Dandong which is Liaoning province and they make watches, but not of good quality. But between the capital of the Arab entrepreneurs and the labour force and experience of Dandong, which is the biggest watch factory, I am told, in north-east China, and plus probably Japanese or some high-grade technology, one day I may be presented with a Dandong watch! And I think it is to be encouraged because this was the way Singapore grew, not by becoming careerist climbing up the snakes and ladders. Our forefathers took chances, seized their chances and modern Singapore is the result. I must not forget Dr Tan Cheng Bock. He was only a doctor when I first knew him. Now he is a shipping specialist - Chuan Hup Holdings. He knows a lot about shipping now, and as it should be. Dr Tony Tan, as you know, is back in OCBC as Chairman, no place higher in OCBC, but he has made it. The MPs who used to work in Government, Mr Chew Heng Ching is now an executive of HP Media Holdings Pte Ltd. I do not know what that is but it sounds impressive. Mr Leong Horn Kee of Orchard Parade Holdings, and I know what that one is because I have seen it in the newspapers. Let me explain very simply, Mr Speaker, that MPs are real men and women, just like you and me, with real families who have real aspirations in life. So when we talk of all these high-falutin, noble, lofty causes, remember at the end of the day, very few people become priests. The Catholic priesthood is shrinking. And we are now talking in a consumer age of finding a solution to produce people of comparable quality but without their total sacrifice. So you know the argument about whether a priest should be allowed to marry or not allowed to marry. The Catholic church has refused to compromise and they are still finding it difficult to recruit. These MPs have all acted rationally. Options are there. They have decided on the sensible option. And all those in the higher brackets of the educational ladder today have broadened their options. This is another problem which the Government has got to face, because our income gap or opportunity gaps between the people at the top and the people at the lower end will widen. You need highly-trained, high-quality men to go abroad with you. Nobody wants your semi-skilled worker. That is what they have. Nobody even wants your skilled worker. They may want your supervisor. Because they have skilled workers too, or half-skilled, who want to do the skilled job, and probably will, in a couple of years. The corporate world in Singapore knows that PAP MPs have been carefully selected. A PAP MPship is like a Good Housekeeping seal, a hallmark of character and integrity that adds value to a person. I instituted the practice. If you look through the MP list, from 1955 onwards, you will find that in 1955 we had two barbers, two postmen, clerks, but they were unionists. They are not ordinary people. But with rising standards, every election term, I had to move with the higher educational level of the voters, something Mr Chiam learned rather late. So he discovered that he had to get graduates. I knew that. By 1968, I started moving in that direction. This is a demanding electorate. Everybody strives to get up to the highest he can of the education ladder, and he wants somebody who is better than him to represent him. He does not want somebody he can talk down to. So PAP MPs are sought after. Let me assure the House that the Government enforces strict rules to prevent influence peddling for the benefit of any person or company. But for that Singapore will be just another of the governments in the Third World which we are not. It is important that we remain different because that is an enormous economic capital for us. Lose that and we may lose about 30% of the rationale why we are different, and why we attract different kinds of investments. But I have had to recognise, and I have told the Prime Minister, that you cannot fight this. A powerful wave has swept up our young and some of our not so young. There is an eagerness, almost anxiety, that they will miss the escalator that is moving up and that can carry them to golden opportunities. In fairness to the young, I would add this with almost a touch of nostalgia for older and better times. It has swept up part of the older generation too. Because the Old Guards, they do not just die away. In Hollywood movies, you walk into the sunset and music and clouds. But in real life, you live on, you become a little bit more infirm, you need medical treatment, and you have needs to meet. For example, Dr Goh Keng Swee recently resigned from the Board of the Government Investment Corporation in order to avoid conflict of interest situations with GIC when he advises several financial institutions on investments in Singapore and abroad which may also be of interest to GIC fund managers. That is quite a shift in the world. It is as if I suddenly decided that I will join Henry Kissinger Associates. The rewards are in for key personnel. It is six, seven figures. Or I do not even have to leave Singapore. I could go back to Lee & Lee. I started the firm. Recently, another distinguished former Minister, Old Guard, part of my generation, was deputed by the retired MPs to see the Prime Minister who told me of this. He was deputed to request that the commuted part of their pensions should be restored after 12 1/2 years, as is the case with civil servants. It is not the case with Ministers and MPs. I know what the Old