Speech on the Debate on President’s Address

On 17 April 2023, I had the honour of moving in the House the traditional motion of thanks to the President for her speech on 10 April 2023 outlining the Government’s plan for the 2nd half of the term. In my speech, I spoke on a number of matters, including the following topics:

1. The ambitious nature of the Government’s plans revealed in the President speech and the 21 Addenda that have since been issued reveal covering so many important areas will not just take us to the 2nd half of the term but a much longer timespan of several decades. This is a characteristic of steward leadership on the part of the PAP.
2. The public service officers play an important role in ensuring the high trust relationship between our people and our Government as an institution;
3. The political leaders in the House have a direct responsibility to ensure that our country remains a high trust country.

I also made several suggestions to strengthen the social compact, including ensuring that our children will have opportunities to play sports which are seen to be within the exclusive domain of the well-to-do.

My speech may be accessed below.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Mr Murali Pillai: Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, “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 Second Session of this Parliament’.”

Sir, a week ago in this House, her Excellency Mdm Halimah Yacob, the President of the Republic of Singapore, delivered a speech on the priorities, policies and programmes of the Government for the remainder of the current term of office.

A plain review of the President’s speech and the 21 addenda issued by the respective Ministries and Prime Minister’s Office since, reveals much more than that.

The plans go well beyond the remainder of the current term of this Government’s office. A good number of these plans, especially the ones dealing with transformation of our defence capabilities, implementing our net zero ambition, developing our sustainable aviation and maritime hubs and transport systems, infrastructural capabilities and building an innovation economy will take decades to complete.

These plans are not just incremental in nature. They are imaginative and involve stretch targets. They are aimed at delivering decisive advantages to Singaporeans of the future. And I fully support them.

They are not at all easy to achieve. To materialise these plans, we require the strong support of fellow Singaporeans. We also need highly competent and dedicated leaders at all levels of government, including the political leadership, to execute these plans.

This is the defining characteristic of this PAP Government.

It sees as its responsibility not just to take care of the current generation of Singaporeans for the near term. All our present-day advantages, hard won on the back of generations past are not considered, I quote, “a pinnacle of achievement, but as a base from which to scale new heights.”

It sees as its bounden duty to lay strong foundations for future generations of Singaporeans. Indeed, this principle of steward leadership is specifically embedded in the concluding paragraph of the President’s speech. She urges us to, I quote, “keep faith with future generations yet unborn and build a Singapore that thrives and endures for many years to come.”

The approach taken by the Government gives us in this House a unique opportunity.

It is my hope that hon Members who will be speaking during this debate will nail their colours to the mast and unequivocally state where they stand on the Government’s ambitious plans to build an enduring and thriving Singapore for now and years to come. By doing so, we will be able to explore building a consensus on these plans. This will include an agreement on funding the projects involved in the plans.

We will also be able to avoid the polarising effect of these long-term plans becoming political “footballs” of populist politicians. What we cannot afford to do as a small country with no natural resources is to adopt a “stop/start” or “feast and famine” approach in funding these important plans. Such an approach will quickly deplete our precious resources and will almost certainly spell doom for Singapore.

Importantly, as I will be alluding to shortly in my speech, it is my belief that building consensus in this House on such key plans will help us retain trust and unity which the President has identified to be essential for the future of Singapore.

I start with the issue of trust. The President stated that in her speech that as we emerged from the pandemic, trust in the Government has strengthened. The President also emphasised that trust and unity are key to dealing with our priorities that includes securing our place in the world, growing our economy and refreshing our social compact.

Indeed, today, Singapore is in a fortunate position to be a high trust country. I looked at the Edelman Trust Barometer 2023 that was reported on CNA on 15 March 2023. Trust in our Government as an institution was reported to be relatively high compared to a vast number of other countries. But we are not amongst the top three. So, we should not behave as though we have arrived.

The results of the survey are consistent with anecdotal experience. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the strong trust between our people and our Government that led to higher levels of vaccination, which in turn ensured that we kept mortality rates low and allowed us to reopen our borders and rebuild our lives much faster than in many other countries.

We also know, though, that trust built today can be easily lost tomorrow. This is the impermanent nature of this “being”. Trust cannot be assumed; it has to be conscientiously built and nurtured.

