Mr Speaker, Sir, the Financial Secretary has suggested that this is a courageous Budget in as much as the Government has resisted the temptation to tie the hands of the incoming government in regard to the policies that it may wish to adopt after the coming election. That is not quite the way it strikes us. Where we can give credit is in the fact that at long last The Government has taken heed of our advice over the years and made some attempt to reduce expenditure; to be precise, from an estimated $277-million this year to $268.5-million next year. But we do not judge Budgets simply by the figures that are presented to us. We judge them by the accomplishments of the past year or years, and by the intentions of the Government in the future. Whatever the merits or demerits of the actual estimates, this is the Budget of a tired government, lacking in confidence in itself, unwilling or unable to plan for the future, because manifestly it has no plans and no hopes. One of the things that has astonished us is that the new Alliance, when it was formed, announced no programme, no plans, and no policies. Of course, you cannot frame a Budget if you have no policy. Here is a time - if ever there was one - if you have confidence in yourself and in the future, for a newly constituted Alliance to frame and proclaim an imaginative, challenging, election-winning Budget, something calculated to rally all democratic forces to its side. But instead, we are given a standstill Budget in a world that is moving fast, because the Members on the Front Bench opposite are too tired and too stale to do anything but stand still. If I may turn at this stage, Sir, to company tax and examine it now, on the Second Reading, rather than later, we would say this: that in view of Singapore's financial position at present, it seems that we must accept as inevitable the increase in company tax proposed. But we must not overlook the fact that this increase will not help to create a favourable climate for the expansion of industry and the launching of new enterprises which the Government professes to wish to encourage. You cannot expect industrialists and investors to be anything but hard-headed in these matters. Long-term investments require a long view ahead. While it is true that the new legislation allowing remission of taxation - the pioneer industries and industrial expansion schemes - is a step forward, a 33 1/8 per cent increase in company tax, in the same breath so to speak, is a step back again. Let us now have a look at income tax revenue during the Government's period of office. In 1956 the yield was $68.3-million; in 1957 it dropped to $65-million; in 1958 it will have been maintained at approximately the same figure of $65-million, as a result of an increase in the rate of personal tax from 30 to 40 per cent. At the same rate of tax, the Financial Secretary estimates the yield of tax in 1959 at $55-million. He therefore proposes to increase company tax by 10 per cent to regain this $65-million mark, and personal tax by 10 per cent to bring the figure to just over $70.million. We now have a picture of what is happening. Since 1956, the Government's first full year in office, we are increasing the yield from income tax by roughly $2-million, that is to say, from $68.3-million in 1956 to just over $70-million in 1959 through the drastic measure of raising personal tax from 30 to 50 per cent and company tax from 30 to 40 per cent - an eloquent testimony of our declining prosperity during the Government's term of office. As I said last year, it is only too clearly revealed that Government has failed to expand commerce and industry during the past three years, for if commerce and industry had expanded, it would be reflected in the income tax yield. It follows, therefore, that as a result of the decreased spending power that must come about in 1959 through increased taxation, the income tax yield will again drop back to something like $55-million or $60-million in 1960. Increase in the tax rate one year has as its corollary the inevitable falling off in yield in the following year, and the law of diminishing returns begins to operate. It would be difficult to say where and when the limit will be reached, but we must be getting very close to it. While we must accept the present increase as forced upon us as a necessity, we must give warning that such a large increase, at a time when we are by no means out of the recession, is not going to help to produce an expanding economy, more capital investment and more employment. It is abundantly evident, Sir, that the Government machine has failed to tick. Where are the promises of the years gone by? Let us have a look at a few of them. At the Ministry of Health, there is the sad story of the District Hospital. First, it was to be built in Kallang, then at Bedok, and now we understand that it has been scrapped altogether and the land given back to the owners. Total achievement after three and a half years - no District Hospital - except that we believe that the Thomson Road Hospital for the chronic sick is to be converted into one - and we know what