Mr Speaker, Sir, the Budget session is always the season for scapegoats - a hunting spree which inspires enthusiasm on both Front and Back Benches, but perhaps a bit more on the Back Benches. We might start by asking what the origin and meaning of the "scapegoat" is. It derives from ancient Hebrew. Among the ancient Jews, a goat was sent into the wilderness on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, bearing the iniquities of the people which are symbolically laid on its head by the High Priest. I have not been able to discover what happened to the goat thereafter. But we might reasonably suppose that at least some of the crowd, both priestly and profane, must have followed the poor goat, thus burdened with the sins of the community, into the wilderness, chopped its head off, feasted on the mutton, and felt purified until such time as they became sufficiently defiled by the next Atonement Day, when they would look for another goat to bear their sins and to feast upon. There is one particular scapegoat (or scapegoats) I am interested in; not in pursuing it into the wilderness and to feast upon the mutton. On the contrary, I am interested in taking a long overdue swipe at those groups in our society who have been saying unkind things about these scapegoats. For if they are sent into the wilderness, Singapore would perish. I refer, Sir, to our entrepreneurs, technocrats, professionals, skilled workers and political leaders who have between them securely laid the material foundations of our social and economic well-being. Sir, the Minister was able to present the kind of budget he did because the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues never allowed themselves to live in cloud-cuckoo land. Beginning May 1959, when the PAP first took the reins of power in Singapore, they grappled with economic realities, not with ideological or metaphysical abstractions. From the word "Go", their primary preoccupation was how to generate wealth, and how to garner and use wealth productively for social, educational, housing, health, cultural and developmental ends. In order to do this, they developed a realistic respect for wealth-generating factors, including the wealth generators themselves. And they never regarded profit as a dirty word, as something sordid and unspiritual. The healthier the profit position of an enterprise, whether private or public, the better for the workers, for the public exchequer, and therefore for Singapore as a whole. Profiteering is a dirty word, but not profits. And that is why the NTUC founded CASE and the Government helps to fund it. Also vitally important to economic progress was the fact that neither the political nor the trade union leaders subscribed to the imbecile egalitarian creed of unearned rewards and unrewarded duties. Societies which adopted this creed are today the broken-back societies of the Third World, but it would be invidious to name them. In Singapore, both the individual and the notion as a whole must earn their keep. Performance, merit, productivity, the international and national market value of the skills or expertise involved - and not the rules of the lucky draw - determine a person's earnings. Let our budding breed of new writers, poets and "back to the Beyond" philosophers also chew on the fact that foreign investors come to Singapore with their technology and their marketing skills, not because of the quality of our poets and philo- sophers but because of the quality of our social and economic infrastructure, the skills of our workers, and the assurance of a healthy return on their investments. Let everybody also be assured that nobody in the political leadership regards affluence and economic well-being as ends in themselves but as the necessary material foundation for the development of higher intellectual, cultural and spiritual appetites in our people. Some distinguished modern spiritual leaders, in both East and West, have affirmed that the higher things of life cannot exist or develop on empty bellies, on poverty and squalor. If the PAP Government had started off with poetry and philosophy, none of our poets today would be able to poetise the way they do, none of our liberals to liberalise the way they do, and none of our philosophers to philosophise the way they do. One would have thought that all the simple basics I have listed are accepted as axiomatic in Singapore. They are not, and I will explain why. One of the less desirable by-products of our increasing affluence and better education are the snooty arty-crafty types, who denounce materialism and materialists. And when they refer to materialists, they are not merely thinking of our Foreign Minister's "Ugly Singaporean" whose religion is moneytheism, who sees wealth as an end in itself, who is completely self-centred with no social concern whatever, and whose tastes in music, art and literature are vulgar in the extreme. On the contrary, according to the snooty arty-crafty chaps, even the word "technocrat" is a term of abuse. And mere politicians like all of us in this House, from the Prime Minister downwards, belong to a lesser breed, people who think in mechanical terms, and are completely divorced from the rarefied worlds of art, music and literature in which these higher spiritual beings float about. They even turn down their lofty spiritual noses on something which we lesser breeds desperately seek for the physical survival of Singapore - technology. Fortunately for Singapore, these bogus mystics of the spirit are in the minority. And