The question I raise is how do we ensure that this strategic resource in the form of the reservoir of trust between our people and Government can be retained and even deepened as our nation navigates through an even more challenging socio-economic environment?

There are many facets to this. I wish to draw focus on three areas: (a) the work of our Public Service officers; (b) the work of our political leaders in this House; and at the end of my speech © the Forward Singapore exercise conducted by our 4G Team.

The Public Service plays a vital role in the maintenance of trust between our people and the Government. It will continue to play an important role in future.

Sir, we are indeed fortunate to have very committed and hardworking public service officers dedicated to their respective organisational missions, the rule of law, securing Singapore’s national interests and improving the lives of Singaporeans. In my respectful view, the strong trust relationship that we enjoy today is attributable in a significant part to the blood, sweat and tears of our officers in discharging their solemn duties.

To underscore this point, Sir, please allow me to share that, not infrequently, I receive detailed email replies from public officers, especially from the Housing and Development Board (HDB), to my queries on behalf of my constituents in the wee hours of morning! I cannot help feeling bad for them as they obviously sacrificed their personal time with their families to deal with official work. These officers have a strong sense of duty. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

What I feel distinguishes our Public Service from others is that in both design and implementation, our officers have foremost in their minds the ordinary Singapore Citizen. In their roles, they serve to strike a balance between achieving policy objectives, exemplifying values such as compassion and fairness, accountability for use of national resources and the desire to do justice in each and every case.

Let me provide two examples by reference to my Meet-the-People Session (MPS) cases just on issues arising from Budget 2023 in the past few weeks.

Last month, I wrote an appeal on behalf of Mdm Zhu, who had just given birth to a baby girl, seeking the enhanced Baby Bonus cash gift as announced in Budget 2023. Her baby, Qi Yue, was born at 5.00 pm on 13 February 2023. This was seven hours too early as the enhanced Baby Bonus cash gift, which would have been disbursed seven to 10 days after registration of the baby’s birth, was meant for babies born on or after 14 February 2023.

Mdm Zhu mentioned that her baby was born earlier than expected. This turns out to be a significant ground of appeal. In fact, the Baby Bonus Cash Gift policy was designed to allow babies due to be born on or after 14 February 2023 but were delivered earlier to get enhanced cash gifts too. By being flexible and not mechanically applying the timeline, we managed to achieve a better balance between the policy intent and the legitimate expectation of the ordinary citizen.

My reward was that I got a photo of Baby Qi Yue who happened to lift her head for the first time on the day that the Government allowed Mdm Zhu’s appeal! So, maybe she approved too.

I now turn to my next example. In Budget 2023, an announcement was made on the GST Voucher — Cash (Seniors’ Bonus). The policy intent was to help lower income senior Singapore Citizens aged 55 and above cope with the cost of living. To gauge the financial circumstances of the senior, the Government uses the income earned in 2021 as a proxy. It has to be less than $34,000.

I had a situation where my resident earned more than $34,000 in 2021 but had a significant drop in income in 2022 owing to personal circumstances. Technically, my resident does not qualify. However, having regard to the policy intent of the bonus, the Ministry of Finance (MOF), in its reply to the petition issued by me on behalf of my resident, was prepared to be flexible. It sought documents supporting my resident’s claim that his income dropped significantly in 2022 before assessing whether it is prepared to provide him with the bonus on a discretionary basis.

Again, this is an enlightened approach and there is much to commend the Public Service for exercising flexibility to ensure that the policy intent is met.

Sir, I do not mean to advocate that all appeals are automatically granted, regardless of merit. Far from it. What I am drawing attention to is the process.

Our citizens must feel that they were listened to, their views considered seriously and they received proper explanations in a respectful manner on the outcomes even if they may disagree with them. This approach will, in my view, will deepen this strategic resource of trust between our people and the Government as an institution.

Trust is the red thread running through the three points that the President made in her speech which made an impression on me.

First, the President highlighted the need for us, as a little red dot, to close ranks and stay united against global forces which will continue to try even harder to influence our domestic public opinion, so as to uphold Singapore’s vital interests.

