Hansard, Monday, 17 April 2023

Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move, "that the following Address in reply to the Speech of the President be agreed to: 'We, the Parliament of the Republic of Singapore, express our thanks to the President for the Speech which she delivered on behalf of the Government at the Opening of the Second Session of this Parliament'."

Sir, a week ago in this House, her Excellency Mdm Halimah Yacob, the President of the Republic of Singapore, delivered a speech on the priorities, policies and programmes of the Government for the remainder of the current term of office.

A plain review of the President’s speech and the 21 addenda issued by the respective Ministries and Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) since, reveals much more than that.

The plans go well beyond the remainder of the current term of this Government’s office. A good number of these plans, especially the ones dealing with the transformation of our defence capabilities, implementing our net zero ambition, developing our sustainable aviation and maritime hubs, transport systems and infrastructural capabilities and building an innovation economy will take decades to complete.

These plans are not just incremental in nature. They are imaginative and involve stretch targets. They are aimed at delivering decisive advantages to Singaporeans of the future. And I fully support them.

They are not at all easy to achieve. To materialise these plans, we require the strong support of fellow Singaporeans. We also need highly competent and dedicated leaders at all levels of government, including the political leadership, to execute these plans.

This is the defining characteristic of this People’s Action Party (PAP) Government.

It sees as its responsibility not just to take care of the current generation of Singaporeans for the near term. All our present-day advantages, hard won on the back of generations past are not considered, I quote, “a pinnacle of achievement, but as a base from which to scale new heights.”

It sees as its bounden duty to lay strong foundations for future generations of Singaporeans. Indeed, this principle of steward leadership is specifically embedded in the concluding paragraph of the President’s speech. She urges us to, I quote, "keep faith with future generations yet unborn and build a Singapore that thrives and endures for many years to come.”

The approach taken by the Government gives us in this House a unique opportunity.

It is my hope that hon Members who will be speaking during this debate will nail their colours to the mast and unequivocally state where they stand on the Government’s ambitious plans to build an enduring and thriving Singapore for now and years to come. By doing so, we will be able to explore building a consensus on these plans. This will include an agreement on funding the projects involved in the plans.

We will also be able to avoid the polarising effect of these long-term plans becoming political “footballs” of populist politicians. What we cannot afford to do as a small country with no natural resources is to adopt a “stop/start” or “feast and famine” approach in funding these important plans. Such an approach will quickly deplete our precious resources and will almost certainly spell doom for Singapore.

Importantly, as I will be alluding to shortly in my speech, it is my belief that building consensus in this House on such key plans will help us retain trust and unity which the President has identified to be essential for the future of Singapore.

I start with the issue of trust. The President stated in her speech that as we emerged from the pandemic, trust in the Government has strengthened. The President also emphasised that trust and unity are key to dealing with our priorities that includes securing our place in the world, growing our economy and refreshing our social compact.

Indeed, today, Singapore is in a fortunate position to be a high trust country. I looked at the Edelman Trust Barometer 2023 that was reported on CNA on 15 March 2023. Trust in our Government as an institution was reported to be relatively high compared to a vast number of other countries. But we are not among the top three. So, we should not behave as though we have arrived.

The results of the survey are consistent with anecdotal experience. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it is the strong trust between our people and our Government that led to higher levels of vaccination, which in turn ensured that we kept mortality rates low and allowed us to reopen our borders and rebuild our lives much faster than in many other countries.

We also know, though, that the trust built today can be easily lost tomorrow. This is the impermanent nature of this “being”. Trust cannot be assumed; it has to be conscientiously built and nurtured.

The question I raise is how do we ensure that this strategic resource in the form of the reservoir of trust between our people and Government can be retained and even deepened as our nation navigates through an even more challenging socioeconomic environment?

There are many facets to this. I wish to draw focus on three areas: (a) the work of our Public Service officers; (b) the work of our political leaders in this House; and at the end of my speech (c) the Forward Singapore exercise conducted by our 4G Team.

The Public Service plays a vital role in the maintenance of trust between our people and the Government. It will continue to play an important role in future. Sir, we are indeed fortunate to have very committed and hardworking public service officers dedicated to their respective organisational missions, the rule of law, securing Singapore’s national interests and improving the lives of Singaporeans. In my respectful view, the strong trust relationship that we enjoy today is attributable in a significant part to the blood, sweat and tears of our officers in discharging their solemn duties.

To underscore this point, Sir, please allow me to share that, not infrequently, I receive detailed email replies from public officers, especially from the Housing and Development Board (HDB), to my queries on behalf of my constituents in the wee hours of morning! I cannot help feeling bad for them as they obviously sacrificed their personal time with their families to deal with official work. These officers have a strong sense of duty. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

What I feel distinguishes our Public Service from others is that in both design and implementation, our officers have foremost in their minds the ordinary Singapore Citizen. In their roles, they serve to strike a balance between achieving policy objectives, exemplifying values such as compassion and fairness, accountability for the use of national resources and the desire to do justice in each and every case.

Let me provide two examples by reference to my Meet-the-People Session (MPS) cases just on issues arising from Budget 2023 in the past few weeks.

Last month, I wrote an appeal on behalf of Mdm Zhu, who had just given birth to a baby girl, seeking the enhanced Baby Bonus cash gift as announced in Budget 2023. Her baby, Qi Yue, was born at 5.00 pm on 13 February 2023. This was seven hours too early as the enhanced Baby Bonus cash gift, which would have been disbursed seven to 10 days after registration of the baby’s birth, was meant for babies born on or after 14 February 2023.

Mdm Zhu mentioned that her baby was born earlier than expected. This turns out to be a significant ground of appeal. In fact, the Baby Bonus Cash Gift policy was designed to allow babies due to be born on or after 14 February 2023 but were delivered earlier to get enhanced cash gifts too. By being flexible and not mechanically applying the timeline, we managed to achieve a better balance between the policy intent and the legitimate expectation of the ordinary citizen.

My reward was that I got a photo of Baby Qi Yue who happened to lift her head for the first time on the day that the Government allowed Mdm Zhu’s appeal! So, maybe she approved too.

I now turn to my next example. In Budget 2023, an announcement was made on the GST Voucher - Cash (Seniors’ Bonus). The policy intent was to help lower-income senior Singapore Citizens aged 55 and above cope with the cost of living. To gauge the financial circumstances of the senior, the Government uses the income earned in 2021 as a proxy. It has to be less than $34,000.

I had a situation where my resident earned more than $34,000 in 2021 but had a significant drop in income in 2022 owing to personal circumstances. Technically, my resident did not qualify. However, having regard to the policy intent of the bonus, the Ministry of Finance (MOF), in its reply to the petition issued by me on behalf of my resident, was prepared to be flexible. It sought documents supporting my resident’s claim that his income dropped significantly in 2022 before assessing whether it is prepared to provide him with the bonus on a discretionary basis.

