigger. So, I am giving you a bigger slice of this pie, but it is still a much, much, smaller slice of the pie than the kind of pie that other workers in other high-income countries are able to enjoy.

The Member also asked me about where the low-wage study came from. So, I will just cite the reference. I am happy to provide the full reference. But basically, it is a study from the National University of Singapore. So, it is not my numbers. I was heartened to see, in fact, that the Times Higher Education Supplement recently ranked NUS as among the top 25 universities globally. So, I would be willing to trust their numbers.

He also talked about how with the PWM and making it universal, it is a step that has come closer to us. I am much more of an ideas person. So, rather than looking at the city-scape, I tend to look at the policy landscape. When I see that the incumbent's position is now closer to us, I say to myself – what a skyline – and I thank the voters for helping us to get a little closer.

A final point – where does the money come from? Well, it is important to know and this speaks a little bit to the debate yesterday in this House as well. We should not think about government budgets in the same fashion that we think about household budgets. Households have finite horizons. People can bequest things onto the next generation but by and large, households eventually perish. Governments have an infinite horizon. Because of that, we can think in a much more longer term.

You see this very simply. There is the possibility that the Government can over-save and in a time where interest rates are at record lows. Ask yourself, is it time for you, even as an individual, to perhaps re-mortgage your home? If you think that re-mortgaging with low interest rates is a good idea, that is about expanding leverage, that is about borrowing.

So, if I may argue that what we want is to make the best use of financial resources and not cling to some rigid ideology that we should never touch. The way we should think about expenses such as our reserves, is not that we are people who will spend the reserves. We are stewards and as stewards, we are responsible not just for ensuring that the pot will grow over time, but as stewards, we are also responsible for taking the right financial decisions which in certain times may involve spending for higher investment things. What are some of these higher investment things? Think about education. These are higher return things from which we can extract higher returns, so that in the future, we will be able to get higher tax revenue that will more than pay for the expenses that we incur today.

Mr Speaker: Mr Vikram Nair.

Mr Vikram Nair: I have two clarifications for the Member. First, what is the level of Minimum Wage that the Member proposes is appropriate for Singapore? Second, is the Member aware of any countries with a Minimum Wage that has a lower unemployment rate than Singapore? Because I think that would be a case study for us.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: Thank you. Let me clarify two things. The first is what is the appropriate level of the Minimum Wage. I should be clear. I do not know and that is exactly why what we need is a national commission to understand this and to study this. That would be what I would argue that we should have, if I were to ask for a practical policy proposal.

We should have an independent panel. In fact, that panel should continue to exist year after year after that Minimum Wage policy is rolled out because that would allow us to continually evaluate whether the level of the Minimum Wage is appropriate. It should be independent. It should be staffed by university professors as well as representatives from both the unions and firms. It should be our famous tripartite arrangements. It should be filled with these people to better understand what is a good level and to adjust. We are a pragmatic country, a pragmatic policy-making nation, and so we can adjust accordingly.

As for countries with different levels of unemployment, I think it is imperative for me to clarify that we do not want to be comparing raw unemployment rates across countries willy-nilly. But what I will say is this – the basis for me to argue that Minimum Wage has a very limited impact on unemployment is premised on reams and reams of studies. It is not my own. Studies within the economics profession have repeatedly shown that in almost every instance, the unemployment impact is either very minimal or statistically insignificant such that it cannot be detected in a regular statistical test.

So, I should be clear that when I talk about the absence of an unemployment effect, I am not using theory to make this argument. It is based on empirical evidence which has been backed by studies from countries all over the world, not just in high-income countries.

Mr Speaker: Ms Tin Pei Ling.

Ms Tin Pei Ling (MacPherson): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the hon Member Assoc Prof Jamus Lim. I have a few questions. First of all, it is more to clarify my understanding. May I first confirm if it would be accurate for me to interpret that based on Assoc Prof Lim's response to Minister of State Gan Siow Huang, is that he does recognise that implementing Minimum Wage in a climate like this, will have unintended adverse consequences on our economy and as well as our employment?

Secondly, can I also confirm that by his response, he meant that the Minimum Wage can be implemented after the crisis and then should a crisis hit again, it should be withdrawn and then implemented again when it is in a good time – and so on and so forth. By that, how might it be more efficient?

The third question is that I understand based on the hon Member's response to hon Member Mr Vikram, is that there is no specific number that he has in mind in terms of Minimum Wage. Perhaps to give us a better idea is, for your Town Council, what is the Minimum Wage given to your cleaners? I think that would give us some form of reference.

The last question is I can feel his passion about youths and Singaporeans. May I ask if he has a specific proposal on how to improve youth employment in Singapore?

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Jamus Lim.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: I thank Ms Tin for those questions. Let me just take them each at a time.

The first is whether I agree with Member Gan that rolling out Minimum Wage would have adverse consequences. No, I did not say that. It was a necessary but not sufficient condition. I did say that this is not an ideal time but I do not know if we were to roll out the Minimum Wage, whether this would result in actual adverse consequences. So, it is a necessary but not sufficient condition.

Personally, I do not necessarily think that rolling out the Minimum Wage is a good time, but I would not go the second step of saying that it would imply adverse consequences. That is the first point.

The second point is whether we want to roll in and out of the Minimum Wage. In fact, I would argue the complete opposite. The whole point of something like a Minimum Wage is to provide the kind of social safety net. If you were to roll out of the Minimum Wage at a time when you are in a crisis, that would pull the rug out from under those workers who rely on the Minimum Wage in a time of crisis. So, that is an absolutely wrong-headed way to go about implementing this policy.

In terms of the Town Council, well, as you know, we are in the process of taking over the Town Council so we have not made decisions on the minimum wage for the Town Council. But let me take the more general spirit of the question. Can we just roll out a Minimum Wage in a given Town Council? No. And again, this comes from the fact that you have general equilibrium effects. If we were to roll out the minimum wage in only one sector of the country, what would happen is substitution and what would happen is you will have the low-wage jobs migrate out of a given country. So you want to be very careful. What you want is an across-the-board, universal Minimum Wage to apply to the entire country and that is precisely why I think that is the way forward. And at least in so far as the PWM is concerned, I would agree with the notion of universality.

Finally, about youth unemployment. This is tricky in part because youth unemployment tends to be very cyclical. So, when you have unemployment especially by the youth in a crisis period, what happens is that that is often a reflection of a decision to delay entry into the labour force and to end up taking more education. So, you would see an increase in unemployment in a time such as this, when we are in crisis, but it is actually not a bad thing. You want these people to actually go in and build up their human capital —

The Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and Health (Dr Janil Puthucheary): Mr Speaker, a point of order, please?

Mr Speaker: Yes, Dr Janil.

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Mr Speaker, Assoc Prof Jamus Lim was asked a question. While I appreciate his erudition in economics – and I am learning quite a lot from him – he has not answered Ms Tin's question.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: If I may clarify, which question did I not answer?

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Ms Tin asked if you had a proposal for youth employment, not the principles under which youth employment change or does not change.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: Fair enough. Yes, but why that context is important is because we do not want to roll out specific proposals to address youth unemployment in a time when we are in a recession because we are not sure if the unemployment is justified or not. So, that is the reason for me stating that context. So, I do not have a specific policy in mind because I have not thought about it. This is a very slow 8086 processor, that kind of dates me —

Mr Speaker: Okay, thank you. Mr Sitoh Yih Pin.

Mr Sitoh Yih Pin: Thank you, Mr Speaker, Sir. As an accountant, I am rather perturbed by something Assoc Prof Jamus Lim said just now. If I heard you correctly, you said that given low interest rate, it is now time to re-mortgage your properties.

As an accountant with over three decades of experience, I can tell you that is how people start getting into trouble. I hope you are not teaching that in your classes. But to my knowledge, Singapore is one of the very few countries in the world, maybe the only one that has not got to borrow in such pandemic times. Having a balance sheet is good, having savings is not a sin, having savings like the way we have it, is very good. So, may you clarify on what you have just said? I hope I heard you wrongly.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: No, in fact, you did not hear me wrongly. That is exactly why I mentioned the distinction between a government budget identity and that of a regular household. Governments have an infinite horizon and so it is entirely possible for governments to over-save. I used the mortgage situation just to illustrate the point that there are instances where if you borrow against low interest rates and you invest in something that would give you higher returns, that is not just financially prudent, it is in fact going to be better for your balance sheet in the long run.

Mr Speaker: Mr Sitoh Yih Pin.

Mr Sitoh Yih Pin: Sir, if I may say, that is living in a stage of euphoria. You are always assuming that tomorrow will be better than today. I do not want to go into an argument about economics here. You said because of the low interest rate, I mortgage and then I reinvest to get a better return. You are assuming there is a better return which may never come.

Mr Speaker: Mr Leon Perera. Yes, Assoc Prof Jamus Lim.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: One clarification. No, I am not assuming a better return. I am saying if there are projects that give you better returns today, you should engage in those. Substitute out from the lower returns that are already locked in by your ability to borrow at low interest rates. So, it is not assuming a future euphoria. It is recognising that there are higher return projects today, unless you are saying that the youth of today in Singapore are not worth investing in.

Mr Speaker: I do not think that was the point that was made. Mr Leon Perera.

Mr Leon Perera (Aljunied): Thank you, Mr Speaker, Sir. I would like to seek some clarifications from Minister of State Zaqy, Minister of State Gan and Mr Vikram Nair about what they have said.

So, I will start with Minister of State Zaqy. I would like to put it to the hon Minister of State that based on Parliamentary Questions that we have asked in the last term, if you take a wage level of say $1,300 per month, the number of people who are earning below that wage right now is approximately 100,000. It could be a bit more, it could be a bit less, but that is my inference from answers to Parliamentary Questions that we got earlier.

Let us assume that it is 100,000 earning less than $1,300 per month. In response to a separate Parliamentary Question that we asked – what is the average household expenditure on basic needs – we asked this of the Government, I believe, in 2019 and the answer came back – $1,300 per month. When a similar question was asked by my colleague Mr Gerald Giam, the answer was $1,250 per month. If I recall correctly, that was a number of years back. So, $1,300 per month is the average household expenditure on basic needs. That excludes transport.

There is no equivalence between the two. Of course, there could be dual-income, triple-income households. But for those earning $1,300 per month, I assume that not everyone will be covered by the Progressive Wage Model. I think that is a reasonable and fair assumption.

The Minister of State and others have said that the Progressive Wage Models can be rolled out to more sectors but my question to Minister of State Zaqy would really be – what would you say to individuals earning less than $1,300 per month who are supporting a household which is below the average household expenditure on basic needs that the Government itself has specified. Does the Minister of State believe that there is no room for policy improvement for this group? Should this group wait until the Progressive Wage Model comes to them? How long will that take? How many years will that take? Is there no room for improvement and what would the Minister of State say to those individuals? That is my first point of clarification.

My second point of clarification is to Minister of State Gan. I would like to invite the Minister of State to agree with, and I think Assoc Prof Jamus Lim did make some of these points earlier that there is a considerable body of academic research that suggests that if a Minimum Wage is set at a level that is not too high – and there are various definitions that had been postulated by academics, I know there is a figure of 40% of the median and so on – if the Minimum Wage is not set too high, will have a minimal or negligible impact on jobs. There is actually quite considerable academic evidence for this proposition. And I would like to ask the Minister of State Gan would she consider that actually the danger to jobs is not setting a Minimum Wage, but setting a Minimum Wage too high, which is definitely not what we are advocating.

My third clarification is to Mr Vikram Nair who asked whether there is another country that has a Minimum Wage and has a lower unemployment than we have in Singapore. I would like to ask Mr Nair would he acknowledge that other countries who have higher unemployment than Singapore, it may not be causally because they have a Minimum Wage; and if we have low unemployment than those countries, it may not causally be that it is because we do not have a Minimum Wage?

Mr Speaker: Senior Minister Tharman.

The Senior Minister, Coordinating Minister for Social Policies and Minister-in-charge of The Monetary Authority of Singapore (Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam): I was not intending to speak and I just thought I would make a very brief intervention.

First, I would like to say, on behalf of the Government, that we do believe that it is important to raise the wages of our lowest paid workers. We really believe this.

We have achieved significant progress in the last 10 years and in the last five years. And we think we should go further.

I would not – and I say this to everyone from all sides – I would not exaggerate the differences between the PWM and the Minimum Wage Model. The PWM is a Minimum Wage-plus and it is a sectoral approach. The sectoral approach actually has a lot to commend it because it allows you to set the minimum rung at a level that is not so low and not so high. Because if you have a single level, you will have to decide where to pitch it. How to do it without having gaming is an issue that policy-makers grapple with. Not such a complicated issue in practice, to be frank. And you have to watch what happens at the edges, but it is a very sensible approach.

I would like to suggest that none of us has a monopoly over compassion. And I say this not to discredit anyone. In particular, I really respect where Member Jamus Lim is coming from – intellectually, emotionally and so on. But no one should assume that you have a monopoly over compassion.

I have listened to speeches over the last few days amongst everyone. I must say some of my PAP colleagues really made an impression on me, not just for the very forceful proposals they were making – often going beyond what the Government is doing – but the force of their convictions and the emotional force of their convictions. So, please do not assume, none of us should assume – I am not directing this at anyone in particular – none of us should assume that we have a monopoly over compassion.

Also, and here is a bit of advice: try to avoid strawman arguments. Like saying that the Government is only interested in efficiency and not equity. That is frankly laughable. By the way, I say "strawman" – should I say "strawperson"? But women are not made of straw, I think, so let us stick to "strawman".

But try to avoid that manner of argument, or painting everything in binary terms. It is usually not necessary to reply but I say this as a piece of general advice.

Raising the standard of living of the poor is a complicated matter. And I say this, by the way, as an economist, as someone who studies overseas experience very carefully, and who together with my colleagues, is a practitioner. How do we do it without losing that wage earners' ability to have the pride of having a job and earning a wage? We do it through the Progressive Wage Model, which has to be expanded. We do it through Workfare. We do it through a range of other subsidies – whether it is KiFAS, the housing subsidies and many other ways.

And it is not a job that is done for good; we have to do more – many of the speeches that we have heard in the last few days about how we can do more in a way that really helps those we are trying to help. But we are frankly not very far away from each other in that objective. In fact, we seem to be quite convinced, there is a consensus, let me put it that way, that that should be our objective. But just try to avoid strawman arguments and pretending that you have a monopoly on compassion.

By the way, it is a very small point – I have never heard economists cite a university as a source of research, be it a well-regarded or not very well-regarded university. Individuals do research and it may be very credible research. But universities do not publish research. [Applause.]

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: May I?

Mr Speaker: Assoc Prof Jamus Lim.

Assoc Prof Jamus Jerome Lim: Yes, so very quickly. I regret if it came across that I was suggesting that only I or the party or any individual has a monopoly over compassion. In fact, that was explicitly why I did cite cases where I felt that existing policy demonstrated oodles of compassion. I even cited other Members not from our party that have also talked about compassion. So, I actually believe, like Minister Tharman does, that there is in fact quite a bit of daylight, there is not as much of a gap between the thinking of the two.

That said, I do not think that I was setting out a strawman argument in talking about an efficiency/equity trade-off, and the reason for this is because this is precisely a continuum. So, I am not suggesting that every policy that is currently in place is only geared toward efficiency. Likewise, I am not suggesting that every policy that I have laid out in my speech and elsewhere, is only geared toward equity. Rather, it is about a continuum. And I am arguing that we can move more in the direction of favouring equity over efficiency. And that was the entire point of the argument, not to create an artificial strawman.

Mr Speaker: Let us move on. Minister of State Tan Kiat How.

3.08 pm

The Minister of State, Prime Minister's Office and for National Development (Mr Tan Kiat How): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise in support of the Motion. Many Members in this House have spoken about the importance of seizing opportunities in the digital age and the tremendous positive benefits that it brings.

Even as we ride the wave of digital revolution, we need to bear in mind that technology is a double-edged sword. There can also be significant negative consequences.

I will speak today on how we can minimise the downside while we seek and strive to maximise the upside – how we can safely navigate cyberspace when there is danger lurking at every corner; how we can come together to build a safer, kinder, more caring online community for all.

Let me first share a few stories. Names have been changed to protect their identity.

Mdm Tan, who is in her 70s, recounted to a Digital Ambassador in my constituency that she had received a seemingly legitimate SMS asking for her bank details urgently, threatening to freeze her bank account otherwise. Fearful of the consequences, she hurriedly replied. Just like that, she was scammed of more than $10,000, a substantial part of her life savings.