conversions cost. In any case, we end up with one hospital: instead of two, and that one not even finished. In respect of the drive against tuberculosis, which is much more important even than that against polio, although it is less spectacular, the position seems to be one of extreme anxiety. A special Survey has been carried out for which the Government is to be commended. But yet at the very time when more cases of hospitalisation are inevitably being discovered, and will be discovered in the future, the number of beds available at the Tan Tock Seng Hospital is being reduced by turning a ward into a nurses' hostel - another conversion and more costs - a change of policy and wastage of funds. Let me turn now to the Ministry of Education. Here we find failure to build secondary schools in reasonable proportions to primary schools - only 9 against 59, or I against 6 approximately - and as a result a desperate scramble to gain entry into secondary schools, resulting in corruption and leakages in the all-important examination papers. And what is worse - many children are getting into primary schools only at the age of 8 plus. There is also the disappointment caused by the cutting down of the cultural affairs allocation, on which I shall have more to say later on. In commerce and industry, the Minister has had a hard row to hoe. It was once said of Shelley the poet that he was "an ineffectual angel beating his luminous wings in vain". I would hardly call the Minister either angelic or luminous, but otherwise the description might be applicable. Last year I brought to his attention the Government's failure to expand industry, quoting employment figures. These are worth repeating and bringing up to date. In March 1956 the number of workmen employed in manufacturing is 57,332; in March 1957, 55,011; and March 1958, 51,296. And in all industries the figures are (in thousands) 124.6, 123.2, and 118 respectively. The trend is worse: the slip backwards is going faster. But the population increases each year by an amount equal to the total number employed in manufacturing. That is a sobering and depressing thought. Last year the Minister pooh-poohed these figures, stating that they gave a false picture, that these figures were the returns of different employers, and if a reduced number of employers sent in returns, it could not be helped. I submit, Sir, that if less employers send in returns, it must be because there are less employers. If it is not so, let the Minister present the true figures. But the Minister went on to give a glowing picture of the number of industries that were about to be set up, but he could not disclose the nature of them. Whether many of these mysterious industries have materialised or not, we do not know; but what we do know is that there are less persons being employed in industry today than there were a year ago. And now, only this month, after years of prompting from this side of the House - I will not weary you, Sir, by repeating what I said before - the Pioneer Industries and the Industrial Expansion Bills have come before us, too late to have the impact they might have had two years ago. And with what irony are they introduced, hand in hand with the increase of 33 1/3 per cent in company tax! Next, Sir, we must turn to housing. The Financial Secretary pointed out that 9,000 units of housing will have been built during the lifetime of the present Government up to the end of this year. But let me remind him that 2,900 of these were built in 1955, that is to say, they were planned and were being constructed before the present Government took office. In other words, only 2,000 per year have been built since then under Government responsibility. Let me further remind him that residential buildings of all kinds, whether by the S.I.T., P.W.D., City Council or private enterprise, were 5,740 in 1955; 4,445 in 1956; 3,351 in 1957; and only 2,826 up to September of this year - a sad story of declining achievement. We are now told that Government housing development will have to decline still further for lack of money. But what has happened to the scheme to allow people to buy their own apartments in S.I.T. housing estates, so that they can enjoy ownership of their own fiats? This system has been adopted in many parts of the world. The legal difficulties have been overcome. Why has it not been introduced here, as the Government promised? Is the scheme lying forgotten in some dusty drawer in the Minister's desk, when it should have been introduced in the new Queenstown and Kallang housing estates, and the sums required made available for further construction? The Minister has something to answer for here. And lastly, let us examine the record of the Ministry of Communications and Works. Firstly, the deferring of a proper public transport system regarding which no progress of any tangible kind has been made in three and a half years. With no reorganised bus routes, we still find our children having to go to school expensively and extravagantly in cars and pirate taxis. Secondly, the failure to solve the problem of floods, so that now the main trunk road from