Again, this is an enlightened approach and there is much to commend the Public Service for exercising flexibility to ensure that the policy intent is met.

Sir, I do not mean to advocate that all appeals are automatically granted, regardless of merit. Far from it. What I am drawing attention to is the process.

Our citizens must feel that they were listened to, their views considered seriously and they received proper explanations in a respectful manner on the outcomes even if they may disagree with them. This approach will, in my view, deepen this strategic resource of trust between our people and the Government as an institution.

Trust is the red thread running through the three points that the President made in her speech which made an impression on me.

First, the President highlighted the need for us, as a little red dot, to close ranks and stay united against global forces which will continue to try even harder to influence our domestic public opinion, so as to uphold Singapore’s vital interests.

Hon Members may recall the debate in this House on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill that was passed in 2021 to deal with hostile information campaigns by foreign powers. What I thought significant then was the united view expressed by hon Members on both sides of the aisle that Singapore politics is for Singaporeans. As responsible politicians, we must continue to close ranks and hold the line on core issues of national importance.

Second, the President highlighted that this unity as a nation will be important as we aim to secure economic opportunities amid a global economic slowdown to strengthen our position as a trusted and reliable business hub adding value to the world.

On this, it may be useful to emphasise one important takeaway from this year’s Budget debate. The raison d’etre behind our economic objectives was never economic growth for its own sake. Rather, growth is a means to achieve our broader objectives of advancing the well-being of every Singaporean.

We are already facing strong economic headwinds. The Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) reported last Friday that our economy grew by only 0.1 % in the first quarter of 2023. This affects our prospects for growth this year with inflation still running high. Economists are predicting a technical recession.

The challenge facing us is clear. It seems to me what the President advocated in her speech about making sure Singapore is united in the context of a global economic slowdown has become all the more important now.

Third, the President emphasised the need to strengthen our social compact through programmes aimed at uplifting the disadvantaged and vulnerable and to keep us as one united people. The President identified this effort as a priority of the 4G team which is engaging Singaporeans through the Forward Singapore exercise to renew and update our social compact. I will talk more on the Forward Singapore exercise later in my speech.

The President also laid down the Government’s four key priorities to strengthen our social compact: (a) expanding opportunities for all, (b) strengthening social safety nets, (c) building a smart and liveable city and (d) deepening Singaporean’s sense of shared identity. In particular, the President stated that the Government will look into ensuring that advantages and privileges that may come with meritocracy does not become entrenched such that it weakens our society.

This point about the need to re-examine meritocracy was probably the most quoted point by my residents about the President’s speech whom I engaged with before drafting this speech. All of them expressed wholehearted agreement with the President. They agreed with the Government’s call to devote more resources to our children who start out with less. The support, however, is not just a question of fact, but a matter of degree too in order that we can make a tangible difference for these children.

The Government has already made substantial investments in our children from humble backgrounds, particularly at rental flats through programmes like the Kindergarten Fee Assistance Scheme (KiFAS) and the Community Link (ComLink).

One other area of potential support that the Government should consider is to address the housing environment of children living in overcrowded flats. This is a point that I have raised several times; the last being at the Ministry of National Development (MND)'s Committee of Supply (COS) 2023 debate during my speech on strengthening inclusivity in housing. In my speech, I said “each child is precious, and we must do our utmost to ensure that they grow up in more conducive housing environment”.

To be fair, based on statistics provided by HDB, there are not many such cases, but I have come across a few.

One possible way that can be considered is to provide for Social Service Agencies to run study centres for these children near rental flats that are open after school. In this way, our children will be able to study in a more conducive environment after school. In Bukit Batok, we have one example in the form of Tava by Talent Beacon, which is a non-profit organisation that sets up a study centre specially for children living in our rental flats, with the support of MND and HDB. Tava even provides study support and mentoring for these children.

At the same time, the President emphasised the need for a stronger network of stakeholders to help provide opportunities for all, participate in nation building and build unity. This is not just the Government’s responsibility. I agree and I believe that all hon Members feel the same way too. The question is how can we achieve this? How do we get more committed stakeholders?

During the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF)'s COS debate this year, I highlighted that over the past five years between FY2016 and FY2020, the amount of tax-deductible donations per year remained more or less stable at $1 billion.

I said then that we need to do something more fundamental to move this needle. I suggested that successful organisations and individuals must feel more invested in the lives of the less fortunate. They must know that we are bound together in one common destiny. We sink or swim together.

This is clearly not an easy ask but we must quite clearly put in as much effort as possible to realise this objective. One area where stakeholders can help is to level the playing field when it comes to giving our children sporting experiences which are perceived to be within the exclusive domain of the well-to-do.

Let me make my point through an example. I am not a golfer, but I have certainly read about the amazing story of Mr Mardan Mahmat, who was Singapore’s number one golfer for more than 10 years.

His is a rags-to-riches story. He dropped out of primary school at the age of 12. A year later, he became a caddie at Jurong Country Club. As a teenager, Mardan frequently snuck into the club’s golf course when no one was looking and, by himself, learned how to play the game. He obviously had loads of talent because he managed to hone it by himself. Long story short, he became Singapore’s number one golfer.

Mardan’s story is exceptional. The reality now is that children from low- or middle-income backgrounds will find it difficult to gain access to more expensive sports, such as golf.

I do think though that something can be done through stakeholders with the appropriate resources to organise efforts to reach out to interested children, give them the sporting experience, suss out from among them the next Mardan Mahmat whom they can help to nurture to be a Singapore golf champion.

I am aware that many of these stakeholders already do wonderful charity work. I do hope though that they can consider this as a worthwhile extension of their efforts. The idea here is to provide children with the requisite talent and drive, regardless of their background, with opportunities to pursue their sporting dreams and become national athletes.

I now turn to the work of political leaders in this House.

The President stated in her speech that the trust between the political leadership and the people is a key strength that we must continue to nurture.

The President gave important guidance in this regard. She advised that our interactions as politicians be anchored on mutual respect and the shared goal of advancing the larger public interest. We should work through our differences, enlarge our common ground and draw strength from our diverse perspectives.

I fully agree. We, politicians, are at our best when we present our arguments in a measured way, recognise the inherent trade-offs in each of the policy suggestions that we make and present cogent arguments as to why we feel the balance should be struck one way or another.

What the President stated brought to my mind the speech that I made during the opening of the 14th Parliament when I advocated several proposals for Parliamentary reform of our evolving democracy.

I said then that building consensus in this House is an important outcome of our work here. I described consensus as a process of contestation, persuasion and resolution. Equally important is that such engagement will enable Singaporeans outside this House to have a better opportunity to understand the points of agreement, points of disagreement raised by their elected representatives and, through that, they will be able to better appreciate how these points impact on the ordinary lives of Singaporeans.