Guards feel. They have seen me. I said you know the rules of the game. You went in, these were the rules, these were the pensions. But they feel that they have been short-changed because their fixed pensions have deprived them of their share in Singapore's growing prosperity. So the Prime Minister has to consider the matter. It is the same society, same Old Guards who sacrificed, some of them literally took their lives into their hands when they decided to stay with the PAP and not move over to the Barisan Sosialis in this House in 1961. But for several of them, the history of Singapore would be different and I would not be meeting and talking to you here. We may be in a completely different age and a different world. Now, let me talk about the recruitment of Ministers. In the last 14 years, only four Ministers have been recruited from the private sector. Tony Tan from OCBC, Yeo Ning Hong from Beechams, Wong Kan Seng from Hewlett Packard and Yeo Cheow Tong from Le Blond. Indeed, the last two, Wong Kan Seng and Yeo Cheow Tong, were originally from the Government. Wong Kan Seng was in the Administrative Service and Yeo Cheow Tong was in EDB. All other Ministers have been recruited from the public sector, either the SAF or the public institutions. For the future, the position will be more difficult. I believe the Prime Minister will be very fortunate if he can find one out of five Ministers who will come from the private sector. He keeps on trying. He never gives up. He keeps on making friends, he keeps on inviting them to tea sessions. They keep on saying, "Next time, please, when my children are grown up." They could not afford to accept the offers he has made to them to become MPs and Ministers of State or Ministers. Let me explain why it is important to have a mix of Ministers from different backgrounds in the Cabinet. I give my personal experience and example. Lim Kim San was and is a very practical man of business. He does not write speeches and books. Every time he has to make a speech, I know it is a tremendous effort and he tells me, "Must I make this speech?" I said, "Yes, you have to. This is your own constituency." But he has a lively practical mind. That is why SPH's profits have increased. He has gone in there, looked at the accounts, decided that the following changes would be made, costs would be cut, this would be amalgamated, and it has just jacked up profits, as I knew he would do. We made him Chairman of HDB in 1960 when we formed HDB. It was crucial, life and death. If we failed we would not be re-elected. This was the first year of office of the PAP. There were a lot of zealous idealists who wanted to put theories into practice. One of them, a member of the PAP Central Executive Committee, said, "We must be different from other builders. Other builders hire contractors who exploit workers. We will hire the workers direct, cut out the middlemen, they will be paid more and we will be model employers." Ong Eng Guan ordered Lim Kim San to hire the construction workers direct. Lim Kim San was nonplussed. He came to see me in my office. He asked me a very simple question. He said, "Do you want me to build houses or do you want me to be an employer of construction workers?" He said, "If you want flats, then I know how flats are built. You leave it to me. I will produce you the flats. If you ask me to hire workers, better look for another chairman." He said, "Let me explain. Every contractor has an elaborate supervisory system. He has his relatives, he has his trusted kepalas. They in turn have each a gang and they know each person in that group and each person has got to produce results to deserve the pay. If I hire them all, including the kepalas, who do not know each other, you will be lucky if you get half a flat for where you will have the flat." So I said, "Proceed." All these ties of kinship and personal obligations ensure success. So I overruled Ong Eng Guan and he built the flats. One block was in my constituency, opposite the former S.H.B. Union House, Cantonment Road. It is still there. If that had not gone up, I may not have been re-elected because Nanyang University and all the Chinese Middle School students targeted Tanjong Pagar to canvass against me. But they looked at the flat that was going up, they decided these little boys were not going to put up the flats, I was. That is why I came back to this House. Later, I persuaded him to take part in the 1963 General Elections and I made him Minister for National Development. On several occasions, his practical market approach to problem, made a difference to the success of projects. So it is important for the Prime Minister to find younger generation Lim Kim Sans, people with different backgrounds who will sit down, cross-fertilise ideas, improve and sometimes block a plan which is theoretically marvellous but will not work out in practice. It has a leavening effect. You need people with different backgrounds. If we keep to past practices, suppose we make no change, we just keep on tampering with the system, and every few years we come back here and have another long debate. I had them every three, four, five years, since 1972. Individuals in Singapore and corporate entities will flourish but Singapore will be depleted at its heart, at the core. Without this functioning core, you will not have your opportunities. The Prime Minister is already 53, the Deputy Prime Minister is 43. This team will not last two election