Seniors are not the only victims. Fifteen-year old Joyce had what she thought was an innocent online friendship with a supposedly 18-year-old boy. This turned into one of manipulation, where he threatened to harm himself unless Joyce fulfilled his requests – even for nude photos. Though the relationship has since ended, the episode left her struggling to trust the people around her.

Mr Speaker, the impact on the physical, mental and financial well-being of victims and their loved ones are real and lasting.

Mr Ong, another East Coast resident, shared with me a harrowing experience. Inappropriate photos of his daughter were downloaded from her phone without her consent and circulated online. Though police reports were made, the social media platform was slow to respond, and the photos stayed online. His daughter was traumatised and even contemplated suicide. The family felt extremely helpless, not knowing what to do and who to turn to.

These stories are not isolated cases. A 2018 survey commissioned by Mediacorp’s Talking Point showed that three out of four youths between the ages of 13 and 19 have been bullied online. Very few told their parents. Based on a study by Microsoft in 2019, two in three Singapore youths between the ages of 13 and 17 have encountered at least one form of online risk, including exposure to unwanted sexual content. Online scams doubled in the first half of 2020, compared to the same period last year. There were almost 8,000 scams, with a staggering $103 million cheated. Seniors are vulnerable, with those aged 55 and above, making up of almost half of all victims of inheritance scams and tech support scams in this same period.

This is not unique to Singapore. Countries around the world are also grappling with these challenges.

New Zealand criminalised serious instances of online bullying, and harassment and appointed an organisation "NetSafe" to act as the first port of call to investigate and resolve complaints on online harm. For example, NetSafe liaises with website hosts and Internet service providers to take down harmful content through persuasion and mediation.

Australia set up an Office of the eSafety Commissioner, a dedicated agency that was empowered to investigate and take action against perpetrators, by issuing warnings, requesting websites to remove harmful material, or seeking a civil penalty order in Court.

In South Korea, the government itself operates a "Digital Sexual Crime Victim Support Centre". This one-stop centre provides counselling services, liaises with websites to delete harmful content and refers victims to pro-bono legal services. Importantly, victims and their loved ones know they are not alone in their darkest hour of need.

Each society has an obligation to protect its citizens. We too have a duty to keep Singaporeans safe from online harm.

Singaporeans are proud that we have one of the safest streets in the world. We let our children and loved ones walk freely around the neighbourhood and we trust they have pleasant interactions. Likewise, we must also strive to build a safe and kind online space – one marked with care and respect, where everyone including our children and our seniors can interact freely without constantly looking over their shoulders, looking for perpetrators and predators.

A few days ago in this House, Mdm Rahayu spoke passionately about building a kind and compassionate society, both offline and online. This is a worhthy goal. We must act now and decisively, and not wait till it is too late.

We are building on a good foundation. Our content classification regime protects our young from harmful or unsuitable materials, while ensuring the rest of us access the whole wide range of content. The recently formed Inter-Ministry Committee on Scams coordinates efforts across the Government to tackle scams. The Protection from Harassment Act or POHA was enhanced in 2019 to allow authorities to better respond to emerging online trends, such as by criminalising the act of doxxing.

We also educate Singaporeans on online harms. MOE’s Cyber Wellness education teaches students to recognise risks in the digital space, identify negative influences and navigate online spaces safely. The National Crime Prevention Council raises awareness on online scams through a WhatsApp broadcast channel and they run an anti-scam helpline.

Yet despite these efforts, we are often only playing catch up. Four reasons.

First, cyberspace evolves rapidly. A few days ago, Ms Tin Pei Ling spoke about the immense popularity of the TikTok video sharing platform. Each emergent platform – be it Instagram or TikTok – brings with it new challenges. This requires us to be nimble and adaptable.

Legislation and Government efforts by themselves are insufficient. Multiple stakeholders need to be involved and each given a stake in this effort. The Government can set out the broad approach to regulations, code of practices and norms, but we need ground-up initiatives to experiment with various approaches to meet the needs of our citizens. If they are successful, we can scale up these initiatives.

With these considerations in mind, let me propose three steps how we can achieve this – how we can Step Forward, Step Up and Step In.

First on Stepping Forward. The Government plays a critical role in this multi-stakeholder approach. It sets the tone and brings the right parties together.

Today, no single agency bears the responsibility of preventing and mitigating online harm. Correspondingly, different Government agencies grasp different aspects of the issue: MOE for cyberwellness education in schools; MCI for digital literacy for seniors and media literacy for young adults; MSF for counselling and support for victims through voluntary welfare organisations; and MCCY for youth mental well-being.

Consequently, we do not fully understand the shape of the elephant, much less tame the beast. This approach must change, so that we can adapt to the growing complexity of the problem.

We need a Government agency to step forward, take charge and develop a citizen-centric perspective on this issue. Like its overseas counterparts, this agency should champion and coordinate the Government’s effort in this area and take the lead in assembling a multi-stakeholder response.

This agency should work with a panel of experts so that we can think about this matter holistically, ensure that we keep abreast of global developments, and stay on top of this issue.

Mental health professionals and academics can help us make sense of the social and psychological dynamics of the online space. Community partners can help us understand the impact on vulnerable groups, and the support they need. Educators and pedagogy experts can study and share best practices on how schools can facilitate learning on these topics. Industry representatives can advocate for the role of the private sector in working with us to build a safer and kinder online space.

This panel can be empowered to make recommendations on how to prevent these harms and provide timely help to the victims. This could include proposals to strengthen current legislative and enforcement levers, or even establish new ones.

But the Government’s role is only one part of the solution, which brings me to my next point. We need every stakeholder group to step up and take action.

To the private sector, my appeal to you is “Starting safe is half the battle won”. It is in your firm's interest to do so – a safe customer is a loyal customer and I will touch on two aspects of how corporates can contribute.

First, companies that deliver digital services should be more thoughtful in the design of their products. They should adopt the concept of “Safety by Design” and embed safety features from the outset as part of the design process. Today, cars and consumer appliances need to meet safety standards before they are allowed into the market. Similarly, we should consider ways on how we can give users a sense of assurance in the online space. There are some early efforts and areas we can further explore in Singapore. For example, banks exploring monitoring elderly customers’ accounts to spot irregular transactions so that they can be alerted in time. Seniors may be also given the option to disallow cross-border remittances made through their e-banking service.

Caller ID can be a first line of defence for many seniors to spot scam calls. For instance, the plus sign is now prefixed to all incoming international calls, to combat spoof calls from overseas. This is a good step and more can be done. Perhaps telcos can consider maintaining a common database of blacklisted numbers and block incoming calls from these numbers, and also consider making many of these functions easily accessible for all seniors. In fact just this morning, there was a Forum Letter on this very issue in The Straits Times.

E-commerce platforms can also better safeguard its customers by implementing measures such as an escrow account to reduce e-commerce scams.

Keeping customers safe online should not be an afterthought or treated as the customer help desk’s problem. Management needs to take ownership and I commend many responsible companies that are adopting such a mindset. I encourage many more to do so too. It is the right thing to do and it makes business sense.

Second, social media platforms can step up to detect and resolve online harm issues early, as well as raise awareness on these issues. Nip the issue early in the bud, before irreparable harm is done.

Platforms such as Instagram and Twitter have existing functions for reporting content, comments, or accounts. They can work with the appointed Government agency on how we can better use these tools to combat cyber bullying and cyber grooming.

Facebook has also piloted programmes with TOUCH Cyber Wellness in schools, to equip seniors to use technology safely, or conduct workshops with school counsellors on how to talk about cyber bullying in the classroom.

Singapore has a stellar reputation for trust globally. It is a win-win outcome for us and the social media platforms if they can do more in Singapore and set the benchmark for the rest of the world.

To parents, my appeal to all of us – since I was recently promoted to that stature – would be, “Staying safe online starts at home.” This was the advice that a group of Secondary school girls that initiated "Project Bluetic"’ shared with me. The team started off with a simple objective to raise awareness amongst their peers and encourage them to "bluetick" uncomfortable online messages – "bluetick", which is to read the message, get the "bluetick", ignore these messages and report the user.

However, they soon realised that the key group that needed education were the parents. One parent signed up for the cyber grooming workshop, thinking it was online courses on how to improve the kid's appearance!

The girls shared with me how important it was for parents to provide a safe space at home, where children can seek advice or help without fear of being judged.

So, to all parents, I humbly call upon all of us to step up to better understand the dangers of online harm and to create such an environment where we and our children can speak freely, heart-to-heart.

I spoke about how the Government can step forward and how key stakeholder groups can step up. Finally, we need everyone to step in and be part of a national movement to build a safer and kinder online community. We must foster a culture of inclusiveness where we make technology accessible. We must foster a culture of kindness where we respect each other like we do in real life and a culture of safety so that our seniors and children can learn and enjoy the Internet without fear.

The Singapore Kindness Movement started in 1997, building on the National Courtesy Campaign. Many of us, even young kids I spoke to, fondly recall the iconic "Singa the Lion", the face of this campaign since 1982.

Perhaps, it is timely for us to have a new national movement under SG Together for the online space. A new movement to rally passionate individuals and groups, and channel their energy and enthusiasm into taking action that would make a difference for society.

A good example is “Flag, You’re It!”, an initiative by a group of NTU students to campaign against cyber grooming. The campaign encourages youths to flag out uncomfortable or predatory online conversations and to have candid conversations on such experiences with their loved ones. They ran a powerful, immersive exhibition at the National Library called “45 minutes in the PreyGround”, P-R-E-Y, PreyGound, where visitors were led to step into the shoes of victims to understand their experiences of being preyed upon online.

I went through exhibition. It was enlightening and very moving. And I reconnected with them recently. Because of COVID, they have focused their advocacy effort on Instagram, sharing stories of victims and bite-sized infographics and videos. They have reached nearly 40,000 individuals online. They even came up with a card game to encourage conversations amongst friends!

The Government can support this national movement by convening platforms to bring together such like-minded parties and amplify these ground-up efforts through funding and mentoring support.

Another insight the NTU team shared with me was the importance of peer support, friends looking out for one another. Each of us can step in and be part of this movement. We can spread awareness, offer a listening ear to our friends or direct those in need to avenues for help and support.

We can also learn how to speak about such issues in a supportive way – to push back against stigmatising such issues and provide a safe space for victims to come forward. Ultimately, kindness starts with each one of us. Put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, think before we click. Mr Speaker, Sir, before I concluded, please allow me to say a few words in Mandarin.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Technologies have brought a lot of convenience to the lives of Singaporeans, but we must also be wary of the dangers that comes with technologies.

Cyber bullying, cyber grooming and online fraud can cause long-term damage to the physical, mental and financial health of the victims and their families.

We must take immediate actions to create a safe and kind cyber space for all, especially the young and the elderly.

First, we need a government agency to coordinate and bring together the various government policies and efforts.

The agency can appoint a panel that comprises professionals and for the panel to study the issue in a holistic manner and make relevant recommendations to the government.

Second, we need the full support of different stakeholders groups in society. For example, tech companies and social media companies can study how to provide safer online services and products, and work with the government to promote cyber security awareness. Parents, on the other hand, can pick up relevant knowledge and provide a safe space at home, so that children can seek advice and help when they need it.

Finally, we must mobilise the entire nation to create a safe and kind cyberspace.

We can each do our part too, for example, helping to promote cyber security awareness, lending a listening ear to friends when they are troubled, providing them with guidance, or encouraging them to turn to existing channels for help.

Technology is a double-edged sword. We cannot shy away from the internet just because there are risks. Instead, we should learn how to make good and full use of it while protecting ourselves. Everyone needs to take responsibility to protect ourselves in cybersecurity.

(In English): Mr Speaker, Sir, Mdm President spoke about the need to build a fair and just society. As our world becomes increasingly digitalised, we must also pay special attention to how the most vulnerable amongst us not just access, but also navigate the digital space.

My wife and I just had our baby. Isaac will be turning a month old this weekend. He and other children of his generation will grow up in a very different world from all of us, where they will spend a large part of their lives in cyberspace. It is the duty of our generation to do all that we can to make sure that our children and seniors can grow up and grow old in a safe and caring online community, where there is no digital divide, where our people have the confidence and skills to ride the digital wave; where just as they are at ease moving around in the physical neighbourhood, they can have the same peace of mind navigating the digital space.

We need to act boldly and decisively now before it is too late. So, let us all step forward, step up and step in to be part of this national movement. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: Mr Louis Chua.

3.31 pm

Mr Chua Kheng Wee Louis (Sengkang): Mr Speaker, it is my honour to address this House in support of the Motion of Thanks to the President, which she delivered at the Opening of the Fourteenth Parliament.

The President mentioned in her speech that we are starting a new term of Government under the shadow of COVID-19. Indeed, COVID-19 has created unprecedented challenges to the lives and livelihoods of the people around the world and Singapore is, unfortunately, not spared from this global crisis. As pointed out by Mdm President, we are facing our worst recession since Independence and we have already seen Singapore's GDP shrink by 13.2% year on year in the second quarter, with total employment seeing the largest quarterly decline on record at 131,500 workers.

Yet, despite the devastating headline economic statistics, I have no doubt in my mind that Singapore will weather the COVID-19 crisis and our economy will continue to grow again. But the bigger question to me is: what does it mean for us to emerge stronger as a nation and how do we define our success?

It is unfortunate that it takes a crisis, such as COVID-19, to expose some of the weakness of our economic structures and our lack of social protection for the vulnerable. To the lucky few amongst us, COVID-19 is just a passing storm or the proverbial rainy day where we can rely on our past savings to tide us through.

But to the less privileged Singaporeans who are struggling to make ends meet on a daily basis, COVID-19 is a tsunami which threatens not just their livelihoods, but possibly even their lives.

Today, Singapore is already one of the wealthiest countries in the world as measured by GDP per capita. Yet, we are also often perceived to be an unequal society where the benefits of growth may perhaps not be evenly distributed and with inequality threatening to weaken our social fabric. It is perhaps time for us to have a rethink of what we value as a society and who have we left behind in our pursuit of headline economic growth.

I call on the Government to evaluate its success not just based on a set of economic terms, but to take a more holistic, multi-dimensional approach in measuring the progress of our nation. We should base our policy decision-making on not just maximising financial value, but on maximising the overall well-being of all Singaporeans, particularly the most vulnerable amongst us.

To this end, I note that New Zealand embarked on its first well-being budget in 2019, recognising that economic growth, while important, does not guarantee improvements in living standards. Bhutan, too, has a Gross National Happiness Index which captures multiple indicators across nine domains. While these may not be directly replicable in the context of Singapore, it is imperative for us to start assessing how each and every Singaporean is doing, and how best to address the unmet needs of our people in a sustainable and equitable manner.

Mr Speaker, COVID-19 has been a catastrophic crisis and we must not let the lessons from this go to waste. On that note, I would like to highlight four areas for reform to build a stronger and more resilient Singapore society, post the current pandemic in this crisis.

The first area of reform is in relation to workers' protection. COVID-19 has, undoubtedly, been an unprecedented healthcare crisis, leading to a simultaneous demand and supply economic destruction.

Yet, with the shortening of business cycles and hastening of technological disruption, the threat of widespread job losses and rapid job irrelevance is only going to rise in future. Direct assistance to companies, such as the Jobs Support Scheme, could arguably provide indirect support to employment. But as we have seen in the second quarter employment change numbers, subsidies to companies and moral suasion cannot prevent job losses. The ratio of job vacancies to unemployed persons reached a historical low of .71 as at March 2020 and with the demand outlook remaining poor and arguably the worst of retrenchments and unemployment perhaps still ahead of us.

Many more workers will be without a job despite their best intentions to be employed. Rather than providing blanket wage subsidies across companies, it is perhaps the workers themselves that are most in need of direct support and financial buffers in the event of unemployment.

The Singapore Government has taken pride in creating a pro-business environment through its economic and manpower policies. It is now time, in my view, however, to strengthen our employment laws to better support and protect workers and raise the standard of work for all.

The Global Financial Crisis in 2008/2009 saw the introduction of Kurzarbeit in Germany, a short time work programme that has been a key feature of the German safety net since, which was a useful template for many countries to model on. Building a more resilient workforce in society starts with strengthening our social safety nets for workers, and we now have an opportunity to do just that without necessarily impairing the incentive to work hard.

The second area of reform is in relation to housing. In its Addendum to the President's Address, the Minister for National Development wrote about taking care of Singaporeans' housing needs, such as ensuring that public housing remains affordable, especially for young families, while enhancing schemes to help our seniors tap on their flats' value to supplement their retirement adequacy.