This is a form of accountability, too. Singapore has always preferred an undramatic approach to problem solving. This is our political heritage from the first generation of our political pioneers. Some of you may have recognised that I quoted a line from Dr Goh Keng Swee at the start of my speech – that we must consider our starting today merely as a base to build tomorrow.

Dr Goh was one of our deepest policy thinkers. He said, and I quote, “Deciding on policy and determining a line of action is different from engaging in a debate. Cabinet government is not a debating society or an academic seminar. These are intellectual exercises. Views are aired and, if done with style and elegance, the participants go home happy. In Government, you have to live with the consequences of your decision. If you make a mistake, the results are painful. In political life, there is no alibi for failure.”

I feel that we, in Parliament, should bear this in mind. When we deal with the real issues in this House, we know that they often matter to millions of lives. When we say that we are not “ideological” about something, it means that we are not wedded to whether the idea is from the left or the right, from the PAP or the Opposition, we are not wedded to repeating yesterday’s solutions tomorrow.

We should be disinterested in merely sounding good. On their own, they do not serve the interests of Singaporeans.

It is against this background that I argue the need for constructive politics in Parliamentary proceedings. Here, it may be useful to recount the debate that we had in this House on the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill.

Before the Second Reading of the Bill in this Parliament, there were concerns within certain quarters about the broad language of the Bill and perceived lack of judicial oversight. My hon friends across the aisle proposed amendments to the Bill to address, among others, these points. Hence, even before the hon Minister for Home Affairs delivered his Second Reading speech, lines were already drawn. This led to the hon Minister making a plea in this House to hon Members not to use Parliament as a forum to read out prepared speeches based on lines that were already drawn before he rendered his speech.

When I rose to speak on the Bill, I highlighted that whilst there were important differences between the views of the hon Members from both sides of the aisle, they were few, compared to the substantive areas of agreement between them. I do not remember a single journalist covering this point in his or her article.

I am not surprised. In my speech on building consensus in Parliament, I said that, and I quote “agreement, collegiality, friendliness, all these make for poor headlines”. Contestation sells, not consensus. As a result, the public perceived that there was a wide chasm between the hon Members of the governing and opposition parties on Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA) than what was, in fact, the case.

For these reasons, I advocate an introspection within each of us in this House to build the common ground that the President referred to in her speech. Parliamentary proceedings should not be turned into arenas for “entertainment” that we regularly see in other countries. This will erode our people’s trust and confidence in their elected representatives. That will be very bad for Singapore.

Finally, and importantly, I turn to the Forward Singapore Exercise.

As we all know, the Forward Singapore Exercise conducted by our 4G leadership involves engaging thousands of Singaporeans from all walks of life. These engagements are aimed at identifying the values, priorities and policies needed to strengthen our social compact and to build a better and brighter Singapore.

I wish to make two points on the Forward Singapore Exercise. First, as we look forward, we should not forget the values that allowed us to make progress as a nation. I, therefore, feel that the President’s reminder that we should hold dear to our core values as Singaporeans is a timely one. This is the enduring legacy of our founding generation of leaders led by our founding Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew.

At the same time – and this my second point – I feel that it is important for the Forward Singapore Exercise to adequately capture the idealism of our youths so that they will be able to identify with and support our vision for the future. After all, they have the biggest stake in our plans for the future.

A few weeks ago, during a house visit, I met my resident, Mr Sherman Chua, aged 21. He is working with a Silicon Valley company in the artificial intelligence (AI) space.

As we all know, this space is simply “exploding” at the moment with the advent of ChatGPT and so on. He told me that as a result of his exposure to this space, he is convinced that life as we know it will change a lot through imminent and rapid adoption of AI. He expressed to me his concern that Singapore is not investing enough resources to get ahead in this area. In his view, if nothing is done in this space within the next five years, Singapore may be passed over and runs the risk of becoming a laggard. I invited him to drop me an email containing his views and I will link him up with the relevant pillar leads in the Forward Singapore Exercise.

I am sure there are other young people like Sherman in our communities. It will serve the 4G Team well to engage such people so that their views on the shared vision for the future are taken onboard. I look forward to receiving the 4G Team’s report on the Forward Singapore Exercise that is expected to be issued in the second half of this year.

Sir, let me conclude. If we are to consider Singapore as a base to scale and not a pinnacle on which we rest, we must recognise that the nature of the electorate is changing. It has been changing since World War Two ended – a generation that has never known war, communalism, death by gunshot or violence, days of hunger, or nights of terror.

Today, a new generation is emerging, standing taller and brighter than the ones before. Their education is deeper, their social support tighter and with more social spending per person than ever before in our history. In health, education, housing and transport, we are doing much more to provide all Singaporeans with better services and to support the more vulnerable groups.

As a result, we have, today, a generation that has never experienced hardship to the same degree and scale of the past. From the start of their working life, they understand that they can ask for work-life balance and mental wellness days, not as entitlements but as a fact of Singaporean life. These are the natural fruits of 60 years of careful tending. Our people today would naturally have different responses to Government policies than those of the past.

Human response is not an artifice. This word “lived experience” is used quite a lot today. Some may feel uncomfortable at how it elevates subjective experience to a policy truth on which we often build an edifice of rights and allocations. The fact remains that people’s psyche will change and, as they do, their government must change and to a degree and at a speed unprecedented. We cannot be an analogue government in a digital world, if we are to keep faith with our fellow Singaporeans.

All this is not to say that Singaporeans are less tough today than we were in the past or that we rise any slower to a challenge. We are a people new to pandemics and the world has not seen the scale and intensity of COVID-19. But Singapore overcame. History is a good teacher but, like PSLE mathematics, we do not need to have worked out the same sum before to get the right answer in a new one.

We are a different people today and require a new style and substance in our policies. Two things which guided our leaders after the war must not change. First, to achieve prosperity so as to ensure happiness and peace for our people; and second, to ensure that Singapore continues to survive as an independent nation.

The President’s speech, like those of almost all Presidents before her, speaks of the need to ensure that Singapore “endures for many years to come”. No large country suffers from this same paranoia. But this is the nature of small states – to be short-lived. We are either annexed or merged and, in fact, we ourselves thought this at the start.

There is nothing external to ourselves, no partners or allies that will ensure the survival of this improbable nation. We must, therefore, trust one another, trust our leaders and trust our shared identity so as to build a brighter future together. Sir, I beg to move. [Applause.]

[(proc text) Question proposed. (proc text)]

Mr Seah Kian Peng.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the President has asked us to broaden the way we conceive of "merit", which is another way of saying "who deserves what" in terms of opportunity and access to finite resources.

Today, it has become fashionable to hammer this word "meritocracy", as if those of us who use it do not know it was originally coined as criticism. Michael Young, the British sociologist, in 1958, argued that a system that rewarded merit defined as "IQ plus effort" is as flawed as that one rewarding accidents of birth, because having cognitive ability is as much a matter of genetic lottery.