terms without considerable infusions of fresh blood. Three Ministers have got two Ministries each, and the Ministers need 15 MOSs as backups, and they have not got it. They've only got seven. They need to be recruited in order that they learn on the job and become part of the team. If our solution, and I believe this one is a realistic solution and a sound one, works, in five to 10 years, the World Bank will again give us a citation, as they did this year. Let me read what they said: `Not surprisingly, Singapore, which is widely perceived to have the region's most competent and upright bureaucracy, pays its bureaucrats best.' When they use the word "bureaucracy", these are Americans, they mean Ministers too. They went on to say: `The monthly base salary of a full minister in Singapore ranges from US$13,800 to US$17,300, while a minister of state receives the equivalent of US$5,600 to US$7,600.' They are saying, yes, it works. I am pitting my judgement, after 40 years in politics, and I have been in this Chamber since 1955, against all the arguments on the other side. I said this is necessary for Singapore. I say face up to the facts, get a good generation in, get the best of this generation. When it works, the World Bank will cite us again. You do not get cited because you are conventional, you follow other people. You become a model because you went against conventional wisdom and prove that they were wrong and you are right. And if we can keep honest, competent Government, never mind about its being brilliant, that is a tremendous achievement. Look at all the countries around us. They started off self-sacrificing revolutionaries - Vietnam, China - they went on long marches, their friends died, their families perished, their systems are not corrupt, their children are corrupt. We have not gone that way because we are realistic and we know adjustments have to be made. There is a price to be paid for hypocrisy. Ministers deal with billions of dollars in contracts. It is so easy. But when discovered, like Teh Cheang Wan, he preferred death because he lost everything. In this society, you will lose the respect of your friends and probably also your relatives. The fate of a country, when it is a matter of life and death, you throw up people who put personal considerations of safety and security and wealth aside. But that is when you have a revolutionary situation, when the whole people depend on the actions of a few. And I believe if such a situation recurs again, some Singaporeans will again emerge and rise to the occasion. But let us look at the problem today. What is the burning issue that excites the population? The price of COEs has cleared $100,000. Horror all round. Amazing. Does everybody expect to get a COE and buy a car? I believe they do, and there is nothing wrong with it. What is there needed of the Government? Not heroic great schemes, but fine-tuning the traffic, get more underground tunnels, more parking spaces, underpasses, overpasses, expressways, flyovers, spaghetti junctions. In order what? To issue another few hundred or a few thousand COEs a year so that you can lower the price. But as the economy booms, when incomes are going up 6-8%, and COEs are increasing by 3%, I read all these clever little letters to the press of how it can be fixed. Stop double transfers, pay as you bid. How does that overcome a basic factor - incomes go up by 6-8%, demand goes up by 6-8%, supply goes up by 3%. All right, ALS - whole day. So it goes up by another 1/2% to 3 1/2%. Does that solve it? It can only be solved if we can make supply go up by 8%. But ingenious journalists and their editors in charge of the motoring page keep on writing fatuous pieces, taking up newspaper space. I am amazed. Highly intelligent people write complex mazes which show that they have not understood or refused to understand a simple equation of supply and demand. You know the hopes that are placed now on Electronic Road Pricing (ERP). This is not a heroic task. It is fiddling with credit cards you put on your windscreen. At the end of it all, what? Instead of paying for the COE upfront, you pay for it every time you drive down Orchard Road at the wrong time of the day. That is all. So maybe more people own cars which they are polishing in front of their house because they cannot travel at the time they want to travel, because other people who can afford more and are prepared to pay the high price are going down Orchard Road and Bras Basah Road will pay. But if that is what makes people happy, I say why not? So it is crucial when you have tranquil Singapore that you recognise that politics demands that extra of a person, a commitment to people and to ideals. You are not just doing a job. This is a vocation. Not unlike the priesthood, you must feel for people, you must want to change society and make lives better. If I had not done that and got no satisfaction out of it, then I would have been a fool doing it because I could have gone back to Lee and Lee umpteen years ago and ridden the boom and sat back, probably at least as rich as my brother, or my two brothers - one is a doctor, another a lawyer. But why not? But somebody has to do this in order that they can prosper. And I am saying those who do this deserve not to be penalised or you will get nobody doing this. One journalist told me that there was some public concern that these higher salaries would change, and I quote him, "the name of the game and attract a