Mr Speaker, Sir, I thank Members for their enthusiastic support for the National Arts Council and for the appointment of Prof. Tommy Koh as the Chairman of this Council, and also for their very thought- ful and thought-provoking comments about what our general approach towards the development of the arts in Singapore should be. A number of comments have been raised which I would try now to address in turn. First, on the funding of the Arts Council. There is some approval for the increase in Government funding, but there is also concern that it may not be enough. Let me assure Members that the Government is committed to furthering the development of the arts in Singapore and will increase its funding progressively. The Council will get an operating grant of $6.5 million in the first year, and this will increase to $7.4 million in the second year to $8.4 million in the third year. The $6.5 million for the first year represents a 67% increase over recurrent expenditure on the arts last year. Beyond these three years, let us wait and see because it is possible to actually waste money on the arts, and we should not be just throwing money at the problem to solve it. There is a certain tao, as it were, as to how quickly the arts can develop in Singapore, and we should move with it rather than to speed it up faster than it can on itself progress. But where Government is needed to provide umbrella facilities, infrastructural facilities, that Government will do and, in fact, as Members are aware, we have now embarked on a project to develop a world class, top rate, performing arts centre in Singapore, and that will cost us hundreds of millions of dollars. The cost of operating that centre must come to millions of dollars every year. All that Government is undertaking to help finance, fully the capital cost of building the centre, and partially the cost of running it. The problem is not really money. The problem is whether we are able to develop the software so that when the centre is ready, not only will we have the people to perform on the various stages, we will also have the audiences to fill up the halls. Building the building, that is the easiest part. But creating the audience support, creating the traditions, developing excellence in performance, all that is infinitely more difficult to achieve. But we will try to do that, so that by the time the centre is ready in 1998/1999, we will have the companies and the groups and the audiences to really breathe life into it. The Council is starting off with an inheritance of $11 million from the National Theatre Trust and the Singapore Cultural Foundation. It will also start off with a staff of over 100. We will take it from there and see what is required from year to year. I am intrigued by Mr Heng Chiang Meng's proposal for double tax relief for those individuals who contribute to this Council, although I must say that as the Minister for Information and the Arts, I am rather more enthusiastic than I would have been as the Minister of State for Finance about this intriguing proposal. Nevertheless, my staff will study it very carefully and put up a case to the Finance Minister. The approach that we take must balance, as Dr Ow Chin Hock has said, various competing considerations, one of which is striking a balance between top-down direction and bottom-up participation. We all know that throughout history, without a certain degree of top-down support the arts can never flourish. You need either kingsor princes, popes, bishops, cardinals, big entrepreneurs, to give funding, to become patrons. It is the case today. That if you leave it just to the market, the arts will never flourish. At the same time, without the market, it is entirely possible that we will be wasting a lot of money on activities which interest very few. So we must always find a good balance between a top-down approach and bottom-up participation. So when Mr Wan Hussin recommends that the Arts Council should come out with policy statements and give clear directions as to what it wants to do, I say, "Yes, I would discuss this with the Arts Council". But I would caution at the same time that the Arts Council should not be too quick to state its views. I think it should first conduct extensive social investigations, talk to people, find out what the ground is ripe for, what people feel they want, and then work with the currents, rather than try to impose from a theoretical academic viewpoint their view of the world on to the arts community and those who support artistic activities in Singapore. Of course, Government should try and regulate in a way which facilitates participation by as wide a circle of the community as possible, and this we would do by managing the whole field more lightly and by reviewing our censorship rules. As you know, Prof. Tommy Koh is also chairing a Committee to review censorship regulations in Singapore. This is very timely. The last time we made a review was 10 years ago when Prof. Jayakumar headed the Committee. So 10 years after that, we have a new Committee and its recommendations should take us 10 years into the future. I do not think we should be overly cautious and take small steps. That will not do because it will create too much uncertainty. I have recommended to the Committee that they make an overall assessment and take a decisive step which will settle the field, as it were, for 10 more years into the future. And then 10 years from now we can have another Committee to take a fresh look. But we cannot be making small incremental steps. In the longer term, what we need really, as Mr Wan Hussin suggested, is to develop consciousness in the arts among young Singaporeans in the schools and junior colleges because that will provide the base upon which the arts can flourish over the long term. Right now, we are trying to light fires from the top here and there, but in the end it is whether the ground is ripe for comprehensive artistic development. The Education Ministry has done a lot and I am very heartened by the interest which parents are showing in the arts field. I have mentioned this before, I say it here again, that every year some 40,000 people take the music examinations under the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) without any encouragement by any public body or by the Government, but parents on their own deciding that - it may be peer pressure - they did not have it for themselves, so they wish it for their children. They feel that if their children do not have such education, somehow they are not completely whole and, therefore, they, on their own, have added the additional pressure on their children in order that they will grow up fuller. It is the same too in other fields, like in Chinese calligraphy. In