Singapore to the Federation can be flooded to a depth of four feet outside the University of Malaya as a result of a two-inch thunderstorm. And what comfort had the Minister to give to this House on the 5th November last? I quote, Sir, from col. 913: "...had the tide been higher or had the rainstorm gone on longer, the flooding in the areas affected on Monday would have been considerably worse." So much for the Minister's theoretical socialism in the fact of hard facts - and wet ones at that! Thirdly and lastly, the abandonment, or certainly the deferment of Phase III of the Paya Lebar Airport development which deals with the handling of passengers and freight, and in this airborne age gives visitors to Singapore their first impressions. It is admitted that the present terminal building is inadequate, that it will cope only inefficiently with the traffic which the new aircraft of 1959 will bring, but we continue to stagnate. No wonder with these dismal failures facing them, with their broken promises and shattered aspirations, the Government is trying to save its face by changing its name, and by laying the blame on subversive elements. But if we are forced to apportion blame, perhaps it would be fair to say that the Government has never really recovered from the ebullience of its first year in office, under another leader who led it at a galloping pace down jungle paths from which it was difficult to extricate itself. To change the metaphor: new brooms are apt to sweep too indiscriminately; in 1955 in the present Government; and in 1958 in the City Council, so that the crockery goes into the dustpan as well as the dirt and the rubbish. But, Sir, let us leave the past on one side for one moment, and consider the future. The Financial Secretary has stated that the cost of the social services will continue to rise year after year. It is abundantly true of education, and perhaps less so of health. I have pointed out a few other things which the Ministers of the Government had promised to do but had to abandon. But it is clear that however heavily taxed we may be by normal and practicable methods of taxation, revenue cannot rise beyond a certain limit. Somewhere between the estimated $264-million for 1959 and $300-million would be a reasonable guess. What then are we to do? If there is a limit to increase in revenue, we must of necessity look for ways and means of reducing expenditure on a permanent basis. We come to the conclusion, as we must, that the cost of administration on this small island of 220 square miles is out of all proportion to the returns we get and to what we can reasonably afford. We cannot afford the luxuries of the democratic system but only the essentials; by which I mean that we cannot afford the cost of a multiplicity of administration - a central or national government, local government as represented by the City Council for one part of the island, and four new District Councils for the rest of it. We often refer to Singapore as a City State. Why do we not run it like a City State under a single, streamlined, rationalised administration? Most of us have been brought up to accept the British pattern of central government and local government - I have certainly been very close to it myself - but it is becoming clear that we must recast our thinking and reshape our ideas, and have the courage to admit that it is not necessarily satisfactory on a small island. The present Government scrapped the City and Island Council purely and simply, I suspect, because the Rendel Commission proposed it, and substituted separate City and District Councils at enormous extra expense. The decision was taken in 1955. The necessary Ordinances were passed two years later - in about August 1957 - but still, after another one and a quarter years, there are no District Councils. At one time we stood poised on the threshold of District Council elections, to be held in April of this year, but now they have been conveniently forgotten. The Government has not had the courage to admit them to be administratively unwise, and yet they hesitate to put them into operation. And is there a loud public outcry over the delay? There is not. The reason I suggest is not far to seek. A new head of expenditure in the Estimates, Head 44, District Councils, adds up to $3�-million. If we turn to the Explanatory Notes on page 476 of the Estimates, we will find what has happened. "The Rural Board was abolished when the above three Councils were established" - The Rural Board has not been abolished - "and the staff split up and posted to the three Districts Council Offices. As the then existing Rural Board staff was inadequate to meet the resultant needs, the following new appointments or posts were authorised in 1958 - 1. Executive Officers, six" and so on. I will not read the rest, as it is there for Members to read. A total of 62 new posts. In addition, the following posts have been seconded from the Medical and Health and the Public Works Department respectively to come under the direct control of the District Councils, and there we have a list of, curiously enough, another 62 