they let off their verbal blasts against the materialistic and mechanical types like us, without taking the trouble to do their homework. Equally fortunately, because of the hard-nosed sophistication of our electorate, any one of these loafers of the spirit would lose his deposit if he stood for election. However, because of their glibness and their great capacity for verbal gymnastics, they do have a capacity to mislead those of our young people who take the arts and the humanities as their field of study. The scapegoat seekers I have in mind come from the now breed of writers in Singapore. Not all of them, mind you, but at least some of them, especially those whom I have called the arty-crafty types. I know at least one of them, a Singapore citizen, who goes into raptures when leader writers of the Manchester Guardian take one of their regular, vicious and ignorant swipes at Singapore and our Prime Minister, but maintains a morose and sullen silence when Singapore speaks out against its foreign detractors. Before I wade into these gentlemen (and ladies!) I might offer my own credentials. In doing so, I know that the position I will take will be shared by the generality of Members in this House. I am ignorant about Singapore writers who use Mandarin, Malay or Tamil as their means of expression. But I have gone through a good number of those who offer their literary creations in English. A surprising number of them write well, and deserve praise and encouragement. No society is complete without its literati. So may they increase in number and flourish! But what some among the literati do not seem to appreciate is that no literati will be possible, without the rest of society, including our much-maligned entrepreneurs, technocrats and other "materialistic" types who are responsible for the foundation of material well-being in our society, and for the solid material launching pad from which our literati are able to shoot up into their ethereal spiritual orbits. A good number of our poets, for instance, have managed memorable lines, and some even memorable verses of a sustained high quality. But alas, an equal number of them have also produced execrable stuff which they attempt to palm off as poetry. These are the confidence tricksters of literature - apes of style, barren of substance, and devoid of sincerity. And they exist in all societies. Only, we seem to have more than our fair share of such posturing humbugs. We could do with less. I would not mention names, but those who squirm when they read this in the papers tomorrow, will know whom the cap fits. I might confess that I am temperamentally incapable of responding to some kinds of poetry, and the fault may be my own lack of receptivity. For instance, verses which offer me the erotic ecstasies which the poet has experienced, leave me unexcited. But this may be because with increasing age, some of my glands do not function as efficiently as they used to. Along with our writers, there have also emerged the literary critics. Here, there appear to be two schools, one a club of mutual masturbators, who are constantly praising each other's works, and the other of critics who use hatchets with great vigour to chop up matchsticks. In this connection, Mr Speaker, Sir, may I toll the Minister of Education that I was alarmed to learn that in our secondary schools, a number of our local poets are read during appreciation of poetry sessions. I am alarmed, Sir, because I know a number of them who ought not to be read at all. I would submit that until such time as we develop in Singapore nationally as well as internationally credible standards of literary criticism, it would be safer to introduce our children to English poetry through universally acknowledged models of poetic content and diction like Wordsworth, Shelley, Milton, Shakespeare, and so on. I mean this seriously, for if I find that my daughter who is in secondary school now, develops depraved tastes in poetry, I may feel obliged to sue the Ministry of Education. I will now say something about the credentials of the generation which made the Singapore of today, which the next generation will inherit. We must give these credentials, so that the arty-crafty dodgers of reality are not allowed to denigrate the virtues and, if I may say so, the passion, which went into the making of modern Singapore. The Singapore we know today, warts and all, and are justifiably proud of, is not the product of our sins. It is the product and image of the virtues of a whole generation of people. What were some of the crucial collective experiences which went into the making of this generation? They were children or adolescents during the great Wall Street collapse of the early 30s, followed by the Great Depression. I remember that as an eight-year old boy, my unemployed father with my mother and seven of us children (There was no Lee Kuan Yew then to say "Only two", and a decent interval in between. There was hardly any interval between us.) were forced to live for nearly two years in a dilapidated garage near Muar. And we did not have meat or even fish for weeks on end. Others fared much worse, sleeping on five-foot ways and tin shacks. Then came the maelstrom of the Second World War, the unrelieved horrors, the massacres and tortures associated with the Japanese occupation. The end of World War 11 and the British re-occupation did not bring with it peace and tranquillity. On the contrary, members of that generation found themselves caught up in a swelling, impetuous and irresistible tide