However, it is precisely our flats' value that is in question where the HDB resale market has been affected by concerns over lease decay in the past few years. This has serious implications for the retirement adequacy of Singaporeans, as much of Singaporeans' assets are being tied to their primary residence, which is their HDB flat.

The Government has said earlier in 2019 that it will consider all alternative suggestions and ways to manage the expiring leases of HDB flats and we cannot continue to ignore the elephant in the room. And this is an issue which I believe should rank high on our national agenda. Ultimately, more than 80% of Singaporeans live in HDB flats, with the overwhelming majority relying on their CPF Ordinary Account balances to finance their flats.

With many Singaporeans entering their golden years, the knowledge of their HDB flats steadily losing value as they approach the tail-end of their leases can become a significant source of mental stress and insecurity.

The third area of reform is in relation to support for families. Our houses may be built from bricks and mortar, but the family is the basic building block of society. Singapore's Total Fertility Rate stands at a record low of 1.14 in 2019 and many couples could potentially be further delaying their marriage and parenthood plans amidst the economic uncertainties today. I believe that sustainable growth is not only defined by fiscal sustainability, but by the future sustainability of our people, our human resource.

We need to recognise that family-friendly policies boost rather than reduce productivity and reject the notion that dedicating time for our care-giving responsibilities hurts the employment prospects of workers. The silver lining to the circuit breaker period was that it institutionalised flexible working arrangements and showed us that economic competitiveness need not come at the expense of our families.

On a personal level, I started working from home even before Phase 1 of the circuit breaker measures and, as a father to a newborn baby, I am thankful to have witnessed his various development milestones over the past year and to partake in the joys of parenthood while continuing to stay productive at work.

I recognise that MOM will support employers to offer flexible work arrangements and work-life harmony initiatives. Yet, there is so much more that we can do. We need to give employees the legislative right to flexible work arrangements rather than non-legally binding advisories. We need the Government to lead by example and demonstrate to companies what progressive HR policies look like. More importantly, we need to devote greater resources to families to support their parenthood aspirations.

Mr Speaker, we cannot expect incremental efforts to result in extraordinary results. We need to take bold and decisive steps and provide greater financial and non-financial support to Singaporean families, recognising that the stresses on families and our low fertility rate, if not urgently addressed today, would have significant long-term socio-economic cost to Singapore.

The last area of reform is on the use of reserves. I agree with the Government's fiscal prudence and policy that our expenditures cannot and should not be more than our revenues for long-term sustainability.

However, national policy proposals that tap on the reserves must be seen in the context of Singaporeans' growing needs across healthcare, ageing and retirement adequacy. As such, there needs to be thorough evaluation of alternative sources of revenue that remain untapped.

Currently, some Government revenues, including land sales, are excluded from the official Budget. However, capital receipts, such as land sales, represent strong recurring cash revenues that are actually received by the Government, particularly with land being sold on a leasehold basis.

As such, one of the ways that the revenue shortfall could potentially be met is by tapping no more than a fifth of the approximately $15 billion per year in land sales that the Government typically collects.

The other area that could potentially be looked at as an alternative source of revenue is to increase the Net Investment Returns Contribution by up to 10%. While we would need to safeguard our reserves for potential contingencies, let us also acknowledge that increasing the percentage of returns generated will only vary the pace of reserve growth, but will not cause the reserves to fall.

Arguably, deploying our reserves into more productive uses by investing them into our people, our human capital, could generate far superior returns in the long run and boost the future sustainability of our nation. Mr Speaker, let me now say a few words in Mandarin.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Singapore is an affluent country, ranked at number eight in the world in terms of per capita GDP. However, we are often described as an unequal society with a widening income gap, weakening social cohesion slowly.

Perhaps it is time for us to rethink what we should value as a society, and whether we have overlooked certain groups in the society while chasing economic growth.

I urge the Government not to continue to measure the success of governance solely based on economic data, but to adopt a more holistic approach and measure the progress of the country in various ways. Policies should not be formulated purely on the economic level, but to give priority to the welfare of all Singaporeans and pay attention to the disadvantaged groups in society.

Mr Speaker, COVID-19 is a crisis, but it also presents an opportunity for change. Today, I would like to raise four areas for improvement so that we can build a stronger and more resilient society after the pandemic.

First, we must better protect our workers.

Global demand is softening, many companies have no choice but to retrench staff, and many Singaporeans have to face unemployment. For businesses, the Jobs Support Scheme, which has been extended repeatedly, may help them survive, and companies do not need to apply. But even if the unemployed can apply for other one-off assistance schemes, some will still be rejected after going through cumbersome application processes.

Instead of continuing to subsidise companies, what local workers need more is direct subsidies and assistance to help them mitigate the impact of unemployment and economic recession. Many older Singaporeans, no matter how hard they work, do not have enough protection if they fall ill or are retrenched. Direct subsidies and assistance are the most needed help for Singaporeans.

The Singapore Government has always been proud of the pro-business environment created through economic and manpower policies, but I feel that it is time for us to strengthen our employment laws to better protect workers' interests and take this opportunity to carry out sustained and structural reforms to ensure that our workers enjoy better financial security.

The second area that needs to be reformed is our housing policy.

Minister for National Development has mentioned the need to take care of the housing needs of Singaporeans, such as ensuring affordability of HDB flats, allowing young families to own homes earlier, and strengthening schemes to help the elderly use the value of HDB flats to supplement their retirement needs.

However, the problem lies in the value of our HDB flats. Leases that are about to expire has affected the resale price of HDB flats in recent years. For many Singaporeans, their main asset is their HDB flat, and they have spent most of their life savings on it. However, if Singaporeans, upon entering their golden years, see resale prices declining gradually as the lease of their flat coming to an end, they would feel mentally stressed and lose the sense of security, because the HDB flat can no longer ensure that they have sufficient retirement funds.

The third area is support for the family.

The family is the bedrock of our society. We must realise that pro-family policies will not reduce productivity but raise it instead. It is also incorrect to think that employees spending time and taking care of their children and elderly at home will affect their career prospects.

We need to take bold and decisive measures to provide more financial and non-monetary assistance to Singaporean families, because if we don’t address early the daily pressure faced by families and the issue of low birth rate, they could have a long-term socio-economic impact on Singapore.

Finally, I would like to talk about how to treat our reserves.

I agree that it is important for the Government to manage its finances prudently, to balance revenue and expenditure to achieve long-term sustainability. However, considering that rising healthcare and cost of living have led to inadequate retirement funds, should we not assess our untapped sources of income in a more holistic manner? For example, every year, we make an average of $15 billion from land sales, but these revenues are not included in the Government's budget.

I must stress that what the Workers' Party is proposing is not raiding our reserves, but to slow the reserves' growth rate. What we are doing is not to cut this tree of reserves, but to allow Singaporeans to take shelter from the forest as represented by the reserves as they are under the scorching sun.

(In English): Mr Speaker, to conclude, COVID-19 will not be the only challenge for Singaporeans. There will be many more foreseeable white swan events and unpredictable black swan events which we may not be fully prepared for. To build a more resilient society, we need to foster a culture of open-mindedness where dissenting views are not only accepted but actually encouraged and where bold, innovative ideas are championed instead of being squashed.

I believe that change has to come from the top and it starts from the context of the Parliament and the Government of the day. To this end, I am comforted by the President's assurance that the Government will be open to constructive criticism and rational debate, and to new ways of doing things.

As a first-time Member of Parliament, I am honoured and privileged to be a Member of this House, and I believe voters have put their faith in us because of their greater desire for diversity in Parliament, more robust Parliamentary debates and a bigger say in Government decision-making so as to achieve the best outcomes for all Singaporeans.

We must continue to be the voice for our constituents. But beyond mere words and statements of intent, it is our actions that define us. I sincerely hope that the Government will have the courage and political will to translate the breadth and depth of ideas that Members bring to this House into concrete policies to take Singapore forward.

A united Singapore Together is not one that speaks with one voice. A united Singapore is one with a diversity of voices sharing our common belief for a better future and working together as one. [Applause.]

3.48 pm

Ms Nadia Ahmad Samdin (Ang Mo Kio): Mr Speaker, Sir, I join the other hon Members of this House in adding to the chorus of support for the Motion of Thanks.

In her address, Mdm President highlighted that we are facing a sea of change in an uncertain and complex world. Globally, fault lines are growing more pronounced across class, political, racial and inter-generational divides. We are seeing new waves of protectionism taking root in a world more connected than ever before. How do these fault lines form? It starts within us and the biases in our mind, whether we admit them or not, and grows in the unwillingness to have conversations to understand the perspectives of people we are unfamiliar with or with whom we may disagree. The end result? Echo chambers where entrenched views take root and we end up in shouting matches on opposite ends of divisive issues.

Mr Speaker, one of the core tenets of Singapore's success lies in our ability to live harmoniously with each other in spite of our differences. We got here by emphasising tolerance and mutual respect, and while mutual respect will always be relevant, we must navigate the uncomfortable but necessary shift from mere tolerance, past acceptance, to active understanding of different views. This requires us to lean into conversations on issues that may be uncomfortable.

But I submit that if we do not lead the way in navigating these conversations, we leave the space wide open for others to fill in ways that may be incendiary or out of context for our Singapore.

While hope for a better future is a shared aspiration across generations, the common lived experience of a Singaporean life has changed dramatically over the years. During my house visits in Cheng San-Seletar, some senior residents shared their fond memories of rubber plantations and farms in Ang Mo Kio. The world we live in today is one where these residents and people like my grandmother hardly recognise. My grandmother was given away as a child and tried to find her way back home after the war. It was a time when girls did not go to school and sometimes were considered less worthy. Her experiences shaped her own perceptions, beliefs and hopes for her children. Only a few decades have passed and now Singapore is a place where girls go to university, participate in the workforce and run for political candidacy.

The stark differences in lived experiences have not spared the baby boomers, Generations X, Y, Z and Alpha from inevitable clashes. It is natural for members of each generation to feel that their experience holds the most weight, to reject opinions that do not gel with their worldviews. And it is convenient to turn to labels, which make it easier to dismiss perspectives. While these inclinations are understandable, they are unacceptable in a society which appreciates the wisdom and guidance of its elders but also trusts its youth to lead it forward into the future.

"OK Boomer" and "strawberry generation" narratives are examples of reductionist caricatures. They obfuscate the path to finding common ground by pitting old versus young. This can cause tensions in the workplace as the average office environment now houses three to four generations under one roof. Generation Z comes in as interns, millennials move up in their careers to take on supervisory roles, Generation X become top executives and seniors retire later. We may even feel this in our own homes as grandparents and grandchildren disagree on political and cultural norms.

If we truly want to harness the potential of our youth and tap on the experiences of our seniors, then we must not be dismissive of their thoughts, dreams and fears.

While social media has amplified the space for individuals to have a voice, ironically, it can also make people more afraid to speak up for fear of being judged or flamed. In a world where tweets and memes dominate, we must also take the time to really listen and consider the details. The space that our middle ground occupies, carefully built up over the years, should be enlarged, not shrunken.

Social media also accentuates the polarisation of perspectives on a global level, which very quickly trickles down to the local. We are not only exposed to shifts in global economic headwinds, now we are also exposed to shifts in social and cultural headwinds, which we must learn to navigate with equal competence.

Mr Speaker, one thing I know to be certain about who we are as a people is our ability to punch above our weight. As much as we are pragmatic, we are a nation built on the backs of dreamers with the gumption to tackle the challenges of their time. We have seen this through the efforts of the Merdeka and Pioneer Generations. Driven by the promise of a stake in Singapore's progress, they pursued the betterment of our society relentlessly. The unlikely reality of Singapore building a bustling metropolis in place of what could have been an abandoned port city post war rife with ideological, economic and social strife came to past, and with that, came the promise of a stake in a young nation's progress fulfilled with citizens through education, home equity and wage growth. This greased the wheels of social mobility.

Fifty-five years later, we are in a different time faced with different challenges in a world battled by COVID-19. While there are immediate challenges to tackle, it is also important to keep an eye on the longer term. After the dust settles, what does that citizen's stake in Singapore's progress look like for future generations? What will be the engine of social mobility for our sandwiched class? In times of hardship such as this, we need to sow seeds of hope for when the rain passes and a strong vision for the future.

In the region and globally, we see socio-economic shifts gassed by systemic inequality. Across the world, my generation worries about rising home prices, stagnating wages and an increasingly competitive job market that could mean that we will not see the same rate of upward mobility as that of generations before.

Here in Singapore, we would be in a much worse position if the Government had not invested heavily in trying to protect Singaporeans by motivating companies through stimulus levers to raise wages progressively, upscale workers and keep the Singaporean core employed. One group that has been deeply impacted are mid-career professionals. These are individuals with several years of working experience and are on track to becoming specialists in their domains. They are often at the age where they have children to raise and parents to look after. Many of my residents fall within this category.

The Government recently introduced the SGUnited Mid-Career Pathways programme. The programme aims to provide 14,500 opportunities for mid-career jobseekers to gain meaningful industry-relevant experience. Those part of the full-time training programme will receive a monthly allowance.

While training allowances are much appreciated, the reality is that these individuals and their families will feel the drop in income. A number of mid-career professionals already find themselves part of the sandwiched class squeeze and at times, the opportunity cost of upgrading their skills in pursuit of a potential future feels far too great. Our workers will need to adopt a longer term earning outlook but this does means that perhaps on the social side, we may need to relook what assistance schemes look like, who qualifies for them, and if there can be interim targeted support so that families can thrive and not just survive.

In her address, Mdm President also spoke about the need to evolve our model of meritocracy. This resonates deeply with me. There are many schemes to support students and families from disadvantaged backgrounds. At the same time, work on the ground reveals that there are people who fall through the cracks and we must deal with these gaps with empathy. Where individuals miss the qualifying criteria by a whisker, where circumstances require our youth to take on part-time paid jobs instead of a coveted, unpaid internship, or where women drop drop out of the workforce to fulfill care-giving roles at home as hired help is beyond their means.

While it may not be possible to completely eradicate inequality in the world, it is entirely within our responsibility to ensure that Singaporeans from all walks of life are not priced out of opportunities and are able to seize them in a timely way.

I would like to share one story of a youth who comes from a difficult background. At 20, she did not fall automatically within the age criteria to receive certain transfers or benefit from schemes that residents 21 and above qualified for. Her parents were divorced, did not have regular employment and could not support her. She met a young man of the same age, had a baby, got married and got pregnant the second time. Despite moving in with his family in their rental flat, the youth and her baby effectively lived as a separate family unit while the husband served National Service.

She shared with me her hopes of finding a job but worried there would be no care-giver for her children as her husband's vocation did not allow him to return home in the evenings and that the flat's monthly rental fees would be adjusted upwards when she became a new income earner in the house. The rental flat fees could increase by up to eight times, depending on the increase in household income.

Could we consider a fixed rental fee for a longer period of time to allow such households to build up their savings for rainier days and future dreams?

In my time on the panel of advisers to the Youth Courts, I have also encountered youth who reside in homes under the Children and Young Persons Act. While family is a building block of society, as spoken about by my colleague Mr Zhulkarnain earlier and the hon Member Louis Chua, sadly, there are some youth who, upon reaching the age of 19, are no longer able to stay in these homes but also do not have families to reintegrate with.

The sudden shift to independent living without a routine while having to find work to pay for accommodation can be overwhelming and these youth, sometimes, are not able to reach their to reach their full potential.

Having served in the youth space for many years, I have seen the shifts and in fact compassion, exercised by policy-makers. There is no doubt in my mind that our youth are deserving and that the Government recognises this and has heavily invested in building up our youth. I hope that we continue to do so and reach even more youth segments. Mr Speaker, a few words in Malay.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] I am concerned about the COVID-19 crisis occupying the minds of our community. I am however confident that this crisis is only temporary and we can overcome it. This is because, in these trying times, the Malay community has shown solidarity to help one another in order to move forward together:

I have seen the spirit of mutual cooperation and collaboration between M³ and Malay/ Muslim organizations under the SG Teguh Bersatu initiative.

I am also touched to see many seniors such as retired teachers as well as qualified business leaders coming forward to help the community.

I am also glad to see youths taking the time to embark on initiatives and serve the community.

When I look at our community, I am filled with admiration because our Malay community is a resilient one. We appreciate the guidance from the older generation and have faith in our youths to progress towards a brighter future.