This is true, except we may prefer to adopt this system, compensate for its shortcomings rather than adopt the alternatives which are random assignment, other criteria such as money, power or birth.

Let me give you the Singaporean rendering of meritocracy which should be seen against our general governance model.

In 1971, then-Prime Minister Mr Lee Kuan Yew gave a famous speech about 300 people in a jumbo jet. Most of us remember that speech for the graphic image of the jet crashing and a country bereft of leadership. But the main idea for me is this, how did these people get on the plane?

Mr Lee said at the time, and I quote, "The main burden of present planning and implementation rests on the shoulders of some 300 key persons." He goes on to say, "Outstanding men in civil service, the Police, the armed forces, chairmen of statutory boards and their top administrators." And then, he goes on to say, "These people come from poor and middle-class homes. They come from different language schools. Singapore is a meritocracy. And these men have risen to the top by their own merit, hard work and high performance. Together they are a closely knit and co-ordinated hard core. If all the 300 were to crash in one jumbo jet, then Singapore will disintegrate. That shows how small the base is for our leadership."

This idea that a man comes into leadership, or indeed, into any position of opportunity, by what he can do, how hard he has worked, the stuff he himself is made of, not who his father was, who his friends are, or how much money he has. This idea that one looks at a man and not his pedigree is as old as Plato's Republic and the Chinese Imperial Examinations. In Singapore, this must remain the only way to get on that jet.

The fly in this ointment, of course, is that the two are not unrelated. How much a man is, determines how many advantages his son or daughter has, who this son marries, and in turn, the kinds of privilege he confers on his own offsprings. And so on unto generations to come.

In Singapore, there are people who are born into HDB rental blocks that their parents live in, as well as those who inherit good class bungalows (GCBs) that their parents may themselves inherit. The Government can make sure that both have a roof over their heads, they have vaccinations in the clinics, that the sons of the rich serve alongside those of the poor in National Service, but there is no way that the first can afford everything that the second does.

We talk often of income inequality and that is indeed an issue. But what I want today to speak about is wealth, because that is an even more glaring offence to the meritocratic ideal. There are 2,700 billionaires in the world – their money comes, not only from their income from work but also through their ownership of capital – property, stocks and the businesses that they owned.

We could reset the game after each round – tax bequests heavily so as to erode the advantages of inherited wealth – but there are two constraints on this: the first is to recognise the ancient instinct which urges us to strive so as to be able to leave something for our family as our legacy; the second is a practical benchmark – that Singapore must set tax regimes for the rich, with an eye on the rates in the rest of the world, rather than merely responding to local pressures.

Having said this, I do think that we can tax the rich further, especially in specific expenditures such as, super cars. I asked this in my Budget debate speech and I ask the Finance Minister, at some point again, to consider a separate category of Certificates of Entitlement (COEs) for super cars costing over a million dollars. The billionaires should compete among themselves so as not to allow the state to benefit from their preferences for luxury goods. The same goes for the tax for GCBs, country club transfer fees and so on.

Net worth is not net income, and it is the first which may be a stronger force for fracture. My second point on inherited wealth is to ask for some data. The data on the Gini coefficient is clear. After adjusting for Government transfers and taxes, the Gini coefficient fell from 0.437 in 2021 to 0.378 in 2022, the second lowest on record. It is a sign that Government transfers are a good way to reduce income inequalities.

But the Gini coefficient includes only wage income. It does not take into account capital income which is likely to be more uneven in distribution. I do not know what the wealth distribution is in Singapore, but the Government may consider releasing some data so as to help public discussion.

I am not asking for a segregation of the super-rich in terms of everyday life, merely in tax regimes, as a matter of fairness. They are, of course, still free to enjoy $4 or $5 wanton mee at one of my coffeeshops at Serangoon Central. We need to keep common spaces open because these are, after all, financed by tax dollars.

The second piece of the puzzle is, therefore, the redistributive function of the state. In order to keep us from fracturing along the lines of inherited wealth, we must also level the playing field for those who are not unto the manner born. In health, education and housing, as well as some elements of transport and financial planning, we must create a minimum standard of living for all Singaporeans.

I would like to suggest one radical idea: the top 40% of each cohort already have access to state resources in the form of higher education. The budget of our top two universities here run to billions of dollars a year, with high resources inside the classrooms, the best labs, professors; and outside: with overseas travel, mental health and wellness and a close network of mentors.

What about the rest of the other 60%? Can we think of some educational spending or resourcing for the 60%? Whether in terms of skills, continuous training, micro-credentials, or even the sort of non-academic opportunities, including sports, which Mr Murali has talked about, that Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) affords to their students? This latter could include opportunities in the arts, sports as well as access to community service and overseas exposure.

Our SkillsFuture Credit framework that we have is good, but I think it should be further institutionalised with additional resources targeted for this 60% group. Singapore would then truly be a home which provides higher and lifelong education for all.

Five years ago, in 2018, also in response to the President's Address then, I had said that we must make sure that a boy born to poor parents must have more from the state than one born from the rich. This aggressive redistribution, which is a hallmark of Singapore's socialism, must become even stronger and not just in fiscal policy, but in public censure of any pretence to social class.

In this, I refer to the most recent incident where the resident of a condominium mocked, humiliated and ridiculed a security guard for clamping the wheels of his car. His utterance – flaunting his wealth, his contempt for the guard is abhorrent and has no place in Singapore. There are some things that money cannot buy and in Singapore, this includes the price of insult and derogation of any man doing an honest job.

We have in 60 years indeed, gone from mudflats to metropolis and may now have a different level of wealth and income but we must not stand for those who think money buys access to a different class.

In our schools, in our army camps, in this House of Parliament, we stand or fall as one.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I have been a Member of this House since 2006 and it has been a true privilege to stand alongside my colleagues of all political colours. Our jumbo jet may be a lot bigger today, but entry is still by merit and there is still just one class.

Today, as in 1971, we are still flying the same flag, with the same five stars: democracy, progress, peace, justice and equality. Today, the success of Singapore lies not within the few in a jet, but in the multitude of ideas in many people who live and work on this island.

In 1971, Mr Lee was speaking of unity and the need for all Singaporeans to feel that we are, at the root of our identity, one people. At that time, his fight was to avoid being torn under and along racial lines.

At that time, a Malay newspaper had been advocating "bumiputera" policies. One Chinese newspaper, on the other hand, has been playing up pro-Chinese Communist news. The English press at the time had been pushing for "more permissiveness in sex and drugs and worked up a campaign against National Service."

In 1971, the way towards unity was to build common ground in a common language and culture, and a stake in a prospering country.

Today, we may all speak a common language, our schools all teach in English and the power of different language newspapers may have weakened. But we still face provocations, falsehoods, dissension sown and manufactured, and we still face a world who has no interest in the success of Singapore.

Aside from the fault lines I spoke of earlier, there are other challenges: foreign and other malign influences through social media, the rise of a victimhood culture where each special group stand on its rights and sees "micro aggressions", where subjective feeling and "lived experiences" take priority over objective truths and rational discourse.

