There will be plenty of time for clarification after my speech. The newspapers, knowing that what is spoken here is privileged, because it is in an Assembly sitting, are therefore completely immune when they publish any lie or any libel against any person. But, Sir, if anything said in this Chamber which is untrue, derogatory or defamatory is repeated outside, then the public may be interested to know that an action for defamation and damages arising therefrom can be brought in any court of law, if anything said in this Chamber is repeated outside and an action ensues and the statement is proved to be true, then he who brings the action fails and he will have to pay costs to the person he has brought into court. Sir, you will forgive me if I have to explain this elementary point of law, because, unfortunately, not all people in Singapore are acquainted with these technicalities. The mass effect is this. Here is the newspaper, here is the headline, and this is what is said. Nothing happens. It is repeated again and again, and after some time it may be accepted. It may be passed off as true. There has been nothing of substance, no argument, no facts on this motion. The facts were given by my colleague, the Minister for Finance. There are only three administrative officers left who are expatriates. There should have been 30 odd officers, but they have left, and we are carrying on. But that is not the point. The point is in the asides - to do as much damage as possible to the character and reputation of those whom the Member wants to destroy. I do not want to waste the time of this House because nothing of substance has been brought forth by the Member other than some, what I have called "cowardly" but which you have overruled, allegations made against his former colleagues. As for the allegations against me, Sir - that I am a stooge, the mouthpiece of an expatriate political theoretician, that I am incapable of setting the Party line, of writing my own speeches, that I am just like Mr Braga, inept, incompetent, a buffoon and a playboy, who does not know what is going on in his Ministry; who allows Mr Meadows, this wicked, evil, British intelligence genius, to manipulate me, and Mr Blades and so on - everyone of those statements of fact and the inferences that he sought to draw from them was an untruth. Sir, it is a very funny thing about Parliamentary language, if I may allow myself one aside, if you use the simple Anglo-Saxon monosyllabic word, "liar", to nail a man, it becomes a little bit obscene. But if you substitute it with the word "untruth", it passes off as parliamentary. However that may be, Sir, a person who utters an untruth is nevertheless by definition a liar. If what I have said is a lie, then I can be sued. Outside this Chamber at the end of this debate. It is very simple. The gentlemen of the Press are here. I ask the Member for Hong Lim to hand them his typewritten notes, with all the allegations about me and George Thomson sitting by my side prompting me: and Meadows; that I am like Mr Braga: and tell them outside the precincts of this Assembly, "Here is what I say of the Prime Minister," and I say we will have a battle royal. Either the Member for Hong Lim is right and I am a stooge, a fool, an idiot, a half-wit, a toy, a puppet of three expatriates; or he has uttered an untruth. Sir, I say he has uttered an untruth, and at the end of this debate I shall use a four-alphabet word without the cover of privilege of this House to tell the Press what I think of him. May I go back to the somewhat mildly worded amendment of my colleague, the Minister for Finance. We all have our recollection of what happened over the last few years since not just 1955 - Malayanisation was an issue which started in the years after the war when, with the output of more and more graduates from Raffles College (as it then was) and from universities abroad, pressure mounted, to take over all these points of power in the cockpit of the State. As far as the main issue was concerned, it came to a head with the Malayanisation Commission, its recommendations therefrom, the White Paper which was tabled, and the stand which the People's Action Party took at that time. Our problem, quite simply now, is how to get the machinery of the State to function in the most efficient way. Let me tell the great anti-colonialist, the self proclaimed anti-colonialist, the Member for Hong Lim, what the real burning issues are now. Not to quibble about three expatriates who can be denounced, defamed and dismissed at will, since they have already taken their compensation terms and are quite safely out of harm's way, and who will go if at any time we want them to go. The burning issue is, quite simply, this. How do you keep this island of 224 square miles alive and viable, when its economic existence is controlled indirectly by companies in London and companies in Kuala Lumpur? In a situation where numerical and other logistic superiority is overwhelmingly on the side of the Federation, and indirectly on the side of the British, how do you establish Singapore as part of an independent State? For the Member's information, we are bringing out, in another anniversary number of Petir, our ideological arguments and our stand-point brought up to date. And we do not require Mr George Thomson, good though he may be as a student of political science, to tell us how to analyse our own future. What I think we must do is to make sure that not only you, Mr Speaker, but also the Members of this Assembly understand this, that the written word as published tomorrow in the Nanyang Siang Pau, the Sin Chew fit Poh, the Utusan Melayu, the Berita Harian, the Tamil Murasu and the Straits Times, will leave no doubts in the minds of the people as to what the real issues are. They are not concerned with Mr Owen and Mr Lui Boon Poh and the aberrations of the Member for Hong Lim when he was invested with tremendous power. But they concern the destinies and the way out for a million and a half people living on an extremely sensitive entrepôt economy - a people who are tremendously active, physically and mentally; a people who, politically, are extremely mature, ready and willing to run the apparatus of an independent State but who are denied the where-withal. How do we create a vital economy, a situation in which independence can become a reality, an independence which can become the basis for a social revolution, to create an economic system that will live up to the platform of a socialist party - the creation of a more just and equal society? We do not pretend that we are doing that, because you cannot create a more just and equal society when you cannot change the basis `of the economic system. But what we do say is that we are providing the people with the maximum social benefits, given the limitations that are imposed on this State, not constitutionally but by the economic facts of life. If he can think out some of the answers to these problems, then he can stand up and say, "Yes, I will drive the Naval Base into the sea, or I shall take it over and change it into a commercial dockyard. I shall take over Changi Airfield and turn it into a new Farnborough showground for South-East Asia. I shall take over the Army installations at the B.O.D. in Pasir Panjang and turn them into brigades for the reconstruction and revitalisation of the independent people of Malaya." Tell us how and we shall listen with avid ears. But if he does not, then I say, keep up his subscriptions, if not to the Party, because he is no longer a member, then at least to Petir, to which he can subscribe, in order that he can keep up with the political education which the Party has given him for all these years. Sir, that is the danger of those who must have mentors. Never quarrel with your mentors, otherwise you go adrift. My colleagues and I are in the more fortunate position of being our own mentors. If the Member for Hong Lim says that that is a lie, that it is not true and that it is George Thomson and Blades and Meadows who run the government outside this Chamber, then we will give him the time of his life. And I hope, Sir, he has sufficient funds to defray the whole cost of what I think will be enjoyable proceedings. We saved him, Sir - my friend, the Minister for Labour and Law, myself and a few others - from the excruciating and terrifying experience of being put in the witness box. Let me just wind it up, Mr Speaker, Sir. It is one thing to shout into this inert microphone, to the discomfiture of the ears of the Speaker - one ear of the Speaker - and to the discomfiture of the other 50 hon. Members of this House. It is another thing to repeat those lies in the witness box in a calm, dispassionate manner where every fact has to be established or every lie has to be eaten - and heavy damages paid at the end of it. Either I am a stooge, a fool, a half-wit, in which case I deserve to be called so outside publicly; or he is a fabricator of untruths. Sir, I am going to say outside what I think of him, and I hope he will do likewise on the facts that he has stated in this Assembly. If he does not, then the people of Singapore will know the worth of his motions which will come month by month. There is nothing new. It is all in the 16 resolutions. Because it is very difficult to think up something new when you have not got a mind that is prepared to be objective, a mind that is prepared to analyse, to argue and reason. But when all you can do is to repeat malicious falsehoods, then I say, he is down the slippery slope at the end of which is perdition.