I am also aware that the government has drawn up various programmes to help needy families. In the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s addendum, Minister Masagos Zulkifli outlined the government’s focus on improving social assistance so that families who need it can receive services that are more comprehensive and coordinated. I welcome this effort as it enhances the government’s reach to connect residents to the last-mile service delivery. I acknowledge that assistance given in a timely manner can change one’s life.

(In English): In closing, we must build bridges of understanding to deal with the shifts in the global World Order and the needs of different generations. I am confident in who we are as a people and our Singaporean values that put us in good stead during these unprecedented times.

As Deputy Prime Minister Heng Swee Keat said in the earlier part of the debate: adapt to change but stay true to our values. The world will change with or without us, and our Little Red Dot’s best shot at driving is to change as we stay united together. We are a young country and I believe our best days are ahead of us. Mr Speaker, I support the Motion. [Applause.]

4.04 pm

The Minister of State for Home Affairs and Sustainability and the Environment (Mr Desmond Tan): Mr Speaker, I rise in support of the Motion.

Much has been said about how the COVID-19 pandemic has severely disrupted our lives and forced massive changes to the way we work, live and play. It is no exaggeration to say that this is indeed a crisis to test our generation. But it is also not without some silver linings. Let me highlight three.

First, people are looking out for one another. We can take pride and draw strength from this. Many Singaporeans have gone out of their way to help others – giving out free masks to strangers, delivering groceries to those in quarantine, hawkers cooking for the hungry, customers rallying support for hawkers on social media. These are just a few examples of the great many heart-warming acts we see all around us.

Second, our businesses and workforce are seizing opportunities and trying new things in response to the crisis. Traditional businesses have innovated and accelerated their adoption of tech solutions. Our wet market stallholders are hawking their fresh produce over livestream on Facebook. Many Members may also recognise getai veteran, Wang Lei, who has sold seafood, durians and even cars online. In his words, he turned the crisis into a business opportunity, or in Chinese, 把危机转成商机.

Third, the enforced time-out has allowed nature and the environment to recover. The air is cleaner and humanity’s carbon footprint has shrunk with the reduction of transportation and industrial activities. At the peak of the lockdowns around the world in early April, global daily carbon emissions were slashed by 17%, dropping to levels last observed in 2006. It was my nine-year-old daughter who has noticed there are more butterflies and wildflowers in our estate during our evening walks.

These silver linings give us confidence that we shall prevail. And we will continue to grow stronger as a nation.

Mdm President has said that domestically, Singapore is at an inflection point of our history. This is indeed the time to chart the future we want for Singapore and Singaporeans. And our youth will be key in shaping our collective future, for they are the leaders not only of tomorrow, but also of today. Our youths, with their ideals and ideas, can play a critical role in building the kind of society we would like to have and to see in Singapore.

What would such a society be like? First, I would like to see a society of opportunities for all. Second, I would like us to build a liveable and sustainable environment. And third, I hope Singapore will be a society built on trust.

First, on a society of opportunities. The economic impact of COVID-19 has not been borne evenly. Lower income households are hit much harder. We have a family in Punggol in which both parents lost their jobs and finding new ones was not easy partly because they were past offenders. They got by with ComCare and COVID Support grants. But what weighs most heavily on them is their worry about the future of their four children who are all in school. There are families out there who need help. And I am most concerned about young children and the opportunities they may lose, if nothing is done.

While there are various Government schemes to support individuals and families along their life journeys, there is an important role for the community and individuals to reach out to fellow Singaporeans, like what we have done during this pandemic.

Two years ago, I worked with some colleagues in the public service to initiate a social programme where volunteers befriend children from the rental blocks at Casa Clementi and give tuition to them after school. Twenty-four-year-old grassroots leader, Hameed, played an active role in setting up and sustaining the centre, together with youth volunteers from NUS and ACS Independent, and even MINDEF and SAF regulars.

Besides tutoring, Hameed and his team organised activities and holiday programmes for them, such as coding classes, football sessions, and trips to the Zoo and the Wild Wild Wet. During the circuit breaker, they delivered special care packs to each of the children’s homes on top of the regular Zoom sessions, just to remind them that they were not alone. It was heartening to see the students improve in their learning attitudes and in their results. Two of them even received the Edusave Bursary Award recently.

I asked Hameed recently what kept him going. His answer was simple – seeing the excitement in the children when they turn up, watching them develop and grow, and simply wanting to make a difference in the community he lives in. I am sure we have many Hameeds in every community to bring all Singaporeans on board the moving escalator, to give each generation a better future. I urge Members of this House, many of whom have spoken passionately about this topic, to rally our community to step up and do something for our children who may not have a good start, to ensure they receive a good education. Together, let us ensure that there will always be social mobility in our society and that this remains deeply anchored in our value system.

Second, I hope that we can build and nurture a liveable and sustainable environment for all Singaporeans. Climate change will remain an existential threat for many, many generations to come and we must never stop pushing for sustainability as a key consideration in all our decisions.

Sustainability is about meeting the needs of the current generation, without compromising that of the future generations. This has become more pressing than ever with the gathering pace of climate change and its impacts. As a low-lying island with limited natural resources, Singapore is especially vulnerable to rising sea-levels and disruptions in global supply chains of critical resources like food and water. So, it augurs well for the future of our common home that sustainability is a high priority for many of our youth, as studies commissioned by the National Youth Council have shown. Many of them are also stepping forward to make their voices and their actions count, and some are working together to make a bigger impact with their efforts on sustainability.

In Pasir Ris, we have residents who are keen to turn seaweed and mussels into bioplastics and then into alternative fuel. We have youth who want to champion rooftop farming, clean up beaches and estates, promote car-lite by improving cycling path networks and so on. There is no lack of ideas and energy from all our residents. We now have a Pasir Ris Sustainability Action Group with over 20 volunteers and growing, from both young and old.

I am excited now to be in MSE, which has committed to plans for a green recovery from COVID-19, one that supports a transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient future. MSE will galvanise sustainability efforts across the Government, promote green growth, ensure resource resilience and pursue circular economy. We will create new jobs in the green sector and develop a pipeline of talent to support sustainability in Singapore.

But sustainability requires a whole-of-nation effort. Besides working with businesses and other partners, we must actively engage and create opportunities for youth to play a bigger role in co-creating and co-delivering solutions. We must take our youth’s efforts seriously because they are not an interest group – they are taking ownership to lead in fighting climate change, to make Singapore a more liveable and sustainable city. I will certainly do my best to support their efforts.

Finally, and most importantly, I hope that we can build a society based on trust. This is more relevant and important now than ever.

How does a society built on trust look like? I believe that such a society is characterised by a sense of togetherness where individuals and groups are willing to sacrifice their own interests for the larger good of the society. A good example in our history is our Land Acquisition Act of 1967. As a young growing nation, our kampungs and squatter huts had to make way for high-rise HDB buildings and industrial development. Our Pioneer and Merdeka Generations understood that, and they reluctantly moved from places they were familiar with to the HDB flats. There was trust that this was indeed necessary for the greater good of our nation. Today, our world class housing bears great testament to what we can achieve when there is trust between the Government and the people. As our founding Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew once said, “Our greatest asset was the trust and confidence of the people.”

COVID-19 has shown this trust still exists today. We saw this when workers accepted wage cuts so that more of their co-workers could remain employed, and when we all responded and stayed home to break the infection cycle and preserve our healthcare system for those who needed them most. I hope that we can continue to build and nurture this trust.

The question remains: how do we build this trust between the Government and people, and amongst people? We often hear the phrase that trust has to be earned. Over my career in the Army and public service, I found that this adage, while may be true, may be counter-productive sometimes because until someone earns it, we hold back trust to protect ourselves, build policies on the premise that a small minority may abuse the trust, and sometimes we micro-manage down to the dot.

Instead, I believe when we are in a position of leadership, trust has to be given. I learnt this as a young father. When my firstborn was in Primary school, I was called up by the school for an incident that he was involved in. Without even verifying with him, I chided him in the car on the way home for getting himself into trouble. He remained quiet for some time and then turned to me and asked, "Dad, why don’t you trust me when I said I didn’t do it?" Like all fathers, I wanted to earn his trust. That day, I learned that I have to give him my trust first.

I hope we can build a culture of openness and trust and continue one in which the Government listens, consults and engages regularly with citizens. This may mean being more transparent about our considerations and trade-offs when developing policies. For instance, since the start of COVID-19, our Prime Minister and the Ministers have been sharing very openly and regularly with Singaporeans about the pandemic, trusting us to rally together to do the right thing.

Beyond sharing information, our policies also need to reflect trust in our people in their delivery. In some areas, the Government can trust citizen groups to lead and execute policies and projects. One initiative that comes to mind is the youth-led Somerset Belt Masterplan, which is a product of the ideas and aspirations of over 40,000 youths on what they wish to see in Somerset and how they can achieve that. It is a good example of how innovative concepts and plans can develop when we give autonomy and trust to our youth who can take ownership of the projects they feel strongly for.

On the other hand, an engaged citizenry must be prepared to listen and understand the various perspectives, considerations and trade-offs. We must create a discourse that is based on data, science and facts, not one based on rhetoric and ideology. I hope to be part of this constructive engagement process.

Trust is, ultimately, a two-way street. It is only when we give trust, that we gain trust and achieve great things together.

Mr Speaker, let me conclude. I urge all of us Singaporeans to come together to build a society with opportunities for all, that is liveable and sustainable, and founded on mutual trust. Let us learn to listen well to one another, and communicate with more empathy. Consulting my two boys on the use of social media so that I can relate to the younger generation, I learnt that if I want them to understand me, I need to first connect with them in their channels, sometimes using their language. I hope to see better engagement, especially with our youths. Together, let us build on the solid foundation that the Pioneer and Merdeka Generations developed for us, and create a society that we will be proud to pass on to the generations to come. With all Singaporeans on board, we will surely get there and grow stronger in the process. Mr Speaker, in Mandarin, please.

(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Mr Speaker, I would like to share the lyrics of a xinyao song; the title is "Singapore Pie". Do not worry, I am not going to sing it, I am just going to read out the lyrics: "Dad said I was born in the 60s. I was only one-year-old when Singapore was born. Back then, nobody believed in the Singapore brand and there were people migrating overseas. Gradually, we went into the 70s, the chimneys in Jurong were rather grand-looking. Then, we entered the 80s. MRT made this legend spread faster. Friends said that the more I live, the more I was as real as Singapore. In a blink of an eye, we are in the 90s and now it is people from other places migrating here. Who do not love the Singapore brand?"

Due to the time constraint, I shall not recite the whole song. If interested, you can go online and listen to it. The reason why I mention this song today is because it tells the Singapore success story. In the early days of nation-building, nobody believed that Singapore would succeed. Some people even migrated overseas. With collaborative efforts from the people and the Government, our Pioneer and Merdeka Generations have made Singapore into a prosperous and orderly country. Those who have migrated also started to return. This is Singapore's success.

The last two lines of the lyrics are: "We will write our own stories. The future will depend on the next generations.” What kind of Singapore are we and our next generations going to build? We must all ask ourselves, do we want a Singapore of mutual trust or suspicion? Do we want a Singapore that people blame each other or help each other to find solutions? Do we want a Singapore where people keep asking "what can I get" or "what can I do"?

Mr Speaker, I only want to say that one day when I am old, I want to leave my children a Singapore that they can be proud of. Thank you.

Mr Speaker: Mr Alex Yam.

4.21 pm

Mr Alex Yam (Marsiling-Yew Tee): Mr Speaker, Sir, needless to say, we are facing a crisis of a generation. Across the world, there is economic chaos, business foreclosures, job instability – perhaps more painful and poisonous than just economic disruption – and a healthcare crisis, its divisions, strife and an "Us versus Them" dialogue.

In Singapore, we have been lucky so far. We have our reserves, we have strong Government, we have a united people, and we have avoided most of the communal upheavals that others have experienced so far. Yet, we cannot and must not assume that the worst is over. The cases of COVID-19 infections may be coming down, may be stabilising, but the economic storm is still yet to hit us fully. And with that, our societal fabric will be strained, perhaps fray, and may well start to tear as well. That we have come through a General Election where passions have been aroused is perhaps a symptom of the times.

Today, more than ever, we need to re-emphasise the importance of coming together, a message that perhaps is both important and well encapsulated in Total Defence. Even if the enemy that we are facing today is unseen, even perhaps unknown, we can see clearly where our military and civil defence have been important. At this point, it is perhaps apt to recognise the work of our SAF, the SCDF, our healthcare workers and many frontliners, who have been serving with great passion, dedication and also compassion during these difficult times.

But just as the Prime Minister said in February 2020, the real test of this pandemic is our social cohesion and psychological resilience. In economic defence, the challenges we have met them so far with our various COVID Budgets. Our MTI colleagues have been on the front lines as well, perhaps less unseen than the rest, to ensure that we have sufficient and constant access to food, supplies, resources. They have ensured that our stockpiles are replenished, our sources are diversified and local production increased; all this despite global disruptions in supply chains.

Our reserves, which has been spoken so much of during the course of this debate, are also an important weapon and armament in our fight against COVID-19 and its effects. They have staved off the enemies of joblessness and economic stagnation. But we, the people of Singapore, must also do our level best.

COVID-19 has accelerated many trends in our economy – driving automation, reconstruction of value chains, e-commerce, logistics, all sectors that are now growing because they are new norms in our COVID-19 world. This is perhaps the best impetus for us to change. And as a people, we must not fear adaptation to explore new areas of growth, to re-skill and upskill. For us, for our families, for our nation, we must remain fearless, relevant, not only to ourselves but also to the world. This is not the time to hide away, or to say that if only we could just turn back the clock, because we cannot. But there are bright moments and there is a lot of motivation as well.

Just recently, the five CDCs held our SkillsFuture Festival, the first fully online festival, and we had very encouraging participation. Over the course of the week, we had over 7,000 people taking part in various courses. We had almost over 20,000 people taking part in our online interactions as well. And many, in their feedback, have said that they have learnt something new and they have enjoyed that process. Some have also shared that they had fears initially, but have found that once they take the plunge, it became so much easier. Changes, therefore, are necessary. But, at the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that change will bring with it some discomfort. It heightens differences as well. Our social defence is, therefore, also at stake.

COVID-19, as we have seen in the rest of the world, has exacerbated inequalities, built up tensions in communities. We see this in various forms, for example, as we work from home and also in home-based learning during our circuit breaker. It is not unapparent that most of us who can work from home, perhaps, can claim to be better off. It is those who cannot, who are on the ground, who have to be physically present, that are feeling the true brunt of this crisis.

Home-based learning also shows up the differences in access to technology. Different family situations give rise to starkly different learning outcomes during the circuit breaker. In as much as we try to provide more equal access, yet, different circumstances still lead to different learning outcomes.

All this comes back perhaps to a word that we use very often in our discourse – meritocracy. Meritocracy underpins so much of our social structures in Singapore and we can justifiably be proud of how we provide equal opportunities for everyone in Singapore. Yet, today, equal opportunities, perhaps, is insufficient. It is also about ensuring that we have equitable outcomes, not equal outcomes, not as what Dodo in Alice in Wonderland says at the end of the caucus race, "Everyone wins and therefore everybody deserves a prize".

We must have equitable outcomes because, if we do not, then it is even worse than not having meritocracy. For this, we must engender change in our attitudes across Singapore in all sectors – at home, at work, in our economy. We need to rethink our values, redefine success, refocus our beliefs, interests, causes, passions. This is the only way we can stop perpetuating the sense of inferiority or feeling of being unrewarded despite trying our best, amongst different groups in our society. We should, therefore, revalue vocational and technical skills as much as academic dexterity, shift out perception of value based on work or academic performance alone.

In many other societies, being a plumber, being an electrician, is a valued skill set. Can we revived that in Singapore? That way, we can ensure that our social fabric is strengthened, not because we are one giant piece of cloth but like a warm comforting blanket comprised of different multiple equally important layers, so that we can all play our role equally in society.

The Members before me have spoken very passionately also about the digital sphere. Digital defence is important to us as well. Amidst the crisis that we are experiencing with COVID, it is also a primary concern because good communications is key in preventing the spread of this disease and reducing its impact. But we must have factual communication. We see this impact of negative communication overseas. People who decry the use of masks, expounding conspiracy theories figures, fake cures, false advisories, even scams, during this period of time. It is therefore, no better time than now to improve digital inclusion and media literacy, especially amongst our elders those who are most vulnerable during this period of time.