posts. Briefly, an increase in staff and an increase in decentralization among the technical officers, tending to a loss of efficiency and co-ordination. Now, Sir, side by side with this, we have the Rural Development Panel set up under the Chief Minister, because of the tendency of a lack of co-ordination - I will ask you to look at page 466 of the Estimates where you will read as follows: "The activities of various Departments and organisations concerned with the rural areas have tended to be unco-ordinated in the past and an authority to plan the development of these areas and to co-ordinate the activities of the many authorities concerned with rural affairs was found necessary. A Rural Development Panel has therefore been set up consisting of Heads of Departments concerned with rural development. A Rural Development Commissioner will chair the Panel. The Panel will serve in a consultative and advisory capacity to the Commissioner who will ensure co-ordinated action. The Commissioner will frame a comprehensive development plan. He will have a staff of eleven field officers, mostly Chinese speaking, who will work in association with the respective departments and the farmers. The Panel will consist of: -
(1) Agricultural Officer. (2) Chief Fisheries Officer. (3) Chief Veterinary Officer. (4) Registrar of Co-operative Societies. (5) Rural Health Officer. (6) Deputy Commissioner of Lands. (7) Director of Social Welfare. (8) Director of Information Services. (9) Senior Executive Engineer, Rural. (10)Deputy Secretary (Administration), Ministry of Education." But no District Councillors, and not even the Chairman of District Councils. A separate body altogether. "Rural Development projects will include matters of land usage, drainage and tenure security... They will arrange for supplies of foodstuffs and later improved types of livestock... They will be concerned with improvement of roads, water supplies and other amenities" which we need not mention here. One policy leading in one direction and another in the opposite direction. Contradictions leading to duplication, delay, frustration and sheer waste of money! The people of Singapore are the sufferers, not the gainers. They pay more in taxes, and get more administration but less results. But, Sir, we are not thinking of a return to a City and Island Council. We are thinking of a complete rationalisation of our administrative system in the hands of a single democratically elected body. In the past year we have seen the City Council pulling in the opposite direction to the Government - something we cannot afford, whatever our views may be on which is the right direction. Soon we may find the District Councils pulling in different directions from the City Council and from each other. Let me give one simple illustration. The boundary between the City and District Councils for many miles runs down the middle of roads, Braddell Road for example. The City Council may want to resurface and widen their half of the road, even to make a dual carriage-way, but the District Council, which will be responsible for the other half of the road, may have other ideas. So nothing will happen and the road will deteriorate, and it will cost more to put it in order in the long run. In other words, the present and future state of our finances cannot afford what I have called the luxuries of the democratic system where each authority can follow contradictory policies. At the moment, health is administered by both Government and the City Council. The latter builds infant welfare centres, and the former district clinics, and both cable for Professor Sabin's polio vaccine. Roads are in the hands of the Government, the City Council, the District Councils and now even the Rural Development Panel. There are two assessment offices and two policies. Traffic is in the hands of the City Council in certain aspects, the traffic police and licensing under the Chief Secretary, and transport to some extent under the Minister for Communications and Works. Although there is to be a Government housing authority, local governments are in charge of building plans and construction by-laws. One could continue to cite examples, but the final one is the question of public utilities. The McNeice Report recommended placing public utilities in the hands of a corporation or Board. However, our view was that so long as public utilities are properly administered without politics becoming predominant, the City Council could safely be left to run them and we believed it to have been the Government's view also. That at least should be the case. Not only have public utilities become the play of politics, but engineers and technicians have departed until the efficiency of the electricity and water undertakings is in grave danger. We believe now that a corporation is essential so that the life-blood of electricity and water can be safeguarded. So we say rationalise our administration and cut out waste, so that we can better utilise the small number of expert technicians remaining to us. If we show to the Federation and to our neighbours and to the world that we are bent on putting