And as Singapore ages, the demands for state resources for older Singaporeans will rise, we can expect rising resentment among the young. In 2017, Greece and Italy spent around 15.5% of GDP on public pensions; Austria, France and Portugal spend around 13% to 14% of GDP. The entire Singapore budget is only about 18% today. So, this is a serious issue which we must tackle.

The challenges today are as numerous as ever. It seems it is the fate of a small nation, to always strive lest we fall. This can exhaust and frighten, or it can inspire and energise. The choice is ours, all of us who have chosen to fly this jet together. Sir, I support the Motion.

Assoc Prof Jamus Lim.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, being a teenager again. The awkward parties, the search for self, the facial breakouts. But one of the feelings that many of us will find inextricably linked to our adolescent years is one of exclusion. Now imagine the same feeling, only that you are now supposed to be a fully functioning, fully participating adult in society.

Mr Speaker, Singaporean incomes present themselves as somewhat of an enigma.

By some measures, we are among the richest countries in the world. Measured in terms of a common currency, Singapore comes in at fifth in 2022, ahead of Qatar and the United States (US), and just shy of Switzerland. When adjusted for actual purchasing power, we climb even higher; to third, just behind Ireland and Luxembourg, two European countries often used as tax shelters.

But amid this wealth, we also see sharply dissonant scenes of the elderly picking up cardboard, selling tissue packs, or clearing plates at hawker centers, of an underclass of workers who live in dingy, overcrowded rental flats and rely on food handouts, of people who quip that in Singapore, you can be poor, or you can be sick, or you can die, but you cannot stop working.

In her address last week, Mdm Halimah urged us to improve our social compact and strengthen our social safety net, emphasising how, I quote, "the fruits of progress must be shared fairly."

I support the President's sentiment and the Motion, but in this speech, I will speak more about the apparent economic success declared by the headline numbers versus the economic precarity felt by a large group of Singaporeans. I will go on to discuss hard living in Singapore, especially after the pandemic, before concluding with proposals that can help us hopefully improve the circumstances of those who are struggling the most.

Living in Singapore is not cheap. Look around. The market price of a 4-room HDB flat – all 970 square feet of it – ranges from $460,000 in Jurong East to a whopping $860,000 in Queenstown. Sengkang, the district I represent, recently saw a flat change hands for close to $1 million dollars. And island wide, close to a dozen 4-room flats sold for more than $1 million-dollar mark in the first quarter. Observers expect this trend to persist.

The cost of a new Japanese sedan, like the Honda Civic that I drive, is $180,000, around five times the price of what it goes for in other advanced economies. Put another way, buying a car would cost close to three years' salary of a typical middle-income individual here, compared to around 14 months in the US.

Our decades-old aspiration toward Swiss standards of living has, alas, also brought with it Swiss-style prices. Reports routinely place Singapore, tied with New York, as the most expensive city to live in in the world. While this Government has argued that such metrics do not reflect the typical experience of a Singaporean household who consume different things and have access to taxpayer-funded grants and subsidies for big-ticket items like purchasing an HDB flat, the sting is that many of these things the rest of the world deem affordable is, for us, not.

That said, by some measures, Singapore is eminently affordable, at least when compared to other advanced economies. Delicious hawker meals, which we rightly celebrate as a part of our natural, intangible heritage, can be had for a few dollars, plus a dollar more if you happen to live in Sengkang.

Our public transportation system is excellent and many of us commute on it on a day-to-day basis by paying relatively affordable, albeit rising, fares. Most of us are able to send our kids to school without the need to resort to expensive private schooling that would break the bank.

Whence the discrepancy? It stems from the fact that for those among us that do not own or have access to capital, life is exceedingly hard. It is one of working long hours but barely getting by, of living out each day with little hope for the future, of seeing the enormous prosperity that our country has achieved but feeling that, somehow, this has mostly passed you by.

But for those of us who own assets like stocks and bonds, who run or inherited a business, or were fortunate enough to get on the housing ladder early on, it is possible to enjoy the fruits of this wealth and rely on high-asset prices to cushion the effects of high prices of goods and services.

Moreover, the challenges of the poor would likely have been compounded by the pandemic. Across the globe, economically vulnerable households have tended to fare poorly as a result of the COVID-19 shock. Detailed surveys from economies, both Western and Eastern, suggest lower-income groups experienced greater job market losses. In Singapore, two separate studies by DBS on account balances revealed that close to half of lower-income groups suffered significant falls in income, with around half within that group experiencing drops of more than 50% and had less than a month of emergency funds available.

This may seem especially unfair, since the less well-off were often our essential workers and had to continue on in the frontlines, even as the rest of us sheltered comfortably at home. Unfortunately, the poor did not find much relief after the pandemic. Inflation hit hard, reaching peaks of 7.5% in August and September last year. While this has come down, inflation, in excess of 6%, continues to eat away at incomes.

A more recent survey by DBS found that wage increases have failed to keep up with inflation and for the lowest income group, expenses have grown close to five-and-a-half times faster than their salaries. Even by the Government's own statistics, household real wages decreased in 2020 and 2021, and the small increase last year does not fully make up for the losses.

In contrast, there are those of us who have been lucky enough to have sufficient savings to invest and, in some cases, have been able to tap on higher interest rates offered by the market to shore up our finances. But such discrepancies only serve to further exacerbate the discrepancy between the wealthy and the rest.

Researchers who have devoted their lives to studying poverty tend to believe that its causes may be broadly defined into two groups. The first argues that low incomes constrain the ability of the poor to save, eat well and pursue educational opportunities. Since poverty causes poverty, the solution is to offer one-off transfers that help the poor extricate themselves from their plight. A second group believes that the poor are limited by their God-given abilities, talents or motivation, and they will always be among us and the solution is to provide small, but repeated, income support.

I believe that there is merit to both these perspectives on poverty. Inasmuch as we want to offer opportunities for those of us to escape the poverty trap, the basis of most of the Government's anti-poverty policies, there are those that happen to be endowed with less potential, stricken by physical or mental disability, or who face persistent discrimination, and hence, require the support of society-at-large. And in a rich, advanced economy, I believe that doing so is the correct and compassionate thing to do.

Regardless of which school of thought one subscribes to, the fact remains that if we are to help the poor, we must know who they are. But in Singapore, we have yet to establish an official poverty line. This is both puzzling and exasperating. We take pride in ourselves as people who are quantitatively sophisticated and highly efficient; we make and meet KPIs. Targeting the poor is impossible, or at least, imperfect, without an official, transparent benchmark.

We have, instead, a confusing mishmash of thresholds that have been applied by different agencies at different times. We sometimes see reports for the lowest quartile, or quintile, being treated as the poor, or simply the halving of median household incomes. The HDB income threshold for rental happens to be $1,500, while the ComCare threshold is closer to $1,900. The Department of Statistics instead pegs the Average Household Expenditure on Basic Needs at $1,250, albeit this low figure was from two surveys ago and the calculation does not seem to have been updated.