All this depends also on the most fundamental pillar of Total Defence and that is our psychological defence. Our psychological resilience and our sense of security is important. Again, it is now more than ever that we are in this together. But we see various examples, many of us in our constituency, we hear more and more comments like these, "My neighbour, formally Malaysian" or "you know, that chap who came from India". This idea of you being more Singaporean if you are homegrown or older or spent more years versus those who are newer who have spent less. But, all of us make an equal contribution to our society because we are all Singaporeans here, regardless of how long we have been Singaporeans.

As disputes arise, we must strengthen our identity of Singaporean. Again, regardless of how long you have been here, you must be proud, to belong to Singapore. All of us here are proud to be Singaporeans, but some of us were not born in Singapore. Yet, we serve fellow Singaporeans in this House. Many out there in society are doing the same thing as well. And they too, are valuable Singaporeans, they too, are our brothers and sisters.

Mr Speaker, let me end off with a short story. A group of pigeons, led by their mother, was searching for food. Driven by hunger, they came across a pile of rice. As they started eating, a little sparrow came by. The sparrow asked one of the brothers, "Could I share in your meal?" The brother said, "No, we found it first." Yet, the mother pigeon said, "There is more than enough, let us share." And so, she welcomed the little sparrow.

As they ate and were filled, they were preparing to fly away when suddenly a huge net came across them. The pigeons panicked, they flew off in different directions But, as they struggled in different directions the more tangled they got. In a distance, they saw the farmer coming at them with a club. It was the little sparrow who suddenly said, "Stay calm. Let all of us take one part of this net and fly in unison. And they did. As they did so, they managed to lift the net and the farmer could only look on as the net flew higher and higher way.

But, they were still trapped in that net. And so the little sparrow also said, "I know of a friend, he is a little mouse who lives across the hill. I brought him food once during the winter. He might be able to help us". So, they flew across the hill and met the little mouse. The little mouse said, "I can get you out of this quandry," as he bit through the net and freed them one by one.

Mr Speaker, it does not matter whether we are a large bird or small sparrow. We are all looking to survive. And where we have more of, we can share. But, we should also not belittle those that are smaller than us, or less skilled than us, or appear to be weaker than us. Because they too, have a role to play in our society and in our country. Perhaps it is them who have the street-smart, who can tell us when we are in trouble, how to get out of there mine.

At the same time, there might be others who are very different from us, but in our time of need, can chew us out of that net. So for all of us in Singapore, this crisis is an opportunity for us to re-emphasise what it means to be Singaporean, why we should be proud of who we are. I think, in the course of these few months, we have shown the capacity to be proud of who we are, Singaporeans and to be proud of Singapore. Thank you very much. I support the Motion. [Applause.]

Mr Speaker: Order. I propose to take a break now. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair at 5.00 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended

at 4.37 pm until 5.00 pm.

Sitting resumed at 5.00 pm.

[Deputy Speaker (Ms Jessica Tan Soon Neo) in the Chair]

Debate resumed.

5.02 pm

The Minister for Culture, Community and Youth (Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai): Mdm Deputy Speaker, before I begin my speech, with your permission, may I ask the Clerks to distribute some handouts.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Yes. [Handouts were distributed to hon Members.]

Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Thank you. I will refer to these handouts briefly in the course of my speech. Madam, at first glance, the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth seems like a potpourri with ingredients thrown together out of convenience – culture, community, youth, and of course, sports. These four strands hold and bind Singaporeans and Singapore society together, for the long term. And I would say – they are no less important than the foundations of our country’s economic and security framework.

Like Mr Sitoh earlier, I believe these four strands coming together synergistically is critical not only to providing an outlet to rebound from the current pandemic, but also to our long-term goals in nation-building. They foster a national identity and consensus in a way that no other facet of society can. I am honoured and very humbled to be given this opportunity as Minister to lead in this endeavor, to build on the solid foundations established by my predecessors.

In this speech, I will focus on youth, and on the kind of society that we want to foster. There is no strict definition of youths. In MCCY, we have defined youths as those between 15 and 35 years – sadly excluding myself. So, this covers everyone from Secondary school to young adults in their thirties, either just left school or entering the workforce. This group makes up about a quarter of our population in Singapore.

Our young people are a crucial segment of our society. The youths of today are the leaders of tomorrow. So trite but very true. They are the people who must have a say in the kind of society they want to be in, and play a part in shaping the kind of future for Singapore that they want to leave behind.

The Government is here to help them reach their personal and collective potential, but the future is in their own hands.

There is a Chinese saying, “年轻有为”. It is usually used to describe a young person who is capable and outstanding. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent of this for older people. No one talks about “年老有为”.

While this saying usually describes young people, it also describes a very positive and hopeful state of affairs with being young and associated with being young – the young are full of potential, promise and eventual accomplishment.

For the young, with the luxury of having time on their side and the endowment of energy and imagination, the sky is the limit.

However, amid the backdrop of COVID-19, there is a perceptible sense that the positivity in our youths might be somewhat diminished and I understand their concerns, as I am sure many of my colleagues in this House do, about the impact of the pandemic on bread and butter issues. This is only to be expected in the current climate, but we must ensure that while we are realistic and we remain aware of the situation, that our youths do not become discouraged, do not become defeatist or disenchanted. The pandemic will pass, but our aspirations and dreams must remain. 年轻有为 still applies. And perhaps even more so in today's context.

In the last few weeks, I have spoke with a number of youths, across a broad range of backgrounds. I asked them about their concerns and their aspirations, and what they felt we should address in this new term of Government. I promised them that we would bring these up in Parliament and let me just share a few of their thoughts with you.

Understandably, many of the concerns revolve around the current economic climate: will I be able to find a good job when I graduate? Will my skills still be relevant in a post-COVID-19 world, where there have been disruption upon disruption? Will I be able to stay competitive, especially in this climate when foreigners can compete for the job and perhaps even do it remotely from another country? Will I be able to afford the things that matter to me most at this point in my life: getting married, buying a home, looking after my parents, whilst trying to start my own family?

At the same time, they are also thinking deeply about the way we live, as a people, dealing with broader societal issues, and the values and ideals that they wish to see in society.

While previous generations chased the traditional 5Cs, this generation is concerned with some other Cs – climate change, constant competition and caring communities.

At the top of their minds are questions such as: how do we care better for one another? Can we better support vulnerable communities and how do we ensure that we leave no one is left behind? How can our society be more inclusive? And can we move from just tolerating, to truly embracing our diversity?

Youths also asked hard questions about the fairness and the tone of political campaigns at the recent General Elections. They asked to see more diverse views in Parliament, more checks and balances and more open debates on constructive policy alternatives.

These concerns and questions are entirely valid and reflect the rapid changes in our economic, political and social environment, amplified, catalysed by the effects of the current COVID-19 situation. A participant, one of them from my youth engagements, summed it up as follows, and I quote, “Youths seem to be dealing a lot with uncertainties – clashing ideologies, existential threat of climate disruptions, fundamental economic shifts. It’s scary having to navigate a future that feels so hostile and full of unknowns.”

I think all of us would have a lot of empathy for this sentiment – the future is uncertain. But I would also say to this group and to those out there – that we are at the cusp of a very different future that is promising in so many ways.

The COVID-19 pandemic has animated a strong spirit of care, cohesion and active citizenry in our society, from ground up, with many organising their own initiatives to assist those in need. For example, Project Stable Staples raised $150,000 in funds to give NTUC vouchers to 2,500 individuals they saw and identified as having been affected financially by COVID-19. The Youth Corps Singapore volunteers supported food distribution drives and delivered meals to nearly 9,000 beneficiaries. Various student groups have helped to share messages of encouragement and also translate content for migrant workers staying in the Changi Exhibition Centre Integrated Community Care and Recovery Facility. Others have contributed through SGUnited, a movement and one-stop digital portal for Singaporeans to contribute toward the national response for the COVID-19 outbreak, and they do so through donations, through volunteering and, of course, also in taking part with others in community-led efforts.

What is striking about all these initiatives is that they were initiated by volunteers, who stepped up, even as they themselves were, at the same time, worried about their own lives and livelihood. This is very heartening and we need to encourage more of these efforts, work together with them and build on them.

In the best of times, the Government does not have all the answers. Today, in an uncertain environment with complex challenges ahead of us, all the more we must chart a path together. As a Government, we need to partner with the community including our young people, to leverage on our shared values and forge a way forward.

Today, I hope to address some of these concerns raised – not just through our policies and our programmes – but also in our broader efforts to partner and work with young people to catalyse the solutions and tackle these issues together.

I will be addressing two broad questions that our youths have raised.

First, how can I secure a good future and achieve my aspirations in these turbulent times? This question deals not only with bread and butter issues in these uncertain times, but also how we can collectively address longer term challenges, like climate change, sustainability and the environment.

Second, how can I help realise the vision of Singapore as a more caring and inclusive society? How do we become the kind of society we want to live in, and would be happy to leave behind, for our children?

This second question is both philosophical and also practical – how do we weave the Tapestry of Singapore’s society to accommodate a diversity of threads seamlessly, so that the Tapestry is at once both beautiful to behold and also comforting to touch.

Sometimes, the Tapestry can be more beautiful to behold from afar than to touch and feel textually. Keeping it together, keeping it nice, beautiful, soft to the touch is a constant work in progress. The threads are woven together, sometimes by suasion, sometimes by policy, and the feel can be kind of uneven and rough on occasion. Sometimes a thread or two might come loose and we have to put it back with some effort. But we have to, because each thread that comes loose from this fabric is Tapestry, it threatens the integrity of the thread next to it, and if left unchecked, eventually could unravel the entire fabric. This is an important aspect of the work in my Ministry and I will come back to this point.

Let me start with the first question. The youths of today face intense competition once they start formal schooling. Globalisation presents new opportunities of exchange, but also opens up academic competition beyond national boundaries. This competition gets sharper in the workplace. And it is exacerbated by the current COVID-19 pandemic when global economies are in recession and opportunities are fewer to come by. My colleagues have outlined the steps to protect Singaporeans better, but the hard truth is that competition is a fact of life and we cannot influence the trajectory of other countries. Yet despite this, I want to encourage our youths to realise that competition drives us to excel, competition pushes us out of our comfort zone to be more than what we thought we could be and realise a better version of ourselves.

We will support you in this journey as best as we can. Whether it is in getting work experience, facilitating job and training opportunities or skills development.

Let me outline a few recent efforts. Together with the National Youth Council or NYC, MCCY has set up a Youth Corps Internship Scheme to allow our students from Institutes of Higher Learning to be placed into on-the-job training to ready themselves for experience for the job eventualy. Internships and work experience in these times could otherwise be more difficult to come by.

NYC has also launched the Asia-Ready Exposure Programe (AEP) for youths to acquire cross-cultural skills in a global world, that is important, cross-cultural skills to understand the region better, to widen their prospects and with that the range of opportunities. We have also set up a portal called gradgowhere.sg that contains resources for youths looking for jobs. The National Jobs Council is coordinating efforts to provide 100,000 jobs and skills opportunities for jobseekers, including graduates and working youths, under the SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package.

MCCY and NYC will also set up a "YouthTech" programme to equip 1,000 youths, in the first instance, with digital skills and training, and then deploy them into the community and social service sector to help this sector to upskill and to digitalise.

These programmes to equip youths with skills and provide more employment opportunities and will help address their immediate concerns about day-to-day living. For more details on these programmes, I would like to ask Members to look at the handouts that I have just given out.

At the same time, while youths are concerned about the immediate bread and butter issues, they also reflected to me that they are equally concerned about the broader, longer term questions, such as looking after our mental well-being and how do we better entrench our environmental sustainability efforts. These are important issues, and I know that many young people angst over them.

Our youths are very much at the front and centre of these efforts. They have called for action to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues, and greater awareness and openness in seeking help. Young people in Singapore, like their peers around the world, are the vanguard for an environmentally sustainable future, advocating not only new ways of living, but also new ways of making a living. In this way, they are really our active agents of change and we need to tap on this dynamic resource.

We will expand our partnerships with youths on these and other issues. We have been working with youths through projects such as the Youth Mental Well-being Network, which was launched earlier this year. We have started a Youth Circle with MSE to partner youths to create proposals and workable solutions that can improve our environment and enhance sustainability for the long term.

The hon Ms Raeesah Khan said, I think two days ago, that youths need to have a seat at the table to look at such issues, and we agree. The above are just some examples of how we want to engage our youths to participate and contribute actively to their own future, having a say, being an architect in their own future and also on matters of national importance. We will continue to create more opportunities and avenues for youths to partner the Government and society on issues that matter to them, and we will do so on a regular and sustained basis.

Let me now turn to the second question – what drives a caring and inclusive society and how can our young people help to realise the vision of such a society? When we engaged youths under the SG Youth Action Plan last year, they outlined their vision for a better society not just for themselves, but for Singaporeans. And inherent in this push for a more caring and inclusive Singapore are key considerations of (a) reducing social inequality; (b) building a more tightly knit society; and (c) improving civic discourse and participation.

Which in turn brings up even more fundamental questions of what kind of social compact and politics we desire for our country, both now and in the long term. An important consideration for me is how we can harness youthful energy to bring about positive change, to allow our young to blossom, instead of allowing uncertainty and discontent to fester amongst our young and resulting in negative confrontation?

I see two things. First, we need to allow the young to give voice to their dreams and aspirations. We need to give them the space and the avenues to engage with the rest of society, and have conversations with older generations to implement change, whilst at the same time understanding the constraints and trade-offs that age and experience sometimes can give a better insight to. The older generation in turn needs to be a little more patient, accepting and appreciative of generationally different views. So, both sides need to come together. These shared ideas have indeed help take us forward.

Let me give you some examples. We have been working with Singaporeans across the age spectrum, across the generations to reflect on our shared identity, and to think deeply about the values and legacy that we want to leave behind. More than 80,000 people of all ages have contributed their ideas and views to the Founders' Memorial to date, on how best to honour our past and create a beacon of inspiration, for our future. This year, 74 Singaporeans aged between 17 and 73 – a fairly broad spectrum of almost six decades – have come together to discuss and put together what they think every Singaporean ought to know, and create content to update the Singapore Citizenship Journey for new citizens. We are a society comprising both the young and the old and neither can exist alone, and we must learn to recognise that all of us have a part to play in moulding our future.

Second, societies need to give the young hope – hope of a brighter future, including good jobs and good lives. Many of the young in developed countries see the dreams of their parents slipping beyond their grasp and are reacting against a system which they might feel is no longer capable of giving them hope. We cannot let this happen to us here in Singapore. Our society needs to remain meritocratic, but not ossified. The forces that enabled the Boomers and Gen X to progress ought not be allowed to stratify society. We must therefore work hard to ensure that meritocracy does not develop into structural inequality. We need to make sure that our society remains fair, transparent, has equality of opportunities and that the fires of the Singaporean dream keep burning.

The story of today's Singapore youth, like the youth before them, must therefore be woven from the fabric of hope. So, I return to the Singapore Tapestry metaphor I mentioned earlier. That Tapestry is really the heart of Singapore. A Singapore for all Singaporeans. The Singapore Tapestry will always have yarns of different colour, sizes and even nature. Some are old threads, some are young threads.

But whatever the case, there are certain enduring truths about the Tapestry. Each of us, each thread and each fibre, is part of a larger whole. All of us have a role to play in keeping the Singapore Tapestry from fraying or worse, from being stretched and ripped apart.

Yet, even as there is only one single Tapestry, we remain individuals, with our own identities, our own dreams and our own aspirations. In fact, it is this very diversity of yarns that make Singapore exciting and more beautiful. In contrast to a Tapestry which had it been spun out of a single spool of fibre, single colour, one type, one nature that would have yielded a uniformly plain and monochromatic Singapore Cloth. You can see the difference.

Our differences, our diverse ethnicities, our cultures, different backgrounds and heritage and beliefs, they make for a collective which is far richer, and for a whole which is far greater than the sum of its parts – and that is the Singapore Tapestry.

At the same time, because of the diversity inherent in this Tapestry, texturally we can be a little rough at times. There will be rough and tough times when some threads in the Tapestry wonder why they are in this Tapestry, or why other threads are in the Tapestry. And these questions do not just revolve just around questions of race and religion, but to newer, perhaps more divisive and contentious issues, including questions concerning LGBT, equality, personal freedoms.

How then do we weave the Singapore Tapestry tightly, but at the same time, ensuring enough space in between the different threads for diversity to exist harmoniously? This is quite a paradox, but it is a paradox that we must, and we can and we have to overcome.

