ESTIMATES OF EXPENDITURE FOR THE FINANCIAL YEAR - 1ST APRIL, 1994 TO 31ST MARCH, 1995
Sir, I would like to thank Members for their many thoughtful comments about SBC, the arts and the future plans for the National Library. Earlier, I asked the Clerk of Parliament to distribute two documents. One, the Report of the Censorship Feedback Panel, chaired by Mr Hsuan Owyang, and the other, the Report of the Committee on TV Violence. This is to help establish the facts for debate here today and tomorrow. Mr Owyang's Committee met last year, gave us a report then, cautioned us on certain matters and SBC has followed up. This year they have given us a follow-up report. It said generally that, by and large, the problem of too much sex and violence on television is more or less under control. Last year, Dr Arthur Beng and some other MPs mentioned the effects of TV violence on actual violence in our streets and, because of that problem, which has been raised again by Dr Arthur Beng this year, we set up a committee consisting of members from MITA, MHA, the Police Force and SBC to monitor violence on television on a daily basis. This, they have done and have also attached their report. They have also attached, as an Annex, the Television Programme Code adhered to by the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation. So with these two committees, we have got agencies in place to monitor the situation. But SBC cannot get full marks. Over the last year, there have been a number of lapses, not in the area of sex and violence, but in new areas. A repeated comment I have heard is that many of the jokes on SBC are crude. This is a problem because, on the one hand, we encourage them to increase the quantity of local productions, so they have to try new things. Sometimes, they make mistakes and there is a whole list of them. Every time, I get feedback from members of the public, from colleagues here, from colleagues in Cabinet, I pass them on. But I tell them, "Do not be disheartened. You press on, experiment, and try new things. But learn from your mistakes and, eventually, you will improve and be better able to cope with the challenges of the future." But they do not have an easy time. Ra Ra Show, for example. I was very reluctant to stop it because it has good viewership. But then, to get the laughs, they became crude. It is one thing when we attend Seventh Moon dinners, when we attend dinners and dances for the performers to crack crude jokes because they are mostly adults. But the crude jokes cracked right in the living room are not on. In fact, I told Moses Lee, the General Manager, a number of times, "Look, try and get them to polish up." In the end, he held up his hands and said, "I have tried my very best, it is not easy." It is not easy because you require lots of creative people to keep up a steady stream of high quality jokes, week after week. The other night, after the SBC Award Ceremony, I spoke to Moses Lim and Jack Neo. They did very well that night. I asked them, "How did you keep up your supply of jokes? Do you have people to help you?" He said, "No, no. We just talk among ourselves and, sometimes, may be in the toilet, we come up with good ideas and then we test them out." They have good nights and they have bad nights. They are not like Jack Benny or Bob Hope who had whole platoons of writers, feeding them with jokes and then they also played off the audiences and they become world class. It will take a while. So I told SBC, "Better send Ra Ra Show back to the drawing board and the next time round, we try again." But they have to try again because if, in the face of criticisms, they become disheartened and they give up, then this whole corporatisation of SBC will be a joke. Then we can go back to the old days, to the RTS days. And, in fact, many of the radio and TV stations in the region are like that. They are all politically very correct. Ministers turn up, speeches, cutting of ribbons, then MPs' visits, everything politically correct, but the moment there are alternatives and the remote control is available at the finger tip, people switch on to other channels. That was what happened to India, with Doordarshan. They have a whole army of bureaucrats there to make sure that everything was correct and Doordarshan was run as an extension of the civil service. Then one day, Li Ka Shing's son came along, aloft on Star Television, beamed up five channels, and within two to three years, it completely undercut Doordarshan. So it was woken up. It started three, four, five stations and now it is busily trying very hard to recover lost ground. But I fear, in their case, some of the ground is lost forever. I will give you an example of what satellites can do. When the Prime Minister was there for Republic Day festivities, Star Television carried it live, not Doordarshan. Star Television carried it live, not because of any Singaporean audience they may be able to reach, but because they wanted to cover the Indian audience. And that is the reality. Within the next few years, by satellite alone, hundreds of channels will be available. So if we do not prepare ourselves for the new scenario, I think we will be in trouble. The waters are coming in, the storm clouds are rising. This is a scenario we cannot avoid. We cannot, like King Canute, try to keep the ocean away. We will fail. Instead, what we have to do is to determine where are the high grounds and, in an orderly