Other unofficial lines, based on ensuring social inclusion or allowing for relative, not just absolute, poverty would suggest higher amounts. These range from $2,500, to as much as $6,400. One may quibble with these numbers and this Government has certainly done so, by arguing that the high-end estimates overstate what are needs versus wants in the household.

A poverty line is defined as the lowest income level that would be deemed adequate in a given country. This leaves a tremendous amount of latitude in terms of what is "adequate". What may be regarded as an absolute minimum necessary to purchase goods and services for basic needs in a poor country may be shockingly low, when set against expectations of needs in a rich country. Indeed, there is clear evidence that as countries get richer, the value of what is conventionally regarded as a basic need changes.

And the fact is, we are no longer a developing country. The sort of things that we need to be as a full participant in Singaporean society has changed. Smartphones may seem like an unnecessary perk to some, but without one, many basic Government services become increasingly difficult to access. A holiday may strike others as a luxury, but for large families cooped up in tiny apartments, a brief getaway to Malaysia offers an important respite that can ensure the mental health of parents.

And money spent on "ang pows" and gifts and celebrations are not just frivolous spending; they represent rites of passage and acts of reciprocity that speak to a moral economy and societal norm, which cannot be reduced to dollars and cents.

It is, in my view, an insult to suggest to a family that the supplemental tuition that their struggling kids need to stay afloat in our overcrowded classrooms is not sufficiently "basic." Or that spending on deodorant in our hot and humid climate, particularly before an interview or a big date, is truly "discretionary".

Part of the problem is a disconnect between what this Government has claimed to be basic, versus what Singaporeans themselves perceive as necessary for human flourishing. But if we can all agree that a good life includes opportunities to education and decent healthcare, employment with work-life balance and a sense of inclusion when one participates in social, cultural and religious activities, then why do we not extend these to the most economically vulnerable in our midst? Life is not just about making it day-to-day, but about thriving, as all humans, poor or not, have aspirations.

It is time for an official poverty line. This line should be established based on components that go beyond just the crude, "basic" needs of housing, food and clothing. Set up a committee, with representatives, from not just MSF, but also leaders from civil society and experts from academia, to figure out what this should be. Then, peg all thresholds for Government assistance, especially ComCare, to this line or higher, but never lower. The Local Qualifying Salary, effectively our minimum wage for Singaporeans should likewise be tied to this line.

Even after we have established a new threshold for ComCare, we need to recognise that the system can stand to be refined. At this year's COS debate, I suggested that the ComCare approval process can be intrusive, onerous and demeaning. While I agree with the general principle of being responsible with public monies, we should not become overzealous in the opposite direction.

It is tempting to design a public welfare system that attempts to sieve out only those that we deem "worthy" of support. So-called "welfare kings or queens" should be excluded as such individuals undeniably exist. We may even have some "regulars" in our Meet-the-People Sessions, but they are few and far between.

Most of my residents possess a lot of self respect and feel uncomfortable seeking help from the state, even when they are going through a tough situation not of their own making. A system that is stingy about financial assistance to the eight or nine folks that just want a little bit of support in a particularly trying time, just to deny the one or two abusers, strikes me as excessive and especially since all that effort translates only to a modest payout.

Furthermore, support is often granted for an unbearably short time – three to six months in the first instance. With precious few exceptions, how can someone's lot improve in just three months? Even when we make appeals and reappeals to agencies, such as the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA), we are often told that we should wait for six months before trying again, since life circumstances are unlikely to change much in the interim. And even if they did, providing some additional months of support would help those who are in need partially fill up the hole that they find themselves in.

As my hon friend Mr Leon Perera has argued in this House, poverty imposes a non-trivial "bandwidth tax": the cognitive burden of poverty, in and of itself. Being in dire financial straits not only imposes mental stress as one searches for job opportunities; it can affect our handling of all-important job interviews, or our performance in a job during the probation period. It steals mental resources that are better spent on improving our situation or providing care for our dependants. It even reduces the little pleasure we receive from what we are able to consume.

Think back on the last time when you had a tight budget before your next paycheck came in and how you had to worry about whether you could make the rent or the mortgage, pay for your meals next week or clear bills that would keep the lights on. Play out that exercise every single day and week, and you will sense what it is like to be poor. Layer on that, the need to "prove" that you are indeed poor every few months to a Social Service Office (SSO) officer, who has the power to snatch away the fragile lifeline that you have.

We can reduce the need for such burdensome and intrusive pre-approval scrutiny by obtaining many documents directly from our public and semi-public agencies, such as rental or utilities. We can deploy conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in exchange for desired behaviour, such as supplementary educational expenses or preventative healthcare spending, and use the fulfilment of the condition as sufficient evidence to qualify for support.

We could set the default that automatically qualifies all Singaporeans in rental flats for an extended period in the Fresh Start home ownership programme, as recently suggested by a local social sector leader.

The Government might argue that beyond ComCare, there is the Workfare Income Supplement (WIS), our other key anti-poverty programme, that is also aligned with incentives. But, as I suggested before, not everyone who is poor is able to work and even when they can, circumstances might constrain how much they can.

The WIS is based on an earned income tax credit (EITC) which, in turn, is a refinement of the negative income tax. Without going into technical details, it is sufficient to note that our scheme tends to be viewed more as a grudgingly offered financial supplement, conditional on one putting in sufficient work hours, rather than a genuine anti-poverty tool aimed at helping provide additional support to our low-income earners.

This is in part because the amounts offered by the WIS are paltry, majority of which is not even accessible for meeting daily needs, since most of it goes straight to the Central Provident Fund (CPF). Even with the most recent revision, topped-up amounts come to $350 a month at best, and can be as little as half that.

While any additional help is undoubtedly welcome, I have had many residents share that the support hardly makes a dent in high cost Singapore. This is exacerbated by our low-income thresholds – $3,000 a year – before one is disqualified. In contrast, the maximum income for the US programme is closer to twice that.

The $500 minimum monthly income requirement introduced last year may also inadvertently exclude workers who are most in need of the flexibility afforded by our part-time employment. While the ostensible reason for the requirement is to exclude some of the more well-off families from benefiting from the programme, it seems like the more tried and tested tool – total household or spousal income or the annual value (AV) of one's residential property – would be sufficient to rule out the non-poor.

Indeed, while we are reassured that those who are already on ComCare would automatically receive Workfare, I am sure that we are aware of many poor families, who for various reasons, are not on ComCare – perhaps because of the onerous documentary criteria I mentioned earlier or if they happen to have an estranged child who is also a high-income earner.

Were these individuals to work only limited hours, perhaps due to health or age, the limited additional support Workfare promises would nevertheless not be available to them.