Japan and in Korea, even though they learn far fewer characters, they teach calligraphy from primary one. We do not, because that will be an excessive burden on our students. But, completely on their own, many parents have decided that calligraphy is a worthwhile pursuit and have prescribed it for their own children and, for this reason, calligraphy classes are booming all over in Singapore. So do ballet classes, dance classes and so on. So I am optimistic, because we have become a middle class society in one generation, and parents realise, on the whole, that when they were young they did not have the training, now they have the wealth, their appreciation of the arts is imperfect for lack of training when they were young, it is a deficiency which they wish to rectify in their children and with the support of the Education Ministry, I believethat the next generation will be much better off. Therefore, when we attend concerts and other performances in Singapore today, we find that the majority of the audiences are young Singaporeans, and this is very heartening because when these young Singaporeans become working Singaporeans, become Yuppies, when they get into their 30s and 40s and 50s, they are the ones who will fill up the performing arts centre and who will provide the market for artistesto make a living in Singapore. So there is a positive current flowing in our society. Now that we have achieved a certain standard of material well-being, Singaporeans are realising that they must also give attention to the arts, and this in fact secures the future for artistic development in Singapore. Our job and the job of the National Arts Council is to facilitate this movement, not to thwart it, and not to accelerate it faster than is possible, but to move with it, and to lead it along. We must also strike a few other balances, and one is creating ethnic spread and keeping alive the old without the old preventing us from acquiring the new. The traditional arts are important because that is our link to the past. But the arts are a living thing and they are evolving all the time. If we are too trapped in traditional forms, then no progress can be made. And the fact that we are multi-cultural is in fact an advantage. I visited the NUS Music Centre recently, and I was told that a few months ago we sent a team to compete in a music composition contest in Taiwan. And initially the University thought: "Why do we go? We'll only lose face, because the others will be so much better than we are." But, lo and behold, we came up tops. So I asked them: How was that possible? They said: "Ah! The judges thought that we were particularly creative." And I suspect the reason is that being multi-cultural, we were able to cut across cultural norms and achieve mutual stimulation, and this assists us in the creative process. Whereas the Taiwanese who were caught in their owngreat traditions had greater difficulty achieving this breakthrough. So, yes, we preserve the past but the past must not prevent us from moving into the future. Yes, we want ethnic spread; yes, we want quantity; yes, we want to be fair; but at the same time we should avoid the pitfalls of too much socialism in the arts. In the end, the progress will be uneven. Some will do better than others; and we are better off by backing winners rather than pulling down winners in order to be fair, and absolutely fair to everyone. If weare absolutely fair to everyone, then we will make no progress. And this is a fine balance the Arts Council has to achieve - feeding many, but for those which thrive, give full backing. I am very inspired by Mr Wan Hussin's metaphor. It is about plants and flowers. And if I may continue the use of that metaphor. If the flowers are the products, then the job of MITA and the Arts Council is to be an assiduous gardener, tilling the ground, adding fertilizer, weeding, and so on. In the end, the actual creative process cannot be willed from above, it must come from the seeds themselves. So too, striking a balance between the local and the foreigner. As Dr Ow Chin Hock said, if we have too much protectionism, there will be no progress. But at the same time, there is an infant industry argument for the arts. I mean there are some seeds which have to be looked after in greenhouses before they can be exposed in the international environment. So I would say we do need a few greenhouses, and we do have a range of assistance schemes right now to assist fledgling arts organisations and fledgling arts activities in Singapore. In the end, what is our objective? Our objective is to help create a Singaporean identity to help forge a Singaporean soul which would attach Singaporeans to Singapore, wherever they are. Are we achieving it? It is hard to say. Because if you ask artists and Singaporeans now to list what they feel to be Singaporean art, they are hard put to do so. It is very difficult to express in words what is Singaporeanculture or Singaporean art. Yes, we can describe what is Chinese art or Indian art or Malay art. But it is very difficult to describe what is Singaporean art other than by using metaphor and saying that it is fried rice, a mixture, or an amalgam of this and that. It is very difficult. Now, this is interesting. I have had to open many exhibitions in the course of my duties. But what I have found is that a Singaporean characteristic is emerging, and emerging irresistibly. You see a painting, initially it looks Chinese. Then you exploreit more closely, you find, no, there is a variation, something is different about this, which sets it apart from the PRC pattern, the Taiwanese pattern. And this is inevitable because the artists grow up here in Singapore soil, they breathe in the air, they take in the spirit, and this must eventually be expressed in their artistic works. And over time, this process will continue, and with each passing year, with assistance from the Government and from private corporations and individuals, we will be able to help in the formation of this Singaporean character, realising at the same time that whatever character we develop must not make us so different as to be weird. And whatever we are, it must not just be attractive to Singaporeans alone, but must also be attractive to foreigners. And this is a great asset we have. That when foreigners come to Singapore, when they come through, visit our exhibitions, there is always something familiar about artistic expressions, something which links us to China, to India, to Indonesia, to Malaysia, to Japan, and to the West. And the more we are able to achieve this distinctiveness as Singaporeans without losing our international character, the more we will succeed and it will greatly enhance our long-term competitive position in the future.