way, retreat back into the high grounds and then learn to swim and set sail, because it is going to be a very watery, a very fluid environment. There is no escaping it. When I was in China, I had discussions with my counterpart, with the Culture Minister, the Television Minister, also with Politburo Standing Committee member, Li Ruihuan. They know that State television, State newspapers are losing credibility. So over the years, they have let go. So today, you go to Shanghai, you go to Guangzhou, you find that television is very lively. Of course, they still maintain ultimate control and for as long as they can keep out Rupert Murdoch and Star Television, they will try to, in order to protect their own TV industry. But this is a storm we cannot avoid. For those MPs who are speaking today, I took the opportunity to send, through Dr Ker Sin Tze, the latest economic survey on television. It is a very well written piece covering the landscape, the impact of satellite TV and almost limitless band width optical fibre and how this will change human society. And there was one line in the report which struck me. It said that the explosion in multi-media will have as profound an impact on human society as printing in Europe in the 15th Century when Gutenberg introduced the printing press. After that, Europe was never the same again. After that, you had the reformation, the counter reformation, the renaissance, science and technology, the industrial age. It was never the same again. But if you remember your history book, when Gutenberg first introduced the printing press, there were the fears, the concerns, the apprehensions that this will be the end of morality. The multi- media explosion will have an impact as profound on society throughout the world over the next 10-20 years. We do not know what the world would be like after the storm because it is not possible to forecast the future. But one thing we know for sure, and that is, it will be a very different world from what it is today. We cannot avoid this storm. And it is for this reason that, many years ago, we have been pushing SBC to become more competitive, to become more marketing-oriented, to go international and be prepared for corporatisation. Because if you are not able to compete, you can have the best "Today in Parliament", you can have the best explanation about our health policy, about this, that and the other, but if people are not listening, if people are not tuning in, it is all a waste of time. And we must not be afraid to look at ourselves. And for the media, the way you look at yourself is to look at who is listening, who is reading, who is tuning in, which means ratings. Ratings are important. And now we have introduced the people meter in many households. We used to produce the Government broadsheet called Mirror. It was under MITA. A few years ago, I had a review done. I said, "Who is reading the Mirror because it costs money to print it and I may get questions in Parliament?" They told me that actually the readership is very low. At one stage, they asked the subscribers to pay for the postage, not for the Mirror, but just for the postage. Immediately, many people said, "No, thank you." I thought about it, and I said, "If that is the case, then why are we fooling ourselves?" So we shut the Mirror. We still have the Bulletin which provides hard facts. It has got much higher credibility and I encourage the Singapore International Foundation to produce their own newsletter which they call "Singapore", and which is so much more lively, so much more readable, and so much more desired by Singaporeans and friends of Singapore who are living overseas. 4.45 pm In this new world, what must we do if we are not to be swamped? In a multi-channel environment, there will be unbundling. It is like what has happened to our radio stations. You are young, you are old, you are old-fashioned, you are hip, you tune in to different stations. And you get amused by different stations. After a while, the market divides out and people will tune in to the TV station they enjoy tuning in most. When that happens, we must make sure that SBC channels are strong anchor channels in every market segment. The idea is not new. All of us who are in business, who studied marketing, understand what I mean. When motorcars were first produced by assembly lines, Ford came out with Model T. You can have any colour except that it must be black in colour. And because it was the only colour which rolled out, people bought it. Then came along Alfred Sloan from General Motors and he said, "No, no. We must divide up the market." So he broke up GM into four divisions - Chevrolet for the hoi polloi, then there was the Buick, the Oldsmobile and, finally for those who have arrived, the Cadillac. So in every segment, he was able to outdo Ford. And before Ford knew what had happened to it, GM had become number one in America. And, of course, the Japanese companies have displaced GM. So today, if you look at Toyota, they have the Starlet, the Corolla, the Corona, all the way to the Lexus. In other words, it does not matter what station in life you belong to. So long as you have the ability to buy a car, there is a Toyota for you. So they hold their position in every market segment. And this really is what we want SBC to do, both radio and television, that in every key market segment, SBC retains a dominant position. The only way it can do this is to be very