different type of person with different motivations". It is possible that politically and socially uncommitted people from the higher management and professional brackets will be attracted to the idea of public office for this higher pay. I doubt it. But if it is so, and they can do better than the present Ministers, they should come out and offer themselves as the alternative. That would be good for Singapore. Far better to have a credible alternative to the PAP than the motley collection of lacklustre candidates put up by the Workers' Party, the SDP, the National Solidarity Party, the Singapore People's Party and so on and so on. None of them has ever assembled a team remotely credible as an alternative government. Yes, they have got Mr Low Thia Khiang. He is a good MP. He looks after his constituency. But you need more than a good MP. To be a movement, to be a government, you must produce 15 men with the capability to run the government. I am not sure that a good MP can run a ministry. And I am not passing derogatory remarks because being a teacher and being a public speaker, especially in Teochew, it is a useful attribute. The PAP had plenty of them and they were very useful for campaigning. But at the end of the day, you have got to sit down, look at the file, masses of figures and you zero in on the critical issues and said, no, don't do that, do this. If this salary formula can draw out higher quality men into politics, whatever their motivations, I say, let us have them. It is better than the Opposition we now have. If we can get in opposition people of the calibre of the Nominated MPs, I say Singapore is better off. At least, I respect them. I can join in the argument. The only one that I find worth listening to is Mr Low Thia Khiang. The others, I switch off. And I have asked the press. They say, yes, they also switch off. It is very difficult to put your earphones on. It is a sad commentary on the standard of Singapore opposition politics. But at the heart of the question is: What makes a good government? That is the heart, the core of the question. Can you have a good government without good men in charge of government? American liberals believe, yes, you can. That you can have a good system of government with proper separation of powers between the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary, plus checks and balances between them, like the regular tussle between Congress and the White House and between the House of Representatives and the Senate in the US, and there will be good government even if weak or not so good men win elections and take charge. That is their belief. My experience in Asia has led me to a different conclusion. To get good government, you must have good men in charge of government. What I have observed in the last 40 years is that even with a weak or poor system of government, but with good strong men in charge, you get passable government with decent progress. And, on the other hand, I have seen many ideal systems of government fail. Britain and France, between them, wrote up probably 80 constitutions for their different colonies. Nothing wrong with the constitutions, with the institutions, and the checks and balances. But the society did not have the men that could work those institutions, nor the men that respected those institutions. Because the esteem, the habits of obedience to a person because of his office, not because of the person, is something that takes generations to build into a people. But the leaders who inherited these constitutions were not equal to the job, and their countries failed and their systems collapsed in riots, in coups and in revolutions. Every time I hear people criticising us. When we are successful, they say we are sterile. When you are not successful, they say, look at the slums, look at the degradation, look at the filth. These are the wiseacres. We have got to live with the consequences of our actions and we are responsible for our own people. And we take the right decisions for them. You look at the old Philippines, the old Ceylon, the old East Pakistan and several others. And I have been to these countries and these places. When I went to Colombo for the first time in 1956, it was a better city than Singapore, because Singapore had three and a half years of Japanese occupation and Colombo was the HQ of Mountbatten's South-East Asia Command, and they had large sterling reserves. They had two universities. Before the war, a thick layer of educated talent. So if you believe what American and British liberals used to say, then it ought to have flourished, but it did not. One man one vote led to the domination of the majority Sinhalese over the minority Tamils who were the active and intelligent fellows who worked hard and got themselves penalised and English was out. They were educated in English. Sinhalese was in. They got quotas into universities and now they have become fanatical Tigers. And the country will never be put together again. Somebody should have told them, change the system, loosen up or break off. Looking back, I think the Tunku was wise. I offered a loosening up of the system. He said, clean-cut, go your way. Had we stayed in, and I look at Colombo and Ceylon - Sri Lanka - changing names sometimes you deceive the gods but I do not think you are deceiving the people who live in them. This makes no big difference to the tragedy that is being enacted. They failed because they had weak or wrong leaders, like