Hon Members may recall the debate in this House on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill that was passed in 2021 to deal with hostile information campaigns by foreign powers. What I thought significant then was the united view expressed by hon Members on both sides of the aisle that Singapore politics is for Singaporeans. As responsible politicians, we must continue to close ranks and hold the line on core issues of national importance.

Second, the President highlighted that this unity as a nation will be important as we aim to secure economic opportunities amidst a global economic slowdown to strengthen our position as a trusted and reliable business hub adding value to the world.

On this, it may be useful to emphasise one important takeaway from this year’s Budget debate. The raison d’etre behind our economic objectives was never economic growth for its own sake. Rather, growth is a means to achieve our broader objectives of advancing the well-being of every Singaporean.

We are already facing strong economic headwinds. The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) reported last Friday that our economy grew by only 0.1 % in the first quarter of 2023. This affects our prospects for growth this year with inflation still running high. Economists are predicting a technical recession.

The challenge facing us is clear. It seems to me what the President advocated in her speech about making sure Singapore is united in the context of a global economic slowdown has become all the more important now.

Third, the President emphasised the need to strengthen our social compact through programmes aimed at uplifting the disadvantaged and vulnerable and to keep us as one united people. The President identified this effort as a priority of the 4G team which is engaging Singaporeans through the Forward Singapore exercise to renew and update our social compact. I will talk more on the Forward Singapore exercise later in my speech.

The President also laid down the Government’s four key priorities to strengthen our social compact: expanding opportunities for all, strengthening social safety nets, building a smart and liveable city and deepening Singaporean’s sense of shared identity. In particular, the President stated that the Government will look into ensuring that advantages and privileges that may come with meritocracy does not become entrenched such that it weakens our society.

This point about the need to re-examine meritocracy was probably the most quoted point by my residents about the President’s speech whom I engaged with before drafting this speech. All of them expressed wholehearted agreement with the President. They agreed with the Government’s call to devote more resources to our children who start out with less. The support, however, is not just a question of fact, but a matter of degree too in order that we can make a tangible difference for these children.

The Government has already made substantial investments in our children from humble backgrounds, particularly at rental flats through programmes like KIFAS and ComLink.

One other area of potential support that the Government should consider is to address the housing environment of children living in overcrowded flats. This is a point that I have raised several times; the last being at the Ministry of National Development (MND)’s Committee of Supply (COS) 2023 debate during my cut speech on strengthening inclusivity in housing. In my speech, I said “each child is precious, and we must do our utmost to ensure that they grow up in more conducive housing environment”.

To be fair, based on statistics provided by HDB, there are not many such cases, but I have come across a few.

One possible way that can be considered is to provide for Social Service Agencies to run study centres for these children near rental flats that are open after school. In this way, our children will be able to study in a more conducive environment after school. In Bukit Batok, we have one example in the form of Tava by Talent Beacon, which is a non-profit organisation that sets up a study centre specially for children living in our rental flats, with the support of MND and HDB. Tava even provides study support and mentoring for these children.

At the same time, the President emphasised the need for a stronger network of stakeholders to help provide opportunities for all, participate in nation building and build unity. This is not just the Government’s responsibility. I agree and I believe that all hon Members feel the same way, too. The question is how can we achieve this? How do we get more committed stakeholders?

During the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF)’s COS debate this year, I highlighted that over the past five years between FY2016 and FY2020, the amount of tax-deductible donations per year remained more or less stable at $1 billion.

I said then that we need to do something more fundamental to move this needle. I suggested that successful organisations and individuals must feel more invested in the lives of the less fortunate. They must know that we are bound together in one common destiny. We sink or swim together.

This is clearly not an easy ask but we must quite clearly put in as much effort as possible to realise this objective. One area where stakeholders can help is to level the playing field when it comes to giving our children sporting experiences which are perceived to be within the exclusive domain of the well-to-do.

Let me make my point through an example. I am not a golfer, but I have certainly read about the amazing story of Mr Mardan Mahmat, who was Singapore’s number one golfer for more than 10 years.