competitive, very alert to market pressures, watch ratings and go for local productions. Why must they go for local productions? They must go for local productions because the experience all over the world is that people like information, education, entertainment about their own local communities. Yes, there will always be Hollywood. Yes, there will always be the genre of films from Hong Kong. But people like watching about themselves. So you can be in Singapore reading the Asian Wall Street Journal, the International Herald Tribune and the Financial Times. But the day is not complete unless you have read the Straits Times and the Lianhe Zaobao because you have to catch up on the local news. You can be tuning in to BBC FM all the time to know everything about the world, but, from time to time, you switch back to SBC channel to find out what is happening in Singapore. It is for this reason that SBC has been told that they have to step up the quantity and quality of local productions - documentaries, news, information, entertainment, the lot - and they have been trying their level best. They make mistakes. I appeal to Members to understand why it is important for them to make mistakes. Because if they do not make mistakes, then it means that they are not trying, they are having the mentality of the old Doordarshan. And if we are not careful, within a few years, we will be engulfed by the water and we will be all wet from the storm. It is very important. Let me go to some points in particular raised by Members. What Mr Peter Sung has said, we understand, but what controls do we have in place? Because at the end of the day, the question is one of balance between regulation and competition. If we over-regulate, we will not be competitive. If we have no regulation, we will just go down market and the Ted Turners and the Rupert Murdochs of the world will engulf us. So once SBC is corporatised into a number of companies, we will create a Singapore Broadcasting Authority and it will be for this authority to censor everything that is broadcast, to set standards and to require of all public broadcasters public service responsibilities. Like our newspapers. Of course, the Westerners say that we are over-regulated, that our newspapers are muzzled, tempered and so on. They may say what they want. But our newspapers know that if they go all out for commercialisation and ignore the public interest, then I, as Minister, under the Newspaper and Printing Presses Act have got powers over them. And when SBC is corporatised, I will be coming before Members in Parliament putting forth legislation to ensure that between the Singapore Broadcasting Authority and myself as the Minister, we have adequate powers to stop local Rupert Murdochs from getting out of control. This, I assure you, we will do. We will have ultimate powers. But at the same time, there is no point corporatising SBC only to regulate it to death. Then it defeats the whole purpose of liberalising. What we want to do is, however many channels there are, if there is a national emergency, or if the SAF has to mobilise people, or something dreadful has happened and we need people to give blood, or the Prime Minister has a very urgent message to get through to all Singaporeans, then I do not care how many channels there are, we will pre-empt the lot in order that all Singaporeans get the message. And if it also means going to the cinema halls, so be it. This is what we have to do. In other words, first, accept that it will be a much more open, fluid, competitive environment. But where it affects us to the core and we must intervene and we must be able to reach out, the facilities, the regulations, the laws are there at our disposal as a community. Dr Koh Lip Lin asked about cable television. We have decided to go into cable television for two reasons: firstly, as a defensive move. Because if we do not move into cable television, we cannot stop people from buying dishes. They are already this size [indicating]. They will get smaller and they will come in all shapes and sizes. Some will look like flower pots. Unless the Finance Ministry gives me the money to have an army of censors, there is no way we can regulate in detail. The experiences in other countries, especially in America, tell us that where you provide cable, most people, 95% of them, will not be interested in going through the hassle, firstly, of buying the dish, then pointing it to the right satellite and then hiding it from the law. They will not go through that trouble. And that is why, as a defensive move, we have gone into cable television. But it is not just a defensive move. It is to make us an information, a cultural and education hub in the region. We are determined to do this. You have read in America about all this laying of fibre optics. We are doing the same in Singapore. The trunk already exists, laid by Telecom. We will extend it to every household, and we will treat it as infrastructure. Just as a developer today is required to bring into the apartment, into the house, water, gas, electricity and the telephone line, we will require him to bring in the information superhighway right into the home. We will be the first city in the world to do that. We are determined to do it because in the next century, those who are able to manipulate knowledge will do best, and we cannot afford to be left behind. It is not just television. It will be education. It will be electronic