Mr Speaker, Sir, the Straits Times has called the Budget a "Celebration Budget". Its editorial on 5th March describes it as "all honey and no sting". The International Chamber of Commerce, the Singapore Manufacturers Association and the Indian Chamber of Commerce have all acclaimed it in different fashions. And PAP Backbenchers, not to be outdone, have also labelled the Budget as "painless", "happy", "no minuses, all pluses", and so on. Of course, business and especially big business corporations have good reasons to be happy. They have benefited immensely from Government give-aways. As disclosed by the Minister for Finance, over the years, Government has channelled to business and especially big business since 1980, through tax rebates and rate reductions, more than $1 billion a year. In the 1990 Budget, MNCs will again benefit by another $100 million, maybe very much more. To avoid unfavourable public reactions, the PAP has regularly imposed taxes, not during presentation of the yearly budgets, but in the months between budgets. These taxes are imposed by decree, and without even a parliamentary debate. All of us will remember, Sir, the sudden hefty increases in diesel taxes, in parking fees, in levies on foreign workers and foreign maids, in taxes on motor vehicles, including motor import duties, road taxes and additional registration fees, in additional hospital fees and charges, and in other fees and charges on goods and services by Government departments over the last few years. All these are not painless but painful taxes. They are not honey but stings, and they have given the people in Singapore no cheer and no cause for celebration whatsoever. To appraise a budget, Sir, we need to see further than taxes. We need to see how revenue is spent. And we want to know how Government uses the budget to redistribute income and wealth among the people. In the Budget, Government has announced a string of goodies to benefit the corporations - income tax cuts, stamp duty exemptions, concessionary tax cuts and incentives for offshore transactions, and a further extension of post-pioneer tax-free status from five to 10 years. From this, it would seem that Government is fearful that MNCs do not make enough profits, and is anxious to ensure that they make more and still more super-profits year after year. Many have said that the PAP Government is a government of MNCs and for MNCs. What of our small and medium enterprises? Don't they also benefit? Yes, Sir. A good number of SMEs do benefit. But they benefit only marginally. And some SMEs hardly benefit at all. The PAP believes in pampering the MNCs, not the local entrepreneurs. And what of the people of Singapore, 70% of whom earn less than $1,000 per month? Have they also benefited? Yes, in a way. They do not have to bear new taxes this time, which is a consolation. But only until the next round of PAP's inter-budgetary taxes. To the people, the PAP means pay-and-pay, and we have been paying and paying all the time. Nevertheless, we have had three good years with billions of dollars in surpluses each year, and we have also billions of dollars in foreign reserves. And our Ministers and top civil servants have given themselves huge salary increases, making them the highest paid Ministers and top civil servants in the world. In our city-state in which poverty still exists in the midst of plenty, and confirmed by the PAP itself in the 1990 Party Convention recently, one would have thought that the Government might still remember its early PAP party aims and promises, have some considerations for the poor, the low and middle income groups, and perhaps help relieve some of their tax burdens, sufferings and hardships. Government statistics have shown that the cost of living has gone up, that daily necessities are more expensive, that the dollar can buy less and less, and that many families have found it more and more difficult to make ends meet. We do not expect the PAP to emulate President Suharto and similarly issue a call to tycoons: "Share your wealth". But does the Budget make provisions to help the poor? In this 25th year of the PAP rule? Let us see what the 1990 Budget brings to the people of Singapore. Government asserts that "our existing personal income tax rates remain fair and equitable". Are they really fair and equitable? For whom? The Minister proposes "to give an across-the-board once-off rebate of 5% personal income tax for Year of Assessment 1990". "The estimated revenue loss is $60 million", he adds, in order to show how magnanimous the PAP is. Of course, this could create the impression that everyone of our taxpayers will get a real bonus. But who are those who will benefit from this largesse of $60 million? As is well known, Sir, across-the-board rebates benefit only those who have high incomes and naturally pay higher income taxes. It benefits the lower and the middle income groups very little. For instance, a taxpayer who pays an income tax of $100 will get a rebate of $5 (not even enough for a plate of mee), whereas a taxpayer who pays an income tax of $10,000 will get a rebate of $500. And of course a taxpayer who pays an income tax of $50,000 will get a rebate of $2,500. How is that fair and equitable? The Minister will have to answer us. Let us consider some of the Government's concessions in the Budget. Tax reliefs for aged parents and handicapped dependants, increased from $2,500 to $3,500, are certainly welcome. However, this