Workfare also seems to be blind to the differential needs of parents with children. The WIS, to put it bluntly, is independent of dependants. This is in contrast to the approach in other jurisdictions where support is significantly higher if the household has one or more children. This approach makes absolute sense, since parents not only have more dependants to support, they also need to make arrangements for childcare were they to enter into the workforce formally.

Finally, Sir, it is worth pointing out that there are age conditions associated with the WIS, where those who are younger receive less support than the elderly. But this is curious. Why would the youthful poor necessarily need less money than the elderly?

This becomes more odd when —

Mr Lim, you have half a minute left.

— how Silver Support is available only to those aged 65 and above.

Mr Speaker, we have been remarkably recalcitrant in our willingness to support our poor. We can do more, much more – if we want to truly call ourselves a first-world nation. Indeed, we surely must.

Mr Vikram Nair.

Mr Speaker, Singapore’s Independence was a product of the post-war decolonialisation wave, that started in the late 1940s with the independence of India. That was also the period that saw the birth of the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and, in later years, the World Trade Organization (WTO).

These organisations formed the backbone of the modern multilateral world we live in. Common values recognised in international law included the recognition of the sovereignty of nations and the prohibition against the use of force except in self defence.

With the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the WTO, trade among nations grew and the world became more interconnected. This was a backdrop that was conducive to Singapore’s growth as a small nation since the rule of law is especially important for protecting the small and the vulnerable.

The last few years have seen an unprecedented retreat from multilateralism. Russia’s attack on Ukraine was a breach of the UN Charter and the prohibition against the use of force. However, Russia, through its predecessor state, the USSR, is also a charter member of the UN with a veto in the security council. The breach of the UN Charter by a charter member is worrying for the rule of law and it is important for the rest of the world to take a firm stand on this if we intend to maintain the rule of law.

Two of the biggest beneficiaries of the liberalisation of trade following GATT and the WTO are the US and China. They are now the two biggest economies in the world. Yet, the rivalry between the two is now threatening the system on which both prospered. Other countries are also taking their cue from the superpowers, and we see increasing calls for protectionism from different countries. In the long run, this is likely to create more silos and a divided world.

The multilateral system is not dead, but I think it is important for those that believe in its importance to continue to speak up for it and help bring in those who are sceptical. The source of the scepticism is that free trade has sometimes exaggerated the differences between the rich and the poor in different countries. As jobs and roles move to different countries, there will inevitably be winners and losers at home. For those who believe in multilateralism, I think it is important for us to acknowledge some of these side effects and then have domestic policies that correct for this.

I think the multilateral system has benefits for everyone, not least of which is greater security. And in this testing time, we need to win back as many of the sceptics as we can.

Singapore itself has not been immune to some of these effects and this leads me to the second area I wish to address in my speech. The President’s Address acknowledged the importance of Singapore continuing to grow, but that these opportunities must be shared equitably.

I believe this is fundamental to preserving our society where everyone has opportunities.

Singapore’s growth over the years has been remarkable and, as we moved from third world to first, the living standards of almost all our people improved dramatically. However, now that we are a developed country and our GDP per capita is among the highest in the world, continuing to be a growing high-income country is more difficult. We need to find better, higher-paying jobs for our citizens.

At the same time, with higher incomes all round, the cost of living is generally higher as higher incomes for citizens translates into higher costs for wages for businesses and higher rentals as people pay more and compete for the real estate. Additionally, global inflationary pressures and higher interest rates also add to pressures in the cost of living for Singaporeans.

Against this backdrop, I think the measures in the President’s Address to ensure that Singaporeans continue to have opportunities to train and get employment throughout their working lives is vital. I would also suggest that this be coupled with income support while people undergo training. This should be enough to tide them over temporary rough patches.

Going to an earlier stage, I think it is important for our schools to remain the great leveller for education. In the past, children would attend school and learn things like the alphabet from there. I recall entering Primary 1 without any knowledge of how to read or write Tamil, but it was still possible to learn from scratch.

Now, with most children having preschool education, the entry benchmark has risen and basic literacy and numeracy is required for children attending Primary 1, failing which, more may fall behind. This means those who miss preschool, who are predominantly from lower-income families, will start off on the back foot. It is therefore even more important to ensure that preschool is attended by all children and either make this compulsory or have strong measures in place to encourage universal attendance.

The next matter, which I think has been alluded to by some of the earlier speakers, is the proliferation of tuition, even after children attend school. Parents across all income groups try their best to supplement what their children learn in school with tuition. In HDB heartland malls, an increasingly larger footprint is being used for such services.

While such services are helpful for children, there is a concern by parents who cannot afford such services that their children may lose out. I have some parents who come to MPS to seek assistance when they are going through a rough patch and they often indicate their children’s tuition expenses are part of their normal monthly expenditures. Of course, MSF rarely gives financial assistance to cope with such expenses.

There are other self-help groups that come in to provide support for this but it will be good if we can develop a system that places less emphasis on tuition. Education in our schools is highly affordable and of a very high quality. It is important that parents believe such education is adequate for their children and that children who are unable to attend or afford tuition and enrichment classes do not get left behind. This is an important part of keeping our playing field open for children of all backgrounds to thrive.

(In Tamil): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] The reopening of Parliament this time coincides with the Tamil Language Festival. This year there are 42 events being organised by a range of different organisations. This event receives strong but quiet support from the Government, which through the Tamil Language Council, provides grants for the organisation of events at this festival.

I am grateful to the Government for its strong support for the Tamil language in Singapore. The Tamil speaking community makes up around 5% of our population and it is one of Singapore’s official languages. The Government supports the language in many ways.

The Tamil Language Council supports the Tamil Language Festival.

Another committee, the Tamil Language Learning and Promotion Committee, otherwise known as TLLPC – which I have chaired for several years – offers support for the learning of Tamil outside of classrooms. The TLLPC team organises events and supports activities throughout the year to make the use and learning of Tamil language fun.

Grants are also given for the production of local Tamil content by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) under its Public Service Broadcast Programme and this allows for the creation of good quality local content, which is monitored by the Indian Programme Advisory Committee.

This support is commendable and has helped the Tamil language remain a vibrant language in Singapore.

Tamil is now also widely offered across more schools. When I was in preschool in the 1980s, it would have been very difficult to find preschools offering Tamil as a second language. When my father was in primary school in the 1950s, he started studying Tamil in Primary 1, but had to drop it in Primary 3 when his teacher passed away and no replacement could be found. He then had to switch to the Malay language. We have come a long way from those days, with Tamil now available across many preschools and government schools.

One issue that has arisen now though is the shortage of Tamil teachers in schools. As the number of Tamil students are small, there are fewer Tamil teachers than for other Mother Tongue languages. However, even though the number of children is small, the Tamil children in schools still have a variety of different needs, including children across different age groups and with different subject-based banding.