newspapers. Just the other day, I met a Senior Executive from the Asian Wall Street Journal. She was discussing with me whether the Asian Wall Street Journal could have more copies circulating in Singapore. We were talking about the Asian Wall Street Journal's electronic newspaper. She told me that in New York now, they are experimenting with an electronic Wall Street Journal which will be available next year. Every 30 minutes, one hour, the newspaper on screen will be updated. So if you are doing business and time is of the essence, you know exactly what is the latest. Let us say something about IBM. If you want to know something more about IBM, you press the button and it gives you all the detailed information about IBM. Once television and newspapers are digitized, they become one field and they will be inseparable. And what our daily routine will be like 10 years from now, 20 years from now, I dare not know. It sounds very tiring. It may be tiring for those who are older. But I think for those who are younger, who are now playing around with computers and mice, they will have no problems, because the future is theirs. And we have to prepare for that age. So we are busily laying cables. We are starting this year. Many details of who pays will have to be worked out, but the idea is to get it in place quickly as infrastructure. Part of it Government will pay, part of it will be recovered by the company. We hope within 2-3 years a basic service will be available. We should take in 20-30 channels and after that, it is virtually limitless. It is virtually limitless because the ability of that optical fibre to carry signals which are digitized and compressed is near infinite. There will be more capacity than we will ever have time to watch or be interested in. It will be like paper once Gutenberg introduced the printing press. Everyday, in our offices, in the bookshops, in the libraries, there are more things to read than we will ever have time for. But they are there. And the people who will succeed in that new world are not those who add to the information flow, but those who are able to package it for local consumption. As they say, value added in the future is information subtracted. And that is the world we are going in. SBC will have to learn how to package, how to combine what it takes in from the satellite, local productions and create something which Singaporeans say, "Ah, I am most comfortable with this product. Let me have it and have it in abundance." And that is what we want to be. Dr Vasoo raised many concerns about the effect of this new multi-media on the family structure, on the education of the young, on our social values. I think this is something which, not just the regulatory authority, but all of us will have to be mindful of. A book, a magazine, can provide good stuff, it can provide foul stuff. In the end, if our society as a whole has the antibodies, in schools, in the homes, in the workplaces, in the Ministries, in Government departments, then I think we will be able to absorb the best from this new technology and control the excesses. But it is a challenge. It is a challenge we cannot avoid. It is a challenge we must respond to with every fibre in our body. Whether there will be a second or third private TV station? There will be many more than the second or the third, because tens of channels will be available through the box. Dr Wang Kai Yuen asked about Singapore International Television. Who will pay for it? It does not come from licence fees. Both external services on television and on radio are now separately funded by Government. And no portion of the licence fee goes into subventing those two services. Should we influence others? Our TV and radio stations now overspill on to the Growth Triangle and we receive their signals - RTM1, RTM2, TV3, TVRI - and now there is the new station from Indonesia called the education channel which is available. It is friendly competition. They have two radio stations in Batam which provoked a furious response from SBC and we have covered the ground. They, in turn, will face competition from us and they will try to compete with us. And in the end, that is part of the market. Because national borders will become more and more porous in the face of this new technology. 5.00 pm That is what I meant when I said that not only have we to retreat to high ground, but we have to learn how to swim and to sail, which means to move out into the region and into the world so that in this great contest for the air wave, producing programmes, switching them around and distributing them, we are also a minor player. I do not think we can be a major player because we are too small. But if we work in alliances with others, I think we can be a minor but a significant player. I encourage our local media companies, SBC and its successor companies, Singapore Telecom, Singapore Technology Ventures, Singapore Press Holdings and every other Singapore company, the multi-media business, to also xia hai [ ], to also see how they can exploit niches in various countries. Dr Arthur Beng raised some troubling issues about television violence and he asked me what further steps we intend to take. I think there is no substitute for constant vigilance. Recently, we decided to move on video games because they were getting out of control. But once games are digitised, and they go over the telephone line of the fibre optic cable, how do we