the Philippines. Singapore must get some of its best in each year's crop of graduates. When I say "best", I do not mean just academic results. When we interview a candidate, his 'O' levels, his 'A' levels, his university degree will tell you his powers of analysis. That is only one-third of the helicopter quality. You've then got to assess him for his sense of reality, his imagination, his leadership qualities, his dynamism. But mostest of all, his character and his motivation. Because the smarter the fellow is, the more wrongly he is motivated, the more harm he will do society. But I also believe, from my experience, that Muller and van Lennep are right that at 21, the man is fully developed and you can discover what he is, if you can test him arduously enough. But by 25 to 30, it is obvious what he is. You want men with good character, good minds, strong convictions. Without that, Singapore won't make it. The problem is: how do you do that when a booming economy is drawing them away? I do not think we can afford to be inhibited by conventional attitudes. Editors of our newspapers, when they were given copies of the White Paper, were surprised with the high earnings of the top men in the professions. My answer is, let us have these figures every year, independently verified -IRAS is not cooking them up. We know how much people are earning. Let us have them. Under oath of secrecy, a group of men independent of the Government and the IRAS can testify and verify. But what is it we are arguing about? The Government today - Cabinet Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries, Political Secretaries, everybody - costs $17 million a year. That is the cost. Working a GDP of nearly $90 billion, growing at 8%, which is $6 billion a year. You have wrong men here, it is a disaster. There is no way a Prime Minister can argue that any Minister can walk out of his Cabinet and get this kind of salary. Just as there was no way when I was a partner of a legal firm and we shared profits in a certain ratio, that any partner could walk out and get that share. In any team, like a football team, there are strikers who score the goals, but he needs his full-back, his wings, to feed the ball to him. And he has to decide how to deploy them. And really we are arguing at the end of the day, whether by this formula which over 3-4 years will pay them $5 million more, the whole lot. What on earth are we arguing about? Except people get envious and they say, "They should really be sacrificing." If it were possible to carry on with the system, I will be in favour of carrying on with what I have been familiar with. But I know it is not possible. I have explained to you on my recent journey how I met three persons and immediately the changed circumstances became obvious to me. And I came back reinforced in my belief that the Prime Minister has to move and move quickly. Let me now take Members to a different angle to this problem. The PM is like the conductor of an orchestra. He has got to make great music. I think the best metaphor or simile for a Prime Minister is really a conductor. In other words, he has got to know something about each instrument, what sounds they make, where they come in. When I started my job, I didn't. But I had to learn it quickly. Home Affairs, Finance - you have to have stability, you have to have an economy going, you've got to have labour relations, education, national development, housing, the whole lot. You must know how to deploy your resources, not just money but manpower. So at any one time, a certain sector is the important one and I send my best Minister and my best Permanent Secretaries to support him, to make sure that that sector succeeds. And he has got to decide how he rewards them. He needs people in his team who are goal scorers. Any team to win must have sharp-shooters. In other words, in government, you must have ideas, you must create new concepts, build new institutions and be innovators, and not simply followers of orthodoxy. I give you a few examples from the past. It is like blowing the trumpet of the Old Guards, but they are out of politics, maybe they deserve to have a few trumpets blown on their behalf. We had massive unemployment in 1959, more than 14%. Every year, 55,000-60,000 were born, 4% of our population growth. It was quite frightening, beyond the capability of Singapore to solve it. We knew industrialisation was the only way. Commerce could not solve it. The United Nations sent a team. Dr Winsemius was the leader. He recommended, "Yes, proceed." Dr Goh discussed it with him, and I discussed with Dr Goh and met him and said, "Let's try. Economic Development Board (EDB) and sell Singapore to America, to Europe, to Japan, as a manufacturing centre." Nobody had an EDB in the world. We formed one and we put in our brightest and our best. You want to know why you got good jobs, why you are doing well. Because every year, I allowed Dr Goh to have his pick of our top scholars. Of course, you make mistakes. Some are bright but they are not much use, lacking judgment. But within a couple of years, you know who has got judgment, sense of reality, imagination, leadership, dynamism plus the powers of analysis. They served Singapore well. We innovated. He created that organisation and he also built up Jurong, invested hundreds of millions of dollars, built roads, canals, filled up the earth, put in power, put in water. And for five years, it was empty, capital