Ms Sylvia Lim, on Tuesday, spoke about becoming a race-blind society. We share the same aspiration, recognising the individuality of each of our races, but at the same time, reaping the strength in that diversity behind the common Singapore identity. Race is one of the primary threads of our social fabric, and the fact that different races are acknowledged while also bound by a shared belonging is what make our Tapestry strong, cohesive and also highly unique.

This is an ideal that we have been striving towards for more than 55 years, since we started our little nation – the day we became independent. On Separation Day itself, Mr Lee Kuan Yew affirmed that Singapore is "not a Malay nation, not a Chinese nation, not an Indian nation. Everybody will have a place in Singapore", and that is how we started. And after decades of nation-building, we are today less race- conscious and more tolerant of each other. More "one united people, regardless of race, language or religion". The young especially, are closer to this ideal than perhaps, their parents and grandparents.

But we must also ask ourselves, how did we get here? There was certainly nothing natural or expected in the progression from Singapore to Singaporean, as the tagline for the Singapore Bicentennial last year put it. If it were indeed an expected natural trajectory, or a natural progression, it would have occurred elsewhere in the world naturally, including among our neighbours in ASEAN.

We got here precisely because we have worked hard at it consistently and systematically, through policies that touch almost every aspect of our lives. We live together, our children play together, they study together, and our sons do the National Service together. We recognise that communities can be narrow and exclusive, as well as generous and inclusive, and our policies must be aimed to promote the latter and counter the former.

Common spaces like our public parks, schools, libraries, sports facilities, and public housing where all races interact, deliberately and accidentally, help to promote a more open and shared outlook across communities by creating opportunities for social mixing and simply doing things together. The whole gamut of policies and programmes that Senior Minister Tharman once famously described as the "most intrusive". And amongst them, the EIP, which Senior Minister Tharman described as our "most important" social policy, and our "greatest strength".

There is absolutely nothing natural or inevitable about any of this. It did not happen by itself, and it is not something which will endure by itself. We must not think that we have arrived or that we have reached an ideal post-racial state that has been attained and that no further more effort by way of these policies need to be put in place.

Race and religion remain faultlines and they remain highly emotive issues. And the risk of regressing on what we have achieved is always there. And we cannot assume that our progress will be a straight line. Yes, we are by no means perfect and discrimination remains a viscerally `rt lived reality for some, as hon Members Faisal Manap and Carrie Tan have pointed out earlier, and we must always continue to find ways to do better.

In Singapore, consciousness of race cannot be erased – nor should it be. Indeed, if we were all the same, we would have nothing unique to contribute, nor learn from anyone else. Because we are not the same, we each have something unique to contribute, to bring to the table, something only we can give to the common good of all of us. The more diverse we are, the richer our culture becomes. We should view difference from the lens of contribution, and not separation.

Nor should being "one united people, regardless of race" mean that we should renounce our cultural affinities or discourage people of the same community from coming together to support each other, and others in the community. The affinities of race have been harnessed to foster a spirit of self-help among our communities.

The ethnic self-help groups or SHGs have rallied their respective communities to serve the more vulnerable across the spectrum of race and ethnicity. For example, Vibrance @ Yishun organises programs to serve all ethnic groups, even while it conducts its own programmes specifically to meet the needs of respective communities. SHGs may be race-based, but they are far from race-bound. And not only are the beneficiaries of these gropus across racial lines – so are the volunteers. Almost a quarter of the volunteers at MENDAKI today are not from the Malay race.

Our ideal is that one day, we want to see a Singapore, where we do not need such SHGs. But that is not going to come about by wishing the differences away. It can only come about by working at it actively, daily and consciously. And on critical issues such as education, economic upliftment, beyond the main efforts by the Government, the communities and SHGs are mobilised, ground up with their own initiatives to help people, help community, and this must be welcomed.

Our diversity and geography means that we must always be conscious and do what we can to sustain our multiracial society. We are not starting from a blank slate, but we cannot take the peace we enjoy for granted, nor can we take our social fabric, built up over generations, for granted. And we must recognise that it takes years to weave a good Tapestry, but mere moments to destroy it. And once the threads start unravelling, it will be difficult to bridge the social divide, the racial divide, the ethnic divide and to stitch the Tapestry back together, will be a mammoth task.

I believe our youths must have as much a voice in this discourse as anyone else. On issues of race and other aspects of our Tapestry, not only between youths themselves, but across generations, with other people. We need to talk about how we can refresh and revitalise the bonds that bind us, because the social solidarity that we enjoy today, that we sometimes take for granted today, has proven so important, especially in today's pandemic and the crisis. It needs constant attention.

The ructions and the affray that bedevil a migrant society such as the United States is constant a reminder that inclusiveness will always be a work in progress for us. Nor are older societies, like Germany, where an anti-lockdown movement is emerging, immune from divisions and distrust that cause society to fracture under stress.

When society is torn apart by xenophobia and prejudices that appeal not to our better self, but to our worst instincts, it becomes impossible to even talk about a caring society. And that must be something we always keep at the back of our minds as we build a nation for tomorrow, as we build a more inclusive and caring society.

How do we apply all of this to the desire to build a more inclusive society?

It means a few things, starting with having to practise and work on inclusiveness every day. We must acknowledge our differences and accept that despite these differences, we live peacefully together, happily because we are in the same boat, in the same place.

I should add that inclusiveness is not about ignoring or just living with differences or denying that different groups have different or even conflicting agendas. It is about accepting that there is always going to be some give and take, and appreciating that everyone is entitled to their own positions as long as those positions do not encroach on another group's right to also have a position, albeit a different one, and perhaps even one that you might disagree with.

Inclusiveness is about acceptance and appreciation and not about changing others to something in your own image. This requires a certain maturity of thought in order for a meaningful discourse to take place. It also requires common values that anchor the social compact between Singaporeans as well as between the Government and the people.

The Singapore Tapestry that I spoke of can magically enlarge the space that we share beyond the physical limitations of our small, tiny city-state island, and it mysteriously also deepens the roots of our young country. It exists beyond the realms of material goods, physical infrastructure and GDP growth.

And so I return to the discussion on the pillars of MCCY. The four pillars of MCCY may be more software than hardware but they play a big part in holding the Singapore Tapestry together. Sports, arts, culture and a shared heritage are the avenues which help connect people and lead us to a better understanding of ourselves and of who and where we are in our community.

In this vein, MCCY will play a part in this journey of deepening our roots and increasing our common spaces so that a more inclusive and caring Singapore will come into being.

Our SG Arts Plan, SG Heritage Plan and Sports Vision 2030 are just some of the master plans that MCCY will be working on with Singaporeans from all walks of life to build a better home together.

Mdm Deputy Speaker, I would like to end by returning to the basics of what makes Singapore, well, Singapore.

Our country has been forged from our shared belief in the tenets of democracy, multi-culturalism, multiracialism, religious harmony, rule of law and meritocracy. Our security framework ensures our political existence as a nation while our economic activity supports our physical prosperity. These two are critical but are in themselves insufficient for our long-term survival as a sovereign and thriving city state.

There is always that something more, something abstract that makes our nation great. In our case, I think it is the heart and spirit of Singapore which is embodied by the Singapore Tapestry – a tapestry that is woven out of diversity and adversity, its colours brightened by the idealism and energy of our youth, its threads tightly bound by a shared sense of community, culture and, ultimately, destiny.

To our youths, I want to say this. Do not stop dreaming and never lose that youthful sense of optimism. This is not a lost generation despite what some have said. This, in fact, is a generation of opportunity. Whether you want to be an engineer or a dancer, a sports man or woman, a doctor or a content creator, stay true and committed to your goals. We will work with you to realise your dreams. And one day, you can look back and tell your own kids of how mom and dad overcame the crisis of a generation.

How did they do that? By uniting with fellow Singaporeans and by leaving behind a more beautiful and tightly knitted Tapestry as a legacy for generations of Singaporeans to come. Madam, I support the Motion. [Applause.]

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Ms Sylvia Lim.

5.34 pm

Ms Sylvia Lim (Aljunied): Thank you, Deputy Speaker. I would like to make some clarifications and also seek some clarifications from the Minister for MCCY.

First, to clarify my own speech, which he referred to. Certainly, I do not take our multiracialism for granted. In fact, in my speech, I did acknowledge that it is a difficult task that the Government has to foster a Singapore identity in a heterogeneous population and I do not take anything away from the Government's concerns. I think I did say that in my speech.

But at the same time, I think my point was that we should not keep talking ourselves down or be held back by the past. I think the Minister himself acknowledges this fact when he says that we are a Singapore Tapestry, we are not ossified. There is a fabric of hope, he mentioned. So, would he not agree with me then that to keep this Tapestry alive, really, we have to refresh our conversations from time to time about such matters. We cannot be ossified by the past.

About the Ethnic Integration Policy (EIP), we all know the avowed purposes of it. But I think he will also agree and probably has come across cases where there is economic hardship caused to minority families due to the nature of the limitations placed on them when they try to sell their flats. My concern is that if the unfairness is not addressed, the resentment might fester and in fact it might become quite a dangerous problem. I wonder what the Minister has to say about that.

Last of all, perhaps, for now, I hope that the Government is not saying that its mind is closed on these matters because if they want to engage across generations who may have different aspirations, then we all need to keep an open mind and from time to time, we have to be prepared to look at things without being held back.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Minister Edwin Tong.

Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Mdm Deputy Speaker, yes, Ms Lim did acknowledge the concerns that the Government has in dealing with this problem, dealing with this issue, and also acknowledged that this is not something that we can change overnight. In fact, I think I heard her say in her speech that some believe we may never get there as well.

But nonetheless, it is a process that has to constantly evolve and certainly the minds are not closed to this conversation. That is why I have pitched in my speech that we must continue to have active discourse, civic participation, gain new ideas and constantly look at the problem.

To the Member's third point – whether or not there are difficulties, economic or otherwise, with the problem, it is something that we have worked into the system and into the scheme for some time. It is a question of the priorities that we wish to put but also at the same time, some of these difficulties can form the conversations that we discuss – look at the trade-offs, look at the balances that we have to put in place and weave that into our discussion as to whether something ought to be changed, something ought to be tweaked. But not at any one point in time forgetting that the overarching and overriding concerns that we have is that we must build a nation that respects each race, that each race has a place at the table and that every race must be encouraged to and indeed share the common Singapore identity.

That is the overarching and overriding purpose. Within that constraint, we can have the conversations that Ms Lim spoke about. We can look at the priorities that she spoke about and we can look at the different considerations. I want to assure Ms Lim that the minds are not closed on these issues.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Ms Sylvia Lim.

Ms Sylvia Lim: One final clarification for the Minister. I think if there were to be different competing priorities, may I ask that the Government look at the EIP as it is implemented now. I think there are many cases where families have lost out economically significantly, due to the quotas being reached. As I said, I believe that this policy needs to be adjusted if it is not abolished. Otherwise, I believe the consequences are very serious on many families who, since I have made that speech, have written to me with their own experiences of the policy affecting them and the price differentials in the sale of flats was even higher than what I had encountered before I made this speech.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Minister Edwin Tong.

Mr Edwin Tong Chun Fai: Yes, Madam. Yes, certainly as I mentioned earlier, this is something that is within the factors that we will consider. I want to emphasise that we need to look at why we do something and the purpose and objective of the policy. Within that, I think we have acknowledged that it is an intrusive social policy. It has always been looked at as a balancing mechanism at ensuring that we do not tilt in favour of one side more so than another. It is a factor of looking at the balance rather than the individual specifics and making sure that we achieve the overall balance and objective that I outlined.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Minister Maliki Osman.

5.40 pm

The Minister, Prime Minister's Office and Second Minister for Education and Foreign Affairs (Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman): Mdm Deputy Speaker, I rise in support of the Motion. Today, I would like to share my aspirations for a fair and equitable society, with opportunities for all. One that is anchored by an education system that celebrates diversity and a social support system that recognises that while we have similar ambitions, we are not all starting from the same place.

Many of my generation benefited from the broad-based social uplift that began post-independence. Our lives improved and we experienced first-hand Singapore's journey from third world to first. We know and believe that the Singapore story has been one of opportunity.

I entered the field of social work when I entered university because of my passion to help families improve their lives and enable children to do better than their parents.

Over the years, I have seen families with multiple and complex problems – drug addictions, divorce, domestic violence, children dropping out of school. I have seen how these and many other problems adversely affected them. Yet, with the right support and motivation, I have also seen how they overcame the odds and emerged stronger. Of course, it was not easy. They had to work hard. We had to spend more time and resources to support and to work with them to resolve their problems. But it was all worthwhile to see how their lives transformed.

But there are also families where the problems appear entrenched, sometimes spanning generations. I am sure Members of the House would have met some of them. For these families, we need to support them better and sometimes differently – to walk that journey at a suitable pace and give them hope at every step of the way towards a better future.

I have sometimes asked myself, as many in the House have – what more can we do to help these families? Does our support come with too many strings attached that they retreat and do not want to seek help? Are the requirements we ask of them set too high? Indeed we must continue to seek ways to uplift our families.

On reflection, I believe that there are two crucial ingredients required for families to seize opportunities and progress.

First, we must not undermine the importance of self-determination – the belief in the possibility of a brighter future and the willingness to put in the hard work that is needed to get there. This is the spirit of our Pioneer Generation that I have seen embodied in many of the families that I have worked with. It is the spirit that my father had taught me and the one that I pass on to my children.

But at the same time, we know the challenges that these families face can be significant, complex and overwhelming. We must provide an environment that enables and empowers them, and gives them hope and opportunities to succeed. Our systems and structures need to support this. This is the second crucial ingredient.

Looking back at the last few decades, many will agree that Singapore has done fairly well to ensure broad-based opportunities for our people.

We have seen the results – more have moved up and experienced middle-class standards. Over the last decade, median income has increased by 32% in real terms – a substantial increase. Educational progression levels have also improved substantially. While only 22% of those born in the 1940s progressed to post-Secondary education, 79% of those born in the 1970s did so. This has increased to well over 90% today.

The increases in income and education are not only substantial but also substantive – they enable people to have more choices and resources to chart their own future.

Our society has also been relatively mobile. A study by MOF has shown that in Singapore, about 14% of those with parents who were in the last income quintile when they were growing up, end up in the top quintile of income earners as adults. This is higher than in other developed countries like the US and Denmark.

Yet as much as we want our citizens to progress together, for some, the path takes longer and is more complex to navigate. And this leads to inequality.

Inequality exists in all societies. The issue is how wide the gap is. Like many cities, our inequality has been relatively high, but we have put in place a progressive system of taxes and transfers to moderate it.

We have kept our tax burden on our lower and middle income low, while providing support to ensure that they can access basic goods like housing, healthcare and education.

Last year, our Gini coefficient of 0.398, after taxes and transfers, was at its lowest in almost two decades. But reducing inequality and sustaining social mobility will get more difficult with time. This is a challenge faced by many advanced countries, not just Singapore. Many in this House have spoken about this topic. Let me assure Members of this House that this is something the Government continues to pay very close attention to.

Unlike in Singapore’s early years, where most of us were from humble backgrounds, over time, we have done well, and many have been able to pass on the advantages to their children. This is understandable, as we all want the best for them. But across generations, those at the bottom will face increasingly unequal starting blocks.

This has been exacerbated by globalisation and digitalisation, which while presenting new economic opportunities, may also worsen wage dispersion, disrupt existing occupations and threaten to leave behind those who are unable to cope in the new economy.

So, we need to monitor, review and adapt our policies, wherever needed, to ensure that they continue to serve our needs well, and that we continue to provide the right environment for families to seize opportunities and move up in life.

Let me now highlight five key areas. First, investing in the fundamentals. Second, ensuring progress. Third, equalising opportunities. Fourth, building a society of equals. And fifth, preserving race relations.

First, we must continue to invest in the fundamentals. We need to ensure that all Singaporeans, regardless of income, can continue to meet their basic needs, and achieve a reasonable standard of living.

How do we define "basic" and "reasonable"? These mean different things to different people – what is a necessity for one, may be a good-to-have for another. Over time, these standards – on education, healthcare, housing, transport, food – will continue to change, and our expectations of them will change too. And because there are different definitions of what is "basic" or "reasonable", expectations on what the Government and the community should provide also differ.

Despite these differences in views and changes in expectations, it is important that we agree on the fundamentals of our social compact, and I believe we can.