also exposes the double standards employed by Government in its dealings towards the rich and towards the low-income groups. In rationalising give-aways in tax rebates and rate reductions to big business, the Minister says that Government should not be miserly. But does he show any charity when it comes to giving urgently needed relief to those who have financial difficulties in looking after aged parents and handicapped dependants? The Minister allows, rather grudgingly I think, only $1,000 extra this year. Calling this "miserliness" on the part of the Minister would be charitable and euphemistic. Some people would say that the Minister is insensitive and uncaring. As is well-known, looking after the aged and handicapped dependants these days would each require a minimum of $600 to $800 a month. This works out to a total of $7,000 to $10,000 a year. The number of taxpayers looking after the aged and the dependants is not very large. Therefore, total expenditure in this instance is very small compared to the millions and billions of dollars given away to big business. Millions of dollars have also been unnecessarily spent on all sorts of PAP celebrations. Need Government be so uncaring towards those in need? Should not Government give more generous tax reliefs to them? Procreation incentives. Special tax rebates to encourage families to have their second child earlier is to be welcomed, especially when the new rebate, together with existing rebates for the third and fourth child, will be allowed to be claimed over an extended period of 21 years. I must congratulate the ingenuity of those who have thought of such a proposal, and I believe a good number of families will certainly be influenced to have their families earlier. An estimated 10,500 women will benefit, according to the Business Times. It is unfortunate, however, that this proposal, like the existing third and fourth child rebates, is aimed mainly at the higher-educated and better-off parents. It is therefore somewhat unfair and discriminatory to other women who are not so qualified. Therefore, to be fair and equitable, in addition to the present scheme of tax rebates, let Government also give less well-off families outright grants of, say, $3,000 to $5,000 for each child who is born. In this way, Sir, all will benefit and none will be left out. That would certainly help correct the present population decline, and put right the disastrous consequences of the many years of the erroneous population policy of the past. Yet another point which should not be forgotten is that certain categories of university graduates will not easily benefit from the new procreation incentive unless they get married while they are still undergraduates. In the medical discipline, for example, assuming that the student enters the university at age 19, he will be at least 25 years old before he passes out as a full-fledged doctor. Add a few years for national service and studies for a higher degree - FRCS, MRCP, whatever - he would be well over 30 years old, well past the 28-year target for the incentive before he can decide to get married. Similarly, a dental surgeon or an architect will be nearing 30 years old when he enters the professional market, so to speak. How then will such graduate professionals benefit from the present procreation incentives? Has the Minister done his homework well enough? The relief for foreign maid levy extended to divorced women and widows with children is also welcome. Government should realise that any levy on foreign maids means unnecessary hardships for working mothers who need domestic help and yet may not be able to afford extra levies. After all, no household would incur extra expenses to engage foreign maids unless absolutely necessary. Moreover, such a levy somewhat runs counter to the policy to promote procreation and early establishment of a family for young working couples. Government should therefore do away with levies on foreign maids for working mothers altogether. As against all these concessions, there is, however, the promised future imposition of consumption tax. The Minister has said that legislation on a comprehensive goods and services tax will be introduced this year. As is well known, consumption tax is a regressive tax. The tax burden is heavier for the low-income groups and it is certainly inflationary. It can also adversely affect the retail trade as well as tourism. Of course, we already have various indirect taxes which are in fact all consumption taxes. The PAP merely wants to further increase the category of taxes. This can only mean an increase of the tax burden for those with low incomes. Therefore, such consumption taxes should not be imposed. It is a tax that is most unfair and inequitable for the low and middle income groups, more than 70% of our population. Sir, further unfairness in the PAP's scheme of taxation is the fact that, despite widespread appeal from the people of all walks of life, the Government has still turned a deaf ear to the call for an increase in personal income tax relief. In 1959, before the PAP came to power, personal relief was $3,000 for a taxpayer and $2,000 for the spouse, ie, $5,000 for a married couple. But very quickly in 1960, the PAP reduced personal relief to $2,000 for a taxpayer and $1,000 for the spouse, ie, $3,000 for a couple. This reduced personal tax relief from $5,000 to $3,000 per couple has remained unchanged for 30 years. As the