of anti-colonialism which was to irrevocably change the political face of Asia. There followed rapid political changes, accompanied by social turbulence, riots, strikes, arson, bomb explosions, and the like - which Singaporeans of today are strangers to. And many a time it was a touch-and-go affair in successive and often simultaneous confrontations with the colonialists, the crooks, the communalists and the communists - the four C's if you prefer. It was no ordinary generation, both leaders and led, which between them forged this nation into being, for they went through a fiery baptism which we sincerely hope that our children will be spared. Many of them are with us no more, and with every passing year, the relentless attrition of time will remove more of them. And our vapid poets (not all of them, please!) with their anaemic, neurotic and erotic verses, cannot even in their most vivid imaginings, capture the drama, the pain, passion, courage and sometimes sheer heroism which formed the warp and woof of the lives of the founding generation of Singaporeans. And yet, the very uniqueness of Singapore is now used as a stick to hit us with. Here is a prize piece of nincompoopery. I quote from a forum on English language and literature in Singapore, published in the last issue of Commentary, a quarterly journal of the University of Singapore Society. The speaker is a senior lecturer in the University's Department of English. I quote: 'Quite unabashedly and without apology, the Prime Minister has said, if I remember correctly, that in the 60s, the early 60s, when there was a baby boom, the Government lowered standards of admission for teachers and they just admitted anybody, [including daily-rated labourers!]. And he took it as an accepted fact that we had to do this. The result has been a decline in standards of English, mainly or partly because of the decline in the quality of teachers. But the PM's remark points to something: in Singapore the solution is always mechanical. Numbers all the time. We think that once we assemble a number of people, a number of resources, and so on, hey presto, something will happen.' More about this person later on. So our Prime Minister is too mechanical. Remember the passion I referred to? But no, the Prime Minister is devoid of passion. He is a robot. His solutions are always mechanical. So we had better have an artist as our next Prime Minister. He would not be mechanical. Perhaps we might try out the chap who writes that poetry corner in the Sunday Times. He will not be mechanical, for he probably does not even know what machines are - let alone poetry! I remember the Prime Minister had given the rationale behind the decision to lower standards of admission for teachers in the early 60s. But there is no mention of this. However, the senior lecturer is absolutely right in at least one respect. We did assemble a number of incorruptible people, a number of resources, and organised a hard-working population, and hey presto, something did happen - the swamps of Jurong gave way to an industrial estate, the slums of Singapore gave way to our numerous townships - and hey presto, we have got the Singapore of today. Only, we did not bargain for this senior lecturer in the Department of English. I will continue with the quotation from this inspired senior lecturer: 'The other point I want to make is about the style of the leadership. If you look at the speeches, they always bring in statistics. We must be about the only country where the Prime Minister releases a sat of tables with his text. Every National Day speech contains productivity figures and projections of trade figures, GNP, and so on. So one does not really need great expressive power'. Our PM has no expressive power as you all know! And the same kind of mindless gibberish goes on and on. This is the kind of intellectual food served to our students in the arts and humanities departments. So what does this mean? We tell the Prime Minister, "Please, Mr Prime Minister, in your next National Day speech, leave out facts, figures and statistics." Use the expressive power of the English language, in the way some of the Presidents and Prime Ministers of broken-back societies elsewhere use their own languages, to treat their people to hock, platitudes, political chants - anything else but the truth, the hard facts about the state of the economy, the geo-political changes for the worse, etc., etc. And our Minister for Finance! When you present next year's Budget don't you dare use statistics! Present your Budget in English verse, with appropriate rhythm and metre. Otherwise, the poor chaps in the English Department would not be able to under- stand you, with your poor powers of expression in the English language. Another speaker in the forum worked herself into a lather over alleged remarks about Western values and chauvinism. A succeeding speaker goes on to make the astonishing assertion that Singapore is probably guilty of cultural protectionism. He says, and he is an expatriate: 'Dostoevsky, Marvell and Wordsworth are not relevant, maybe, but in the larger sense they are somewhat insidious. I resent this belief... .'