These include: for our young children, it is about giving them an education that will develop their character and prepare them well as adults and lifelong learners; for our youth, that they can advance through a vibrant job market and pursue their passions; for the young couples, that they can have a home to call their own and affordably raise a family; for our adults, that they can have job security and prepare sufficiently for their retirement; for our seniors, that they can grow old with their loved ones beside them and with dignity.

We want to ensure that these are achievable goals for all Singaporeans, regardless of their background.

That is why we invest heavily in education at all levels for all Singaporeans and we set aside more resources for those from low-income families.

Low-income families, including those living in HDB rental flats or receiving ComCare assistance, pay as low as $3 per month for full-day childcare at Anchor Operator pre-schools. They also pay zero school fees for Primary, Secondary, Pre-University, and ITE education, and receive additional support for other school expenses.

We recently enhanced bursaries for our full-time diploma and undergraduate students. The cash outlay for fees for low-income students has been brought down to $150 a year for Polytechnics, and $2,000 a year for most undergraduate courses.

Our investments extend beyond school, to encourage lifelong learning. Through the SkillsFuture movement, we support our workers to re-skill and up-skill, so that they can find good jobs and seize opportunities in growth sectors in the economy.

Public healthcare today is heavily subsidised – up to 80% – and those who are still unable to afford their bills can apply for MediFund assistance.

We have one of the highest rates of home ownership around the world and provide significant housing subsidies – such that the majority of first-timer families can pay their mortgage instalments using CPF, with little or no cash outlay.

But even as we continue to invest in these fundamentals, our conversations on the kind of social compact we want must continue.

There needs to be societal consensus on what is a basic and reasonable standard of living that we commit to provide to all Singaporeans, bearing in mind that increases in support and benefits provided are not free, but ultimately paid for by everyone through taxes.

We must remain committed to the fundamental aim of Singapore being a place where our efforts are rewarded not just in economic terms, but in the quality of life we enjoy; and a society where everyone has a place that is valued equally.

Second, to achieve greater social mobility and reduce inequality in a sustainable way, we need to ensure progress for all. Relative social mobility is important, but by itself, and its focus on comparison, it is always a zero-sum game, where a step forward for one is a step backwards for another. We fail to see that both can actually still be doing well and better in their own ways.

Indeed, for mobility to be meaningful, we also need absolute mobility – a system where everyone is progressing together. Senior Minister Tharman has likened this to a moving escalator. If the escalator is moving up, being overtaken by someone matters less. The differences between each step is less stark because overall, our lives are still improving.

Even as we deal with the COVID-19 crisis, we must press on with our long-term commitment to build a strong and dynamic economy that can give our workers good jobs, reasonable wages, and sustained wage increases with commensurate increase in productivity and skills.

At the same time, we may have to accept that rapid growth may be more difficult, as our society matures. For those that grew up in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s – like me – we started from a low base. We saw significant improvements in our lives and made a quantum leap in a generation.

We are now at a much higher base, and we may not be able to replicate the same quantum leap of improvements. Steady progress is still possible if we continue to invest in creating good jobs for our people and supporting our industries to transform and remain relevant to the world. This has taken on greater urgency given the unprecedented challenges posed by COVID-19.

In this new phase of development, can Singaporeans’ aspirations continue to be met?

My view is that our well-being and success should not be defined solely by the academic qualifications that we possess, or how much money we earn, or how big our house is, or what kind of car that we drive. It is something we must define for ourselves. And we know this must evolve with successive generations based on the circumstances they grow up in.

Third, while we cannot ensure equal outcomes, we must strive for greater equality of opportunity. This is not just about access to education, health, and other public goods, which I spoke about earlier. But rather, that our starting point in life should not dictate our ending point, and that with hard work, ability, and ambition, we can succeed. We must strive as much as possible to level uneven starting blocks, and to provide opportunities at every stage of life.

MOE has made significant moves in recent years to address this, and in the years ahead, we will continue to do more, to give all our students opportunities to excel.

First, we have broadened our definition of merit – to go beyond grades and paper qualifications, to skills and ability – to allow more to access opportunities in society.

We have made major changes across our education system – our PSLE scoring system, how we admit students into schools and institutes of higher learning – to recognise the diverse skills and talents of our students.

We are also providing multiple pathways and opportunities to cater to our students’ different learning styles, abilities, and interests, and to allow them to pursue their diverse aspirations and achieve their fullest potential.

A key part of this is our efforts to move beyond streaming, to full subject-based banding.

We have also been enhancing porosity and creating more pathways to the higher education sector. For example, through the expansion of aptitude-based admissions, including for working adults.

We are also creating more pathways for young Singaporeans, including Polytechnic graduates, to take up a publicly-funded degree. Our Autonomous University Cohort Participation Rate, or CPR, was 27% in 2012. This year, we expect it to increase beyond the originally planned 40%, by up to two percentage points.

Over the years, the increase in our CPR has benefited Polytechnic graduates. Around one in three students admitted to our Autonomous Universities today are Polytechnic graduates, up from one in four in 2012. On top of this 40% CPR, we also cater another 10% for working adults to upgrade to a university degree. This is real progress, far from tokenism.

All this is also in the spirit of the SkillsFuture movement, which represents a continuous and broad meritocracy where people can continue to learn and access new opportunities throughout life.

But, fundamentally, for real change to be felt, society must be ready to accept and act on broader definitions of merit. This has to be reflected in our personal choices: as students, choosing an educational path not because it is the most popular, but because it is aligned with our interests and passions; as parents, giving our children the encouragement and space to do so; and as employers, in the way we hire and recognise our workers.

Second, on top of expanding opportunities and broadening merit throughout life, at MOE, we are investing additional resources and effort to uplift the disadvantaged and help them benefit from these opportunities. We are enhancing access to quality and affordable pre-school education, to temper inequalities from the start, and lay a strong foundation for every child. By 2025, 80% of pre-schoolers will have a place in a Government-supported pre-school, up from just over 50% today.

Children from low-income families also receive upstream support through programmes like KidSTART, which supports parents in areas such as health, social and child development.

To ensure that every child can develop to their full potential, we provide more manpower, including teachers, and funding to schools with greater needs, to allow them to provide effective targeted interventions. These include programmes to support academically weaker students, as well as priority access to after-school care and subsidies for student care fees for those from disadvantaged families. Many of these programmes, such as literacy and numeracy support programmes, are conducted in smaller pull-out classes of eight to ten students, to provide more focused support for lower progress students.

For students with special educational needs, we ensure that they are supported – whether they study in our mainstream schools, where they are supported by teachers trained in special needs and Allied Educators in Learning and Behavioural Support; or in our Government-funded Special Education schools, which are a more customised learning environment where they can thrive.

At the same time, we are thinking hard about how to transform the way our programmes are delivered, to ensure that we can better journey alongside those that need help, so that no one is left behind. One example is UPLIFT – or the Uplifting Pupils in Life and Inspiring Families Taskforce. Through UPLIFT, we are looking at the unique circumstances of such students and their families, and ensuring that they get the help that they need.

First, we are going upstream, to strengthen support to those who show early signs of emerging issues such as irregular attendance in school. By identifying and addressing their needs early, we can build in protective factors and provide sustainable support to prevent their situation from deteriorating further.

Second, we are strengthening partnerships across Government, and with the community, to provide wrap-around support for disadvantaged students and their families.

One key initiative is the UPLIFT Community Pilot, where an UPLIFT Town-Level Coordinator works closely with disadvantaged students and their families to link them up to local community programmes and resources, such as social workers and social service agencies.

We will also explore expanding UPLIFT efforts to the Polytechnics and ITE students.

Ultimately, the question is the kind of society that we want to be collectively.

Just last week, I asked a few youths in my constituency about what a fair and equal society meant to them. One of them told me that she had felt looked down upon when her schoolmates found out that she was receiving financial assistance. Another shared that he felt an invisible divide between himself and some of his other University mates, because he had come from a so called "less prestigious" school. Both of them were passionate about their desire to change society, so that others would not have to feel the same way as they did. This conversation left me somewhat unsettled, about how material divides can translate to social divides, yet still reassured by the drive of our youths to better society and make a difference.

Ensuring opportunities in society cannot just be about systems and structures. It is also about the values that shape our actions and define us. A society of opportunity must be undergirded by: first, egalitarianism – where we treat everyone as equals regardless of their background, with respect and dignity; second, humility – where we recognise that our achievements in life are not just our own, but those of our families and the communities that have supported us; third, responsibility – where we care for not just ourselves, but for our fellow man and our environment. These values are both organic, and carefully nurtured. Education has always played a critical role in the latter.

Through our Character and Citizenship Education or CCE curriculum, we strive to instil in our students a strong sense of values and purpose, so that they can prepare for a dynamic future, where issues of diversity and inclusiveness may increasingly come to the fore. These values cannot be just learned within school, but also applied in life.

We have revamped the CCE curriculum to go beyond the classroom. We strive to have our students internalise values into their hearts and not just in their minds. We hope that as they go out and clean our beaches, they will come home and contribute to ensuring the cleanliness of their own neighbourhoods; or as they spend time in senior homes, that they will come home and connect with the lonely elderly in their own neighbourhoods.

We want to encourage our students to engage in deeper conversations about topics such as equality and inclusivity, to relate these to real-life issues, and take concrete steps to address them and put their values into action. This is really the heart of our education system.

What is core to building a fair and equitable society is to strengthen our racial and religious harmony, and our multicultural ethos. We all want the ideals of a "race-blind" society, one where there is no racial prejudice and discrimination in our attitudes and practices, including in the way we treat one another, and select people for jobs. But we must not confuse this with being blind to the genuine differences and contexts across races, neither should we ignore or underestimate the severe and sometimes unintended negative consequences that can easily occur with unrestrained comments on race relations and related issues.

It is in this spirit of respect for all races, social cohesion, nationhood, and togetherness, that I want to reiterate several fundamental principles that I hope we will continue to agree on.

First, to be an inclusive society, we must accept that there are differences across races, and approach these differences constructively. These could be differences in cultural traditions and practices, emphasis on priorities and what matters more in life, but also the specific community problems or issues that members of a race group find that they have to grapple with, that require dedicated attention and assistance.

An inclusive Singapore must recognise, appreciate, understand and accommodate these differences, and allow this positive sense of racial identity to exist and develop, and have a comprehensive set of policies and community initiatives, including self-help groups, to address issues and be part of a larger ecosystem that provides help and solves problems effectively and with empathy.

Second, from our own individual experiences, as well as psychological research, we know that there is in fact no inherent contradiction for an individual to have both a strong racial identity and a strong Singaporean identity.

To be truly Singaporean does not at all mean that we must forgo or dilute our racial identity, or pretend that we are not of a particular race, or cannot see the race of a fellow Singaporean. On the contrary, to be truly Singaporean is to understand and respect these race differences. So, having the CMIO framework does not make us less Singaporean and doing away with it does not mean we will become more Singaporean either.

This leads to my third point. We need to be aware and respect differences. This common attitude has contributed to the richness of Singapore’s culture, and did not mask the race groups as if races and their differences do not exist. Our policies, practices and public discussions must avoid playing up misunderstanding ethnic differences, as well as not deny and mask genuine differences.

Finally, how we discuss issues about race publicly and push the boundaries of dialogue will evolve with time, but we must always remember to put in concerted effort to be inclusive, especially when we interact in common spaces, and build mutual understanding. The underlying value and guiding principle must be mutual respect for differences and strengthening social cohesion.

Mdm Deputy Speaker, being born both a Singaporean and a Malay in the year of Independence and growing up in multi-cultural Singapore, I have a strong sense of identity as both a Singaporean and a Malay at the same time, and I am proud to be a Malay Singaporean. And I believe I speak for many in my Malay community. We are proud of our rich Malay culture and heritage and beautiful Malay language. Now, allow me to speak in my Malay language.

(In Malay): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Mr Speaker, to build a fairer and equal more equitable society requires everyone to play a part. Apart from the Government, our communities also play a key role. I will now discuss three areas that we will require to strengthen our Community's Core.

First, religious leadership. Last year during Minister Masagos’ official visit to Egypt, the Grand Imam of Al Azhar and the Grand Mufti of Egypt shared their views that our Malay/Muslim community is the model of a successful minority Muslim community living and functioning in a plural society. This is because our Muslim community lived harmoniously with other communities in Singapore. Other foreign visitors have marvelled at the modern facilities that they saw in our mosques and at Muis, a statutory board, to oversee the religious needs and development of the community.

What we have here is not always the case in other countries, where there are cultural rifts between races, where minorities may be marginalised, and often times, socioeconomic opportunities and the aspiration to succeed differs with other communities.

It is a result of over 55 years of painstaking effort and belief in the common desired outcome of racial and religious harmony, supported by policies that may not be popular but necessary. Every community understands the importance of placing this above their individual needs and are prepared to make adjustments and at times, sacrifices.

Our Malay/Muslim community has also played its part. We have been committed to building a Community of Success, forging a progressive identity in a plural and contemporary Singapore.

Like all other religious groups, Muslims are free to practice their religious beliefs and customs. However, maintaining our racial and religious harmony requires continuous effort on all fronts and by every community. We need to adapt quickly to evolving issues and challenges as we maintain harmony. Interfaith and inter racial relations, are dynamic and evolve over time. These relations can be influenced by regional and global trends, creating fault lines. These fault lines can easily be exploited by internal and external elements, if we are not cautious or careful.

To help our community navigate such issues, Muis envisioned the Singapore Muslim Identity, which details the 10 desired attributes of Singaporean Muslims. This vision and its attributes have guided us, a minority Muslim community in a multicultural society, encouraging us to be progressive, adaptive and inclusive in our religious life and live harmoniously in Singapore’s multiracial and multireligious society.

Living together can sometimes give rise to disagreements, despite our best intentions. We must manage these difficult conversations sensitively, via constructive dialogue on our differences while preserving the social cohesion that binds us together as Singaporeans.

We need a strong religious leadership core, who can help the Malay/Muslim community navigate these sensitive issues. Mr Fahmi Aliman asked about the importance of equipping our future religious leaders with the right skills, so that they can provide strong guidance to the community within our country's unique context. That is why I chaired the Committee on Future Asatizah, or COFA, last year. COFA looks into transforming the religious sector, to ensure that our religious teachers keep pace with the latest developments in science, in our demographics and socio-economic issues, and its effect on the community. This enables them to lead and guide competently and confidently.

For example, our asatizah demonstrated their optimistic and progressive attitude during this COVID-19 pandemic.

The advent of COVID-19 meant that we could no longer go to the mosque or attend face-to-face religious classes. Some of our younger asatizah, particularly in the Asatizah Youth Network, had already been doing extensive engagements on social media. The rest of our much older asatizah were quick to upgrade themselves and pick up new digital skills, so that they could conduct online sermons and classes, to ensure continuous access to religious content for our community.

The Office of the Mufti and our senior asatizah worked with medical professionals, demonstrating their confidence and leadership in issuing religious guidance on issues such as the suspension of Friday prayers in the mosques and deferring this year's Haj pilgrimage. Even though these were difficult decisions, and I am grateful that our religious leadership took early and decisive action.

The essence of leadership is the ability to make sound and well-considered decisions, even if they are unpopular and are difficult to be accepted by some segments of the community, but should be done in the interest of the larger community and society. Our asatizah made these decisions as they understood the context of virus transmission in Singapore. We are also aware that religious authorities in other countries, made the similar decisions, in the months that followed. The COVID-19 pandemic posed unprecedented challenges. Therefore, our future asatizah will face unprecedented dilemmas and challenges, and they need to be ready to equip themselves with knowledge in new areas, as well as adopt new methods in providing leadership and guidance to members of the community, in a fast-changing and uncertain world.

Second, our efforts to help the vulnerable to achieve their aspirations. Our community has done well over the past decades. For instance, now more than 90% of Malay students in each cohort attained post-secondary education; the number of those who attained first class honours multiplied 10 times in 7 years; one in three of our workers are in PMET jobs.

However, there are still those who are saddled with multiple social challenges – impacting adversely on their children’s growth and potential. We will continue to help them. For children of these families, we will strengthen our support through UPLIFT, managed by the Ministry of Education, in collaboration with the Ministry of Social and Family Development.

Through UPLIFT, we will approach children who show early signs of emerging issues, such as irregular attendance.

We will also strengthen partnerships across Government, and with the community, to mobilise energy and resources and provide comprehensive support for students and their families.

We understand the challenges of these families. Many face social challenges. They have worked hard to take care of their basic needs. Often, they are unable to contemplate longer-term issues, such as education, upskilling and financial planning. They live from paycheck to paycheck, and COVID-19 has only made their situation more complex and challenging.