Minister himself well knows, school fees, bus fares, radio and TV licences, housing, PUB bills, hospital fees and charges, other fees and levies, household expenditures have all gone up. Yet, the personal tax relief remains the same, and the low-income groups are made to pay income tax when they should have been exempted. I am sure the Minister cannot honestly maintain that making those with low incomes pay income tax is fair and equitable. In the circumstances, the only decent thing for the Minister to do is to raise the personal tax reliefs immediately from $3,000 per couple to $5,000 per couple, to begin with, ie, to the pre-PAP 1959 level. In Malaysia, the personal income tax relief per couple is $7,000. Why cannot our personal reliefs be harmonised? After all, taxes should be paid by those best able to pay them, not by those who can hardly make ends meet. With such miserly personal reliefs, the income tax rates clearly are most unfair and inequitable. And how are our taxes to be used? Revenue collected by Government should be channelled to meet the needs of all the people in the country, not just for the benefit of the privileged and those already sitting pretty at the top. Thus adequate funds either in the form of grants or subventions should be made available to ensure equal opportunities for education for our children to develop to the best of their potential all the way to the top. Similarly, more funds should be made available to ensure good, affordable medical care for the people and especially for the aged, and to generally improve the quality of life for all Singaporeans. But it would appear that in all these aspects the Government has not shouldered its rightful responsibilities to the people. Let us see how Government proposes to spend some of our revenue in 1990. The biggest expenditure is reserved for the servicing of public debt. In 1989, the amount was more than $5 billion. In 1990, the amount will be increased to more than $6 billion. Interest payments alone will come to $1.8 billion, enough to build, I do not know, how many schools, Sir. Who are those who benefit from receipt of such huge amounts of interest? They are those who can afford to buy Government bonds and Treasury Bills. They are not the low, middle, or even the moderately high income groups, but the finan- cial institutions and the very rich. Who are those who contribute towards payment of the interest on these Government bonds and Treasury bills? The people of Singapore, the common man-in-the-street. This is one of the most unfair and inequitable ways in which the budget has been used to redistribute wealth in Singapore, from the comparatively poor to the rich. At one time, the PAP had claimed that it was playing the role of Robin Hood in taking from the rich to subsidise the poor in low-cost housing. We can see from the servicing of our public debt alone that the PAP is no Robin Hood at all. In fact, it is the very opposite, a Robin Hood in reverse. It takes taxes from the people in order to pay vast sums of interest to the rich and super-rich, including foreigners. The budget provides for more loans to be raised this year. Do we really need to raise loans and more new loans when we have such huge surpluses and such huge foreign reserves? And what about defence? The provision for defence amounts to $3.2 billion, another huge chunk of our budget. And if we add also the Development Estimates, the amount adds up to $3.5 billion, more than one and a half times the amount budgeted for education, nearly six times the amount budgeted for health and 15 times the amount budgeted for community development. Sir, we have been told that we should increase productivity. Then do we really need to spend so much on something which is totally unproductive? When the whole world is cutting back on defence expenditure, and the US has said that its reduction in forces in Asia will not affect security in any way, do we need to increase our expenditure on defence by 19% over the 1989 expenditure, and thus take away funds which could be better spent on education, health and community development for the betterment of our people? Sir, we need to be realistic in our assessment of the political and military situation in and around South East Asia. We need to put our priorities right. We do not need to spend billions of dollars on defence in order to safeguard the security of Singa- pore when a much smaller sum would suffice. If we continue to raise expenditure on the wrong things and neglect to spend appropriate funds to carry out policies that serve the people well, we will all be losers in the end. No wonder thousands of our best brains leave Singapore for other countries every year. One of the main reasons why people emigrate is that they can no longer tolerate the policies pursued by our insensitive and uncaring Government. Let me summarise, Sir. The budget proposes more give-aways to big business. It has also proposed a few goodies to the people but these have not really helped those most in need of Government's assistance. At the same time, Government has continued tax policies that shift tax burdens more onto the shoulders of the poor, low and middle-income groups. It has thus widened the gap between the rich and the poor. The budget has all its priorities wrong, and it is certainly not a fair budget for the vast majority of the people of Singapore. I hope the Minister will reply to the points I have raised. 3.25 pm