lying fallow. We watched it, wringing our hands. Because two years in Malaysia, the Finance Minister of Malaysia squeezed us and did not give us pioneer certificates. We nearly failed. But we did not fail. I gave Dr Goh the best Permanent Secretary we had - Hon Sui Sen - to help him. He became Chairman of EDB and he was a very good judge of people and persons. He was a very quiet man, didn't make great speeches, but understands people and knows who can do what. He built up a good team. And from EDB sprang Trade Development Board (TDB), sprang DBS, because we had to build up the finances to help people start their industries. This is not administration doing a job. This is entrepreneurship on a political stage, on a national scale. We changed the complexion of Singapore. You can bring him back to life and reward him? In 1968, we were looking for ways to fill up our economy. Hon Sui Sen came to see me and said, "Let's take a chance. Change our foreign exchange regulations, release it." We were part of the sterling area. We had foreign exchange controls. He said, "Cancel it. Let's start the Asian Currency Unit. Collect all the dollars in the region, lend it to the world. We will be the link between New York closing and London opening." I listened intently. I said, "Proceed." We took the Bills through. Today, Singapore is the third largest foreign exchange trading centre in the world, next to New York and London. We have also got a budding futures trading exchange in Simex. We have great potential for growth and very high value added. Can you thank Hon Sui Sen? True, it wasn't all his ideas. But he had the good sense to listen to people with ideas. So a Dutch banker called Van Oenen who worked for Bank of America, who was a friend of Winsemius, said, "Try it." But we made it work. Now everybody wants to be a financial centre. We have overseas HQ. Kuala Lumpur immediately followed. We have no patent on it. They studied our laws, they up the stakes. So we have to keep on, innovating, moving ahead. You do that with a bunch of mediocrities? I make no apologies for collecting the most talented team I could find. Without them, none of you would be enjoying life today in Singapore, including the reporters up there. I say this without any compunction. Who pays for all this? A Singapore economy which has been so finely tuned that it is able to take advantage of every opportunity that comes our way. You want to know entrepreneurship? Without Dr Goh Keng Swee there is no SAF. He is the SAF. 1965, we were suddenly independent. I said, "You were a corporal in the Singapore Volunteers. You know something about this. Better learn something more. Start it." He came back one day in February 1966, and he told me, "You know, we have got two battalions. They were in Malaysia for two years." More than half the battalions were now Malaysian Malays. So when one battalion came back from Sabah and the Malaysian Regiment refused to move out of their camp, they had to be put up at Farrer Park and they might have gone on riot or mutiny. So he came to see me and said, "You have made me as if I am a British general in charge of troops, half of whom are Italians." So we worked day and night to sort that out so that we have troops who are Singaporeans. Had we failed, I would not be here to tell you the story. We got the Israelis. We studied the Swiss. We got an SAF that nobody believes is just for show. But the most important entrepreneurship is really the structuring of Singapore. I was determined that before the soldier fights for Singapore, he must have something to fight for. Each family must own their home. So I set out right from the word go against any opposition from any quarter to build up the CPF. At each salary increase, I pushed something into CPF and built up the home-ownership programme that today gives 91% to 92% who own their homes, which are going up in value year by year because the infrastructure is getting better, the economy is getting better and they are rising with it. So you can sell one 5-room flat in Singapore and buy two bungalows in Perth. But before you do that, remember that your 5-room flat will go up in price but your two bungalows there will be empty and will go down in price. I take this as a matter of fact, but things have to be done which are unpleasant. I changed the acquisition laws and cleared off compensation for sea frontages so that we can reclaim the land. Then we have got East Coast Parkway. Fire sites, I reclaimed and acquired the right to acquire as of occupied status. It was Robin Hood, but I succeeded in giving everybody their own home. Of course, it is not me alone, but the concepts, the planning, I make no bones. I took responsibility, and it has succeeded. I put Medisave in place. I faced opposition in the Cabinet. Ministers came back from China and said, "Wonderful place. Everybody has got the same medical services and for free." I said, "Why do you believe this fairy tale?" I put 4%, 5% aside. I changed the Minister and I put Mr Goh Chok Tong as Minister for Health. I said, "Implement this." Today we have a viable national health service which avoids waste, no buffet syndrome, but guarantees adequate support for everybody, adequate health. The CPF also. Low interest rates, yes, but it has paid for all the infrastructure of our roads, bridges, airports, container ports, telecommunications, MRT, land reclamation. An ordinary group of people would think that up? No, Mr Chiam, you