I am often told about their dilemma – many are self-employed and do food deliveries. Their income is quite attractive. I was told that if they work hard, they can earn as much as $2,500 a month, in cash. Their hours are long, from morning until late at night. However, they are actually at a disadvantage and lose a lot of benefits, compared to those who take on permanent employment – such as employer's CPF contribution (17%), paid leave (at least 14 days), hospitalization leave (60 days), and better career opportunities, but with a lower take-home pay. The main issue is that if they do not work, there is no pay, for instance, if they fall ill. The risk is high to themselves, their family and their own finances. This is a real trade-off for the family – whether they can pay the bills, or support their children’s education and other longer-term needs.

I understand these trade-offs are never easy for them. Yet I worry if these families continue with this trajectory.

But if we rally together as a community, we can help relieve some of these pressures for fellow members of our community and citizens; to stabilise them and work together to chart a brighter future for their children.

The third aspect that we need to strengthen is our spirit of self-help, with strong institutions like M³ (Mendaki, MUIS, and Mesra) and other Malay/Muslim organisations serving the community – particularly helping to uplift vulnerable families.

Under the M³ initiative, the Bersamamu programme supports soon-to-wed and newly-wed couples to start strong families. Community volunteers act as "marital first responders" to provide basic marriage advice to vulnerable Malay/Muslim couples. With a more comprehensive wrap-around care, these couples will have early access to guidance and support as they meet various challenges.

We will also ensure our community has access to available opportunities to improve their employability. Thus, to complement the national SkillsFuture movement, the community set up the SG Teguh Bersatu Taskforce, to support those affected by COVID-19. The Taskforce which comprises Mendaki SENSE, the Singapore Malay Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SMCCI), and other Malay/Muslim Organisations, as well as NTUC, aim to encourage our community to reskill and upskill to enhance their employability, build resilience and provide assistance to the community.

For example, Mendaki SENSE organised the JUMP virtual career fair which offered more than 3,000 job vacancies across various sectors. More than 10,000 job applications have been received and 600 job seekers have been successfully placed into jobs so far.

KURNIA@WGS is yet another initiative that demonstrates the strength of our community – with eight Malay/Muslim organisations working hand in hand to help families seeking help at WGS via a one stop centre concept.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough on many within our community. People are losing their jobs and the economy is increasingly bleak. But we quickly banded together to as a community to mobilise our resources to help one another.

For instance, with the support of community contributions, Muis administered the COVID-19 Muis Support Fund to support those within the community who face severe financial hardships due to the pandemic. Muis received over 7,700 applications throughout the application period.

MENDAKI has allocated $1.9 million to support, among other things, students' Home-Based Learning by leasing laptops, and providing interim allowance to ITE students who have lost their part-time jobs or if their families had income loss amid the pandemic.

Taken together, these efforts demonstrate the strength of the Singapore Malay community in being self-reliant, while working together with the perseverance of every member of the community. Through this, we grow stronger as a Community of Success – one that is adaptable and stands united in overcoming any challenges, while contributing to the common good of Singapore. This is the impact when we are self-reliant – we are able to find solutions to problems and challenges we face while contributing to the development of the nation. These efforts exemplify the spirit of the Singapore Together movement, where Singaporeans partner with the Government, to own, shape and act on our shared future together.

(In English): Mdm Deputy Speaker, now let me conclude in English. I started my speech by talking about how the Singapore story has been one of opportunity. It has allowed many of us from humble beginnings to not only do well today but also do good to uplift others.

But like many advanced societies, inequality and social mobility is a challenge and the path ahead will not be an easy one. We will need to decide how to define the basic commitment that we will provide all citizens what our aspirations are for ourselves and for our society, and how best to get there.

We will have to make difficult trade-offs, in how we allocate limited resources among competing needs, and balance across conflicting objectives. We will need courage to make tough decisions, boldness to change the status quo, and humility to listen to feedback and suggestions to improve.

Above all, we must continue to put the interests of Singapore and the well-being of Singaporeans first. We will need to build an environment that not only supports us to seize opportunities, but also equips us with what behavioural science calls “psychological capital” – the self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience – that we need, to adapt and emerge stronger and better.

The crux of this is harnessing the diversity on which Singapore has been built, and how we have thrived all these years. This diversity has enabled us to not only be competitive in the world, but also colourful as a nation. Our success in creating a society where people of different backgrounds live harmoniously must be translated into our education system, our workplace, and indeed, our society, where what makes us different individually, makes us stronger as a nation. Mdm Deputy Speaker, I support the Motion. [Applause.]

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Ms Sylvia Lim.

6.32 pm

Ms Sylvia Lim: Thank you, Mdm Deputy Speaker. First, let me say that I appreciate where Minister Maliki is coming from. In fact, we are of the same age. So, I think we do understand each other to a large extent.

To clarify, he earlier mentioned that we should approach society's future with boldness. And certainly, I think all of us celebrate the ethnic diversity. I do not think any of us is pretending that we are ethnically uniform or that there are no racial differences. But I wanted to ask him whether, for the community expertise that he mentioned that is in the self-help groups, is it not possible to bring everybody under one national umbrella so that we do not lose that expertise in that sense? At the same time, with such a national body, there will be the advantage of pooling of national resources from the whole population that will be contributing to this pool. And it will also have the additional uplifting effect for some that they are actually contributing to a race-blind fund.

I wanted to ask whether he thinks that this discussion can be opened, and I think will be interesting to find out whether Singaporeans prefer to contribute monthly to a race-blind fund or to contribute monthly to a community-based fund.

Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman: I thank Ms Sylvia Lim for her comments. Indeed, we are in the same age group, born in the same year, and went through similar experiences, I guess.

The self-help group concept has worked for over almost 40 years now. MENDAKI started in 1982. Because of the success of MENDAKI and ability for us to reach out to the Malay community together with support from the Government, SINDA and CDAC were formed.

Today, I am sure Ms Sylvia Lim also knows that we do not work in silos. Over the years, we have made efforts to work together. But while we work together in different platforms, we also recognise that the uniqueness of each self-help group does serve our respective community better to a certain extent. Because we do understand our cultural nuances, we do understand our cultural history, we do understand what we stand for as individual communities.

So, I think it is not about whether we want to pull everybody together and just have one race-blind fund, but it is also to be able to give each community the space to understand their respective issues, their respective challenges, work in their own pace and find their own strengths. This is what we often talk about – unity in diversity – and I think we should continue to celebrate this diversity.

I personally have been involved with MENDAKI. For many, many years, I have worked with SINDA; I have worked with CDAC. We acknowledge the value of working together. But I think my personal belief is that we should continue along this line, and where possible, where we can galvanise our resources together, we can do that.

Today, the tuition programme, for example, we have seen great coordination – any child who would like to participate in any of the tuition classes can participate in a tuition class organised by CDAC, SINDA or MENDAKI based on the proximity of where he or she lives. But backend, MENDAKI, SINDA and CDAC will then proceed with the necessary administrative processes that they have put in place.

So, there are already efforts at collaboration, and I think it has worked well, and I think is useful for Ms Sylvia Lim to also perhaps get further feedback from the other self-help groups, and I think we should continue to allow this diversity, to continue in the way we have managed issues faced by the respective communities.

Ms Sylvia Lim: I thank the Minister. Certainly, I would be most keen to take feedback from all groups available. But I certainly hope, in the same vein and more importantly, that the Government will also have a sensing with Singaporeans, and particularly the younger generation, whether this is the model that they want to continue forever.

Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman: I want to assure Ms Sylvia Lim that we have been talking to the younger generations for the many years we have been in politics and even before that. Those in the younger generation do also grow up, and when they grow up, sometimes their perspective change too.

Today, we will continue to talk to our younger generation. We have the MENDAKI Club, which is the younger generation of young Malay activists; CDAC has their younger Chinese activist club, and so does SINDA. I think each of our communities do talk to each other; each of the members of the young communities in MENDAKI Club, CDAC as well as SINDA will continue to talk and engage in conversations. The Government continues to engage them too. And I think we remain open to look at what evolves.

My point is that as we talk about all this amalgamation as suggested by Ms Sylvia Lim, we do have to also look at the uniqueness of this cultural nuances that is very necessary, sometimes, to find those solutions required for the respective communities.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Mr Leon Perera.

Mr Leon Perera: Thank you, Mdm Deputy Speaker. Just one point of clarification to the hon Minister, Mr Maliki Osman. He spoke about the continued relevance in the eyes of the Government of the CMIO framework that we are members of different ethnic groups in terms of how we are viewed by Government systems and processes and so on, and that it is important to keep that in mind.

Over time we have seen more and more interracial marriages between Singaporeans of different ethnic groups. The Government has more recently allowed double-barrelled ethnic classification on the NRIC. I think that has become a process that has gained some momentum. As time goes by, we may even find more marriages between a Singaporean from an interracial marriage and another Singaporean from an interracial marriage.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Mr Perera, please ask your question.

Mr Leon Perera: Yes. My question is: how will the Government adapt to these changing realities? Would children who are offsprings of such marriages be asked to classify themselves as "Others", or how would that be approached?

Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman: I think as the Member has rightly put it already, they are allowed to decide for themselves. The parents are allowed to decide for themselves because of the double-barrelled classification policy that we have put in place. So, I do not think it is an issue as to how the children should identify themselves.

When I come across mixed marriages, both parents are equally proud to want their children to grow up in the respective cultures. I think that provides diversity for the child growing up in such a family. So, I will leave it to the children and the double-barrelled policy allow them to make the decision on which identity they want to take up.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Mr Leong Mun Wai.

Mr Leong Mun Wai (Non-Constituency Member): Thank you, Mdm Deputy Speaker. I have one clarification for the Minister. I have heard from what he said that there are few things that we have to take note of and cultivate in a person in education, like in character, moral values, intercultural interactions and also lifelong learning.

I think the important thing is while we have all these ideals and objectives that we want to achieve, what are the supporting changes that we are going to make to the curriculum, the delivery, the assessment and the pathways.

Of course, I think the Minister has covered some of them. If you can share more on those, I would appreciate very much.

Dr Mohamad Maliki Bin Osman: I think I would encourage Mr Leong to raise this at another platform because I think this is not the right forum to elaborate on what the Ministry is doing.

But suffice to say that I have shared in my speech that we are looking at education beyond just the academic. About character building, I have elaborated quite significantly on Citizenship and Character Education. I have talked about experiential learning. There is a lot of progress that has been done in the way we educate our children, because we know these are very important skillsets and values that are required for children in the future.

Much has been talked about in terms of changes that we have put in place in the education system. I invite Mr Leong to look up some of this information. If he needs further information at another platform, I invite him to file questions or raise some of these issues. I just find that this may not be the right forum because I think there could be many other speakers. I also invite Mr Leong to look at my speech again and see how I have elaborated on the various changes we have put in place in our education system.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Minister Iswaran.

The Minister for Communications and Information (Mr S Iswaran): I wanted to ask a clarification of Ms Sylvia Lim. The reason I rise is because I was the first CEO of SINDA. At the time that I was CEO of SINDA, we worked collaboratively with MENDAKI which was helmed by Mr Zainal Abidin Rasheed. We worked with the CDAC which was led by Mr Chan Soo Sen, and also with the Eurasian Association, which was, at that time, led by the Chairman, the father of our Deputy Speaker, Mr Timothy de Souza.

I understand where she is coming from about the questions that have been raised. When I was asked to be the CEO, I had the same questions. But I think after involvement and seeing the evolution and not just in individual silos, but I think in the collaborative way in which our self-help groups have operated – be it in the context of educational support, be it in the sharing of expertise, be it in the area of working with the Government on various policy initiatives, I think it is fair to say that our self-help groups have not been ossified. They have evolved. There has been a response to not just the feedback from population, but also from the evolving needs of the different communities and how we can work together.

I think the Member is also fully aware of the range of programmes that are now being mounted individually and collectively by these self-help groups, and the number of people that are being helped.

With that understanding, with that appreciation of the evolution, the question I have for her is: does she feel that we would be better off without the self-help groups? Is that her assertion?

Ms Sylvia Lim: Mdm Deputy Speaker, I respect Minister Iswaran's experience and that is his perspective from having worked in SINDA before as the CEO. His question is whether I am positing that society be better off be better off without the self-help groups. First of all, in my speech, I had acknowledged the good work done by the self-help groups, especially for the under-privileged and children in particular. But the question, of course, is whether similar outcomes or even better outcomes can be achieved with an amalgamation.

This is something I am calling for an open conversation about. I am not trying to be prescriptive to say that the answer is to amalgamate. But it was put forward as a suggestion from me as something that could be discussed in the national exercise and that was the spirit of my speech.

Mr S Iswaran: So, I take it that the Member's position is not that she is advocating — because an amalgation is an effective dissolution of the existing entities. So, assuming she is not recommending that, her proposition is that we should have an on-going dialogue in terms of how we can work closer together. And that in fact is what has been working all along. That is why the self-help groups have evolved the way they have. I am not quite clear what the Member's proposition is, or is there a specific proposal that the Member has.

Ms Sylvia Lim: Mdm Deputy Speaker, as I have said the spirit of my speech is to call for an open conversation on whether the self-help groups should remain distinct as they are different entities. Even if they collaborate, the question is whether it would be something that society wants to move on about, to have these, all the work done under a national body, in that sense.

I can share with the House as well. I think the Minister is a bit older than me, but it does not matter. The fact is that there are many people in my generation, as I had mentioned in my speech, who grew up during Mr Rajaratnam's time. Our distinct memory was quite different from the reality that I sensed today. In fact, many of my contemporaries wrote to me thereafter to say that they are very uncomfortable with the self-help groups as they are.

So, I respect that there may be different views on this, as I have said. But I think it is important for us to have a conversation, and as the President said, in a spirit mutual respect and being open to the possibility that things may not be static.

Mr S Iswaran: Madam, the hour is late; I do not want to prolong this. But there are so many things wrong with that. Firstly, about age, I am not that much older than the Member but I will leave that for now. More specifically, calling for an open dialogue, I think is very welcome. We can all do that. But when you start the dialogue, what is your starting position? That is unclear.

Ms Sylvia Lim: Mdm Deputy Speaker, I think in my speech I made a suggestion that we might look into whether the self-help groups should be amalgamated into a national body. I did not say that this is the answer, but this is something which I think should be in the discussion. And at the end of whole national exercise, the consensus is, "No, we should not do it", I will respect that but I think we need to have a starting point for discussion.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Senior Minister of State Dr Janil.

The Senior Minister of State for Communications and Information and Health (Dr Janil Puthucheary): Mdm Deputy Speaker, I echo Minister Iswaran's apologies for prolonging this matter. I would just like to reframe the matter. Perhaps Ms Sylvia Lim is coming to this a little bit late. That such a body exists. In fact, we have several such bodies that exist that engage in non ethnic-based help, across a number of communities, across a number of causes, across a number of ages. This includes the People's Association (PA) – and I know Ms Sylvia Lim and her colleagues have particular views of the PA but it is not limited to the PA. But one of those bodies was actually founded by the self-help groups coming together several years ago and we celebrated our 10th anniversary a few years ago; I happen to be the Chairman of OnePeople.sg. Indeed, we have been engaging in such conversations with a wide variety of people.

Rather than talking about getting rid of existing bodies or creating new bodies, perhaps, we should work with the bodies that already exist. And Singaporeans can volunteer for more than one body, more than one organisation. They often do. Singaporeans can contribute funding to more than one body, and often do. There is plenty room in Singapore for us to work through a variety of means to achieve this common aim.

I just wanted to put that on the table. This is not a new idea. It has been posited before and there are people who have actually made this happen. And if people would like to come and find out a bit more about what these bodies are doing, I would be very happy to provide them some instructions. Thank you, Mdm Deputy Speaker. Obliged for your indulgence.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Ms Sylvia Lim, last point.

Ms Sylvia Lim: Thank you, Mdm Deputy Speaker. I would be happy to make this the last point. I would like to thank Senior Minister of State Janil for sharing his efforts in promoting inter-racial unity. But of course, one of the questions which I have and is part of my suggestion, is that currently, the self-help groups are a Government-sanctioned network that makes monthly deductions from Singaporeans on a race basis. And this is something that I think deserves a second look.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: Last point. Dr Janil.

Dr Janil Puthucheary: Thank you, Mdm Deputy Speaker. I just want to point out that the self-help groups do actually provide monetary contributions to OnePeople.sg as well.

Mdm Deputy Speaker: It is late. Deputy Leader.