Yet, because of the shortage of teachers, I understand some schools have been forced to combine Tamil classes with children in different subject-based bands coming together for the same class. This makes common teaching difficult. It will be helpful to know if the Ministry of Education (MOE) has any plans to deal with this issue. This may include plans on how we may develop a larger pipeline of Tamil teachers for our Government schools and preschools.

The learning of Tamil in Singapore has come a long way, with quiet support from the Government going a long way. I am grateful for this support and hope it will continue.

Mr Gerald Giam.

Mr Speaker, in her address to Parliament, the President called for a “broader and more open meritocracy that works well for all Singaporeans”. A lynchpin of our system of meritocracy is our education system, which is the subject of my speech today.

Singapore’s education system has gone through several changes over the years, from the introduction of streaming in 1981, to the introduction of Subject-based Banding (SBB) in 2014, to the roll out of Full SBB starting in 2020. Yet, even with these changes, one major feature of our education system remains central – examinations.

As a parent of two children who have gone through PSLE and are now in secondary school, I am rather familiar with both the joy and – more often – the frustration that parents go through when helping their children through major national examinations.

Tutoring my own children has also provided me insights into the academic curriculum and its continued focus on examinations. I remember spending an inordinate amount of time working with my children through assessment books and past examination papers. I would often have to peek at the answer sheets behind, so I could teach them how to answer science questions with just the right number of points while putting up with taunts from my own offspring, which went along the lines of, “See, you also don’t know!”

I would also have to repeatedly drill my children on mathematics problem sums. To get a good pass in Singapore’s examinations, students need to not only answer questions correctly, but also quickly, or risk the “horror” of having many unanswered questions at the end of the paper, due to examination time limits.

Many mid-year examinations have been done away with, but these have been replaced with weighted assessments which occur throughout the school year. The major national examinations like the PSLE, "N", "O" and "A" levels always loom just around the corner. Perform poorly in any of these examinations and the students will find their future educational options narrowed down or delayed – a prospect that many students and parents fear, no matter what the Government says about the many pathways to success.

There are positive effects of examinations. They can incentivise teachers to cover their subjects more thoroughly, a skill which our local educators excel in. Examinations motivate students to work harder to gain a sense of accomplishment.

However, there are also negative effects of examinations. They can motivate students to aim for test mastery instead of subject mastery. Tests encourage teachers to narrow the curriculum and lose instructional time, which could lead to “teaching to the test”.

Examinations, typically, assess only certain aspects of a learner's knowledge, potentially overlooking other aspects of their education. Examination outcomes may not be definitive since they are solely based on a student's performance on the examination day. If a student is unwell or performs poorly under stress, it could adversely affect their examination results and their scores may not be an accurate reflection of their grasp of the subject matter. If the student fails to achieve their desired examination results, they will have to settle for courses of study in secondary schools or tertiary institutions that they may not be so inclined towards.

National examinations induce tremendous amounts of stress on students, as they determine their future educational pathways and, consequently, their future careers and earning potential. While it can be argued that it is good for young people to learn to cope with stress, when stress becomes toxic, it can have negative effects on learning and knowledge retention and, in extreme situations, could become chronic.

By channelling their energies into preparing for examinations, students may forgo opportunities to experience the joy of learning and achieving mastery in what really is important for life.

The streaming approach puts students through a standardised test like the PSLE, sorted them into good, average and weak students, and put them on different education streams in secondary schools with different subject combinations based on their test scores. The new Subject-based Banding approach also sorts students into good, average and weak students for each subject, and channels them into subject combinations based on their assessed ability in each subject.

While subject-based banding is less rigid than streaming, it is still based on the same principle. A student has to meet a specific test score in order to study the subjects they are interested in.

The ostensible reason for implementing this sorting mechanism is to provide some assurance that the student can cope with the rigours of that subject or subject level before being allowed to take it. This is probably why through-train programmes are currently available mainly to an elite few students who qualify for the Integrated Programme by virtue of their stellar performance in the PSLE. There is little risk that these students will become early dropouts of school.

In contrast, the Workers’ Party has proposed a 10-year through-train programme from Primary 1 to Secondary 4 as an option for parents who want their child to bypass the PSLE. Our proposed through-train programme gives students 10 years to prepare for their first major examination at Secondary 4, allowing them to learn at a pace suited for them while developing other areas of interest. The 10-year through-train programme will pair up existing primary and secondary schools and complement, not replace, the non-through-train tracks in these schools. My hon friend, Assoc Prof Jamus Lim, elaborated on this proposal in detail during the COS debate earlier this year.

We need to make our education system less of a sorting mechanism for identifying students’ abilities and more of a launchpad for students to discover their strengths and interests and develop deep skills in their areas of interest.

Students should not be channelled away from their interests just because they did not obtain a certain cut-off point in their examinations. There might be concerns that some so-called “kiasu parents” will push their children to take subjects that are far beyond their abilities. However, I believe that most Singaporean students and their parents are keenly aware of their own limitations and will not bite off more than they can chew. After all, if a student takes a subject at too challenging a level, they will have difficulty scoring the much coveted "A1"s in national examinations.

I would now like to move on to another aspect of education which needs more focus in Singapore – financial literacy.

Singapore is a major financial hub, with numerous global, regional and local institutional investors and high-net-worth family offices based here. Billions of investment funds are raised and managed in Singapore.

Yet, Singaporeans generally lack the financial know-how and confidence to manage their own personal finances and plan for their future. In a private sector survey in 2022, more than half of Singaporeans considered themselves “financially illiterate”. The same survey showed that financial literacy is the lowest among the age group of 18 to 24, at only 35%. In the MoneySENSE National Financial Capability Survey 2021, four in 10 respondents said they lacked knowledge of basic financial concepts, such as risk diversification and simple and compound interest, and more than half had not developed a retirement plan.

MoneySENSE is Singapore’s national financial education programme. In the two decades since it was started, it has launched various programmes and provided resources to help Singaporeans better manage their finances. However, the programmes seem to be mostly ad hoc and campaign-driven. Various surveys have been conducted on financial literacy among Singaporeans since its launch, but it is not clear how much the financial literacy of Singaporeans has improved over the last two decades, as these surveys do not seem to have followed the same scope or framework.

Based on the results of the recent surveys, it appears that a lot more needs to be done to enhance Singaporeans’ financial capacity and literacy. And instead of doing more, it appears that some co-funding of financial literacy workshops for schools under MoneySENSE has been discontinued.

For a developed country, with such high educational, wealth and income levels, and an established status as a leading international financial hub, the survey results show worrying statistics about the financial literacy rate in Singapore. To improve our financial resilience as a nation, there is a need to plug the current financial literacy gap among Singaporeans and empower Singaporeans with the knowledge and confidence to take greater ownership of their financial well-being.

I would like to share three suggestions to systematically uplift the financial literacy of Singaporeans and empower them with the knowledge and confidence to manage their own financial health.