His is a rags-to-riches story. He dropped out of primary school at the age of 12. A year later, he became a caddie at Jurong Country Club. As a teenager, Mardan frequently snuck into the club’s golf course when no one was looking and, by himself, learned how to play the game. He obviously had loads of talent because he managed to hone it by himself. Long story short, he became Singapore’s number one golfer.

Mardan’s story is exceptional. The reality now is that children from low- or middle-income backgrounds will find it difficult to gain access to more expensive sports, such as golf.

I do think though that something can be done through stakeholders with the appropriate resources to organise efforts to reach out to interested children, give them the sporting experience, suss out from amongst them the next Mardan Mahmat whom they can help to nurture to be a Singapore golf champion.

I am aware that many of these stakeholders already do wonderful charity work. I do hope though that they can consider this as a worthwhile extension of their efforts. The idea here is to provide children with the requisite talent and drive, regardless of their background, with opportunities to pursue their sporting dreams and become national athletes.

I now turn to the work of political leaders in this House.

The President stated in her speech that the trust between the political leadership and the people is a key strength that we must continue to nurture.

The President gave important guidance in this regard. She advised that our interactions as politicians be anchored on mutual respect and the shared goal of advancing the larger public interest. We should work through our differences, enlarge our common ground and draw strength from our diverse perspectives.

I fully agree. We, politicians, are at our best when we present our arguments in a measured way, recognise the inherent trade-offs in each of the policy suggestions that we make and present cogent arguments as to why we feel the balance should be struck one way or another.

What the President stated brought to my mind the speech that I made during the opening of the Fourteenth Parliament when I advocated several proposals for Parliamentary reform of our evolving democracy.

I said then that building consensus in this House is an important outcome of our work here. I described consensus as a process of contestation, persuasion and resolution. Equally important is that such engagement will enable Singaporeans outside this House to have a better opportunity to understand the points of agreement, points of disagreement raised by their elected representatives and, through that, they will be able to better appreciate how these points impact on the ordinary lives of Singaporeans.

This is a form of accountability, too. Singapore has always preferred an undramatic approach to problem solving. This is our political heritage from the first generation of our political pioneers. Some of you may have recognised that I quoted a line from Dr Goh Keng Swee at the start of my speech — that we must consider our starting today merely as a base to build tomorrow.

Dr Goh was one of our deepest policy thinkers. He said, and I quote, “Deciding on policy and determining a line of action is different from engaging in a debate. Cabinet government is not a debating society or an academic seminar. These are intellectual exercises. Views are aired and, if done with style and elegance, the participants go home happy. In Government, you have to live with the consequences of your decision. If you make a mistake, the results are painful. In political life, there is no alibi for failure.”

I feel that we, in Parliament, should bear this in mind. When we deal with the real issues in this House, we know that they often matter to millions of lives. When we say that we are not “ideological” about something, it means that we are not wedded to whether the idea is from the left or the right, from the PAP or the Opposition, we are not wedded to repeating yesterday’s solutions tomorrow.

We should be disinterested in merely sounding good. On their own, they do not serve the interests of Singaporeans.

It is against this background that I argue the need for constructive politics in Parliamentary proceedings. Here, it may be useful to recount the debate that we had in this House on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill.

Before the Second Reading of the Bill in this Parliament, there were concerns within certain quarters about the broad language of the Bill and perceived lack of judicial oversight. My hon friends across the aisle proposed amendments to the Bill to address, amongst others, these points. Hence, even before the hon Minister for Home Affairs delivered his Second Reading speech, lines were already drawn. This led to the hon Minister making a plea in this House to hon Members not to use Parliament as a forum to read out prepared speeches based on lines that were already drawn before he rendered his speech.

When I rose to speak on the Bill, I highlighted that whilst there were important differences between the views of the hon Members from both sides of the aisle, they were few, compared to the substantive areas of agreement between them. I do not remember a single journalist covering this point in his or her article.

I am not surprised. In my speech on building consensus in Parliament, I said that, and I quote “agreement, collegiality, friendliness, all these make for poor headlines”. Contestation sells, not consensus. As a result, the public perceived that there was a wide chasm between the hon Members of the governing and opposition parties on FICA than what was, in fact, the case.

For these reasons, I advocate an introspection within each of us in this House to build the common ground that the President referred to in her speech.