control? How do I control a telephone conversation? How do I prevent young kids from dialling long distance to get pornographic broadcast from America? We cannot control from the centre. In the end, it is the parents, the community, ourselves, as moral human beings, to control this because controlling the technology is not possible. But we can make it difficult for people to make money. So those operations which distribute pornographic videos to housing estates, every time we get the flyers, we conduct an operation, we round them up and we imprison the distributors. Rupert Murdoch and others may want to beam in their television free into Singapore. If they are too lewd or incendiary or pornographic, we can prevent them from collecting money, but only to a point. I read recently an article in Europe. They banned hardcore pornographic stations available on satellite in Britain. But this is a game, is it not? Because the companies then use the post, send out pay cards, and if you slip those pay cards into your set tops, you can receive and decode those channels. It is like subscribing to Playboy by Singapore Post and having it put in a brown envelope. How do you control that? Yes, occasionally, you can sample and find out who are transgressing, but this is a game which should be more and more difficult to control in the future, and we have to accept that. Do all we can at all levels, but recognise that the waters are coming in, whether we like it or not. For violence, I think we have to make a distinction because they are not all the same. When we were young, we watched Road Runners and Tom and Jerry and cowboys and Red Indians and kungfu movies. Yes, they are violent but I do not think they do very much harm. Or even wrestling. Personally, I find wrestling very distasteful. They trip each other, they smash faces in and they do all kinds of terrible things to each other. Then you have to remind yourself that it is all wayang. I wonder why people are interested. I go to Yaohan and I see all these television screens outside and people are standing there watching, enraptured by wrestling matches. Why are they interested, I do not know. I think they must tap something very deeply psychological in human beings. If you ask me whether or not we should ban wrestling, if it provides harmless entertainment, I say carry on. What we are opposed to is a kind of pornographic violence which we are now seeing in the west. It all started, if you remember, the Clockwork Orange in the late 60s, systematic, sadistic, realistic portrayal of wanton violence by human beings done to human beings. Then the Godfather and it became commonplace. I have no difficulty classifying them as pornographic. Those kinds of violence, I think we should, without hesitation, try to stamp out as much as possible. But we must make a distinction. When I talk to some Members, they say, "Look, why do you deny me my kungfu flicks when I find it very relaxing at the end of the day." I have to agree with them. We have to make distinctions. But the field is changing very rapidly and it will be for the regulatory authority and for which we will have to find wise men to sit on the Council to help guide our society and navigate us through the new shoals. There were some questions raised about the arts by Dr Arthur Beng, Mr Peter Sung and Mr Peh Chin Hua. The article in the Straits Times "Short cuts", the antics of Fifth Passage, the two-way mirror and NAFA, I can say without any equivocation that this is precisely the direction that we do not want to take. In fact, when the newspapers carried the stories on Fifth Passage, the body hair incident and the self-stimulation of vomit, I applauded and I encouraged NAC to take a very firm stand. When we promoted the arts, we said, "Look, the old OB markers have to be widened and we would determine the new OB markers when it is clear where they should be. When this incident took place, I say, "Ah, this is a very good spot to plant a new OB marker." So we took a position, and many in the Arts Committee, including Dr Kanwaljit Soin, had their reservations, but I think for the long term it is good to define the boundaries. When the boundaries are clear, then those who act within the boundaries are free. But when the boundaries are not clear, those who act within the boundaries become unfree. This is a good position to take. At the end of the day, it is one of balance. We do not want to stifle artistic creativity. We have made a lot of progress over the last five to ten years and I see us continuing to make progress in the future. When the new Arts Centre is ready, it will not just be for artists and for the higher brow art fans. It will be for everyone. This project on Marina Bay is very exciting. It will also be quite costly. But the site is superb and I am very pleased that President Ong Teng Cheong, who used to chair the Committee before he stepped down from office, is still on the Committee as our Adviser. The detailed plans will be ready for public exhibition within a few months. But our intention is not to make it just a venue for the high arts. We want it to be a civic centre, like a piazza, for all Singaporeans, that every time there is a major festivity, Christmas or the New Year, or Hongbao Festival, we all gather there and be happy. To make us doubly happy, the Satay Club will also be moved inside because, as we all know, the way to the Singaporean heart is through his stomach.