our administrative house in order, reducing our overheads and lowering our expenditure, we should attract both the Federation and the world to our door-step. Indeed, eventual merger with the Federation will be easier if we have one clear-cut administrative body from which certain subjects can go under central control with the minimum of reorganisation. We shall appeal more to the Federation if we are a financial asset and not a liability. That brings me to my next point: merger with the Federation is the desire of all Singapore political parties, but we believe that the first step should be an economic merger rather than a political one. If we could come closer together economically and look at ourselves as a single economic unit, both countries would benefit. It has been suggested that if the Federation Government could have a say in the working of the Singapore Harbour Board, it would be as realistic a step in the economic field as having a say in our internal security in the political field. To take another example - in the field of electricity. The Federation Government is launching a new hydro-electric scheme in the Cameron Highlands. This will cost millions, but it will only be able to serve areas of central Malaya. I believe the only power station south of Kuala Lumpur is in Malacca. Is there any reason why Singapore should not be responsible for providing power to the south of this? A Singapore Electricity Board could work closely together with the Central Electricity Board of the Federation. I believe Singapore already supplies Johore Bahru with electricity. Why cannot this sort of thing be developed on a joint planning basis, to mutual benefit? In other words, the greater mingling of the two countries in port facilities and power supplies - to mention only two possibilities - would be of immense advantage to both of us. But whatever the future holds, we are in fact on the eve of great events and the next four or five years may make or mar our destiny. If Singapore is to be prosperous, then it cannot be the prosperity of the few: that is not Socialism, but plain commonsense. An age of austerity is coming, and a very large number of people reaching quite far down in our social strata must be prepared to accept a less extravagant way of life. We are a shallow, pleasure-loving community, finding enjoyment in the things that money can buy and not in the richer things of the intellect and of the spirit. For this reason, I deplore the cutting down of the cultural affairs grant. I do not say that $100,000 can do the trick any more than $50,000, but any Government worth its salt must do all in its power to interest the population in cultural pursuits and interests. This part of the world is not only rich in biological, zoological and botanical treasures but in subjects of sociological, ethonological and linguistic study - great avenues of knowledge and research waiting to be explored. In the artistic sphere, we have few creative writers and musicians, poets and painters, through lack of encouragement and incentive and not through lack of talent. What is the use of writing a book in Singapore if nobody cares to read it? Sir, Members of this House said a year ago that we cannot afford a Nature Reserve or even the Botanic Gardens, for we need the space to build houses or grow vegetables. The truth is that we shall have to look for far larger areas of land on which to settle thousands of our citizens in the not too distant future. Having passed legislation for a 44- or 48-hour week, we must see that our people learn how to use their leisure to the best advantage. Unless we encourage cultural pursuits, we cannot have people with sufficient imagination and enthusiasm to solve the problems that face us in the future. If you encourage people to write, you encourage them to think, and if you encourage people to take up scientific or literary or linguistic studies for their own sake and not for pure monetary gain, you will encourage people to think on creative lines and hence to try to solve the difficulties of modern Malaya. There are many more worthwhile things to do than eat a ten-course dinner, pick up a tip for the third race on Saturday, or gossip and drink in clubs and coffee-shops - things that are much cheaper but more rewarding. Our view of how we must go forward in the next few years is this: rationalise our administration, unify our economic affairs, simplify our mode of living for the greatest good of the greatest number. Mr Speaker, Sir, I started by deploring the standstill policy of the Government, without plan or programme, as a wrong approach if they want to capture the hearts and minds and enthusiasm of the electorate. I have ended, I hope, by being just a little more constructive, a little more positive about the needs of the future. The Liberal Socialists are ready to pool their ideas and plan for the future hand in hand with all other true democratic forces on this island, provided there are no prejudices, personalities and reservations allowed to stand in the way, to cloud and distort the vision of our essential goal. Time is running out. 11.50 a.m.