Parliamentary proceedings should not be turned into arenas for “entertainment” that we regularly see in other countries. This will erode our people’s trust and confidence in their elected representatives. That will be very bad for Singapore.

Finally, and importantly, I turn to the Forward Singapore Exercise.

As we all know, the Forward Singapore Exercise conducted by our 4G leadership involves engaging thousands of Singaporeans from all walks of life. These engagements are aimed at identifying the values, priorities and policies needed to strengthen our social compact and to build a better and brighter Singapore.

I wish to make two points on the Forward Singapore Exercise. First, as we look forward, we should not forget the values that allowed us to make progress as a nation. I, therefore, feel that the President’s reminder that we should hold dear to our core values as Singaporeans is a timely one. This is the enduring legacy of our founding generation of leaders led by our founding Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

At the same time — and this my second point — I feel that it is important for the Forward Singapore Exercise to adequately capture the idealism of our youths so that they will be able to identify with and support our vision for the future. After all, they have the biggest stake in our plans for the future.

A few weeks ago, during a house visit, I met my resident, Mr Sherman Chua, aged 21. He is working with a Silicon Valley company in the artificial intelligence space.

As we all know, this space is simply “exploding” at the moment with the advent of ChatGPT and so on. He told me that as a result of his exposure to this space, he is convinced that life as we know it will change a lot through imminent and rapid adoption of artificial intelligence. He expressed to me his concern that Singapore is not investing enough resources to get ahead in this area. In his view, if nothing is done in this space within the next five years, Singapore may be passed over and runs the risk of becoming a laggard. I invited him to drop me an email containing his views and I will link him up with the relevant pillar leads in the Forward Singapore Exercise.

I am sure there are other young people like Sherman in our communities. It will serve the 4G Team well to engage such people so that their views on the shared vision for the future are taken onboard. I look forward to receiving the 4G Team’s report on the Forward Singapore Exercise that is expected to be issued in the second half of this year.

Sir, let me conclude. If we are to consider Singapore as a base to scale and not a pinnacle on which we rest, we must recognise that the nature of the electorate is changing. It has been changing since World War Two ended — a generation that has never known war, communalism, death by gunshot or violence, days of hunger, nights of terror.

Today, a new generation is emerging, standing taller and brighter than the ones before. Their education is deeper, their social support tighter and with more social spending per person than ever before in our history. In health, education, housing and transport, we are doing much more to provide all Singaporeans with better services and to support the more vulnerable groups.

As a result, we have, today, a generation that has never experienced hardship to the same degree and scale of the past. From the start of their working life, they understand that they can ask for work-life balance and mental wellness days, not as entitlements, but as a fact of Singaporean life. These are the natural fruits of 60 years of careful tending. Our people today would naturally have different responses to Government policies than those of the past.

Human response is not an artifice. This word “lived experience” is used quite a lot today. Some may feel uncomfortable at how it elevates subjective experience to a policy truth on which we often build an edifice of rights and allocations. The fact remains that people’s psyche will change and, as they do, their government must change and to a degree and at a speed unprecedented. We cannot be an analog government in a digital world, if we are to keep faith with our fellow Singaporeans.

All this is not to say that Singaporeans are less tough today than we were in the past or that we rise any slower to a challenge. We are a people new to pandemics and the world has not seen the scale and intensity of COVID-19. But Singapore overcame. History is a good teacher but, like PSLE Mathematics, we do not need to have worked out the same sum before to get the right answer in a new one.

We are a different people today and require a new style and substance in our policies. Two things which guided our leaders after the war must not change. First, to achieve prosperity so as to ensure happiness and peace for our people; and second, to ensure that Singapore continues to survive as an independent nation.

The President’s speech, like those of almost all Presidents before her, speaks of the need to ensure that Singapore “endures for many years to come”. No large country suffers from this same paranoia. But this is the nature of small states — to be short-lived. We are either annexed or merged and, in fact, we ourselves thought this at the start.

There is nothing external to ourselves, no partners or allies that will ensure the survival of this improbable nation. We must, therefore, trust one another, trust our leaders and trust our shared identity so as to build a brighter future together. Sir, I beg to move.