. Now, what in heaven's name are these learned blather skites blathering about? Mr Speaker, the Oxford Dictionary defines the word "blather" as "loquacious nonsense". If there is one place in the world where there is no cultural protectionism, it is Singapore. Who in Singapore is against Western culture or English culture, or for that matter against any culture, be it Chinese, Indian or Malay? The present generation of leaders are persons reared, among other things, on English literature. Indeed, some of the values we cherish and admire are British values, which seem to be going out of fashion in Great Britain itself. But that is not our fault. Our Deputy Prime Minister, for instance, has drunk deep of Plato, Aristotle and the classics, quite apart from his mastery of Adam Smith and the classical economists. I have heard our Prime Minister discuss the development of Shakespeare's dramas over lunch. Our Foreign Minister, as everyone knows, is a walking library. Rumour has it that even his toilet is a mini-library! And I will take a dim view of anybody who thinks poorly of Dostoevsky, Marvell or Wordsworth. So let us tell these ladies and gentlemen, do not try to give the misleading impression to our students that those who sit on the Front and Back-benches of this House are a bunch of cultural and literary morons. What we do object to is not Western culture and civilisation, or English culture and literature, but the yellow pop culture and the cheap literature churned out by the pulp mills of the West. Not only of the West, we also get pop mandarin and pop culture through Taipeh and Hong Kong. If we were against English culture and literature, our senior lecturer in the English Department would not have a job, for there would be no English Department. Although I do not personally subscribe to any institutional religion, I would not object if anyone described me as somebody who values things spiritual. And I know a number of Members of this House who, in their different ways, are deeply religious men. But it is not with the empyrean that we in this House are busy. Rather it is the opposite end of things that engage our attention. And, quite rightly, for ladders to Heaven for earth-bound mortals like us must yet be rooted on firm ground. As an Indian scripture put it: "The earth is our footing". Our major preoccupation therefore is to ensure the secure livelihood of our people, including the literati and members of the English department, in conditions conducive to continued political stability and economic progress. But the best answer ever given to the growing number of artistic and literary refugees from reality, both in Singapore and elsewhere, was one given by the great American architect, philosopher and futurist, Buckminster Fuller. He once told an audience of culture-vultures in America, who looked down snootily on mundane and unspiritual things like technology, as follows: "Throw all the technology into the ocean, and millions will starve. Throw all the philosophers into the ocean, and nobody will starve!" And Singaporeans ought to know, especially our students, that if we throw our Government Front benchers, our Back benchers, our top civil servants, our technocrats, systems engineers, entrepreneurs, skilled workers, and managers into the ocean, there will not be any Singapore. But throw these arty-crafty reality-dodgers into the ocean, and you might get a bit more literary and spiritual realism. You might even conceivably get a better poetry corner in the Sunday Times. There are some people who seem to think, I am told in the University, that the official establishment in Singapore will look with favour on poetry or prose writings which have a propagandistic content. This is utter rubbish. I do not know anybody in the Singapore Government who believes in the communist theory of socialist realism in literature, initiated by the late and unlamented Josef Stalin and his cultural henchman, Zhdhanov. If there are any, they must have escaped the eyes of our ISD and should not be anywhere in the Government. I hope that our writers and artists are patriotic. But it requires more than patriotism to produce good prose and poetry. For good literature in all languages, while it may have a local content, colour and flavour, must yet have a more than local and, if possible, a universal significance. That is why I am suspicious of some writers who appear to suck up to authority in their writings, in the hope of securing official approbation. I personally would not trust them, either as writers or as patriots. I might conclude, Mr Speaker, Sir, that often it is our technocrats, economic planners, and entrepreneurs themselves who draw upon their heads the contumely of the arty-crafty. For several of them are also guilty of a snobbery in reverse. You mention art, music, poetry or literature, and they snigger, and you can almost see them making a mental note to the effect: "This chap must be soft in the head." Such an attitude betokens an absence of culture and is the sad result of excessive specialisation enforced by the demands of modern disciplines in our tertiary institutions. It would therefore be a healthy development for Singapore if our technocratic elite attempt to widen and deepen their awareness of matters cultural and literary. By the same token, some of our writers could benefit from a heavy dose of the economics of development. It would be a pity if we developed too many Singaporeans with capsule minds, effectively, insulated against exposure to other fields of human experience and knowledge. As far as possible, we should aim at what I might call "the rounded Singaporean". And a rounded Singaporean will not be an ugly one. Finally, Mr Speaker, Sir, may I assure the Finance Minister that I for one would not want him to present his next Budget in poetical form. I want my facts, figures and statistics. I will go elsewhere for my poetry. 3.16 p.m.