are wrong. You need entrepreneurs. I will say this, if we did not have the entrepreneurs, we would not be here and you would not be a lawyer, leading a quiet happy life. Look at all the housing estates. Public housing in Singapore is not an apology for slums. You go to Britain, you go to America, and vandalism and crime. Have you ever asked why it is different? Because from my own experience, as I went around on constituency tours in 1962 and 1963, I discovered there were grassroots organisations, kompang groups, Muslim mutual fund groups, clan associations, retailers associations. I organised them and I made them community centres' management committees and they ran the place for themselves, for their communities. From them, I formed Citizens Consultative Committees and altered the face of Singapore. Then, as we moved into the housing estates, the same experience, I said, "Start zone committees, residents' committees, every five, 10 blocks." So there is a nervous system of human beings transmitting messages, getting people together so that they know they are a community and not just anonymous individuals who shut their flat doors and live their own private lives. On my present contribution, this one I am going to be cautious, because the results will be another five to 10 years, but I think we are on the right track. If we do not go regional and sprout the second wing, our destiny will pass us by. Not everybody will be winning. But if we are careful, I think four out of five or eight out of ten will be winners, because the region will grow and we can grow with it. Civil servants work this out? No. You need somebody with the dare and the insight and say, "Look, this has to be done." Of course, it is novel to have an industrial park in Suzhou and it may fail, but not if we are determined that it will not fail. When it succeeds, and the first signs can be seen in five years, although it may not be completed for 10, 15 years, then we have all the cities of China open to us. I ask Mr Stephen Lee in private enterprise, supposing I was doing this as part of Kissinger Associates or Lee & Lee, what is my fee? You are going to begrudge $5 million extra to the Prime Minister who has got to look for new and younger Lim Kim Sans, Goh Keng Swees, Hon Sui Sens? He has got to find them, not every member of his team. But if he has not got such people in his team, he is in trouble. He will not be able to produce or deliver. We will succeed in Suzhou. We will be able to do something, I cannot say of the same scale, but we will do something in Vietnam, either Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City, just as we have done for Bangalore and for Batam. I think I should allow the Prime Minister to blow the trumpet of his own team, but I have watched and I know they deserve to have their trumpets blown. If that IPO of Telecom had not had ministerial direction, we would have lost at least $2 billion in that first issue. Ministerial intervention and hard-headed minds, with very good grasp of figures, saw through all the complex data which our financial advisers gave us, and said, no, we will have this price. We will have it issued to the public of Singapore, maybe one million, maybe 1 1/2 million, and the strike price was eventually twice what the financial experts recommended. You give the Ministers 1% of that, the difference is $2 1/4 billion. Can you calculate that? Do you not think it is worth a few million dollars a year to make sure that the Prime Minister can recruit such people and he has to get them from the private sector too because, as I have explained, if they all come from the public sector, they all have the same background, you will not have this ferment which is very necessary. Finally, let me put the issue very simply. I hope the Prime Minister also will not forget to mention about GST and HDB upgrading. You need boldness. Other cities go into decay and decline. But they have embarked on a plan, which I fully endorse, which will prevent the oldest estates from becoming slums. It is going to take more than a billion dollars each year which we are giving to our own citizens. They have to pay a small sum which is necessary because otherwise they will not understand the value of what is being given away. But we will have a sparkling city without slums. My generation got rid of the squatters. When the last squatter hut went, metaphorically, I gave every member of my team a gold medal. But they will do something better. You watch the housing estates in London or in New York, the slums, the tenements, and you know how horrifying it is. You are scared to go in. When you go in, you feel a chilling fear. We will not have that in Singapore, with this upgrading programme. You need powers of analysis, imagination, sense of reality, drive, and character. There can be no end to this argument. I am prepared to say to the people at large, (I read what Walter Woon says, "let us have a referendum.") are they in a position to judge? Is it within their range of experience? I have been through this life and had I lived a different life in Lee and Lee, I would never have this experience. Because I have gone through this, I say do it. I am in a position to judge. I say I am prepared to put my experience and my judgement against all the arguments that doubters can muster. In five to 10 years, when it works and Singapore has a good Government, this formula will be accepted as conventional wisdom. [Applause].