[h=2]Ng Kok Lim’s comments on PM Lee’s parliamentary speech[/h]
February 11th, 2013 |
Author: Ng Kok Lim
I refer to the 9 Feb 2013 Straits Times report of PM Lee’s parliament speech [1].
PM Lee need not strive to bring us peace and happiness. We would be immensely grateful if he doesn’t mess things up more than he already has. He shouldn’t deceive himself into thinking that his policies make every generation do well when it is obvious that skyrocketing property and car prices can only mean that each subsequent generation will get worse, not better.
The White Paper is not an affirmation of faith in Singapore’s future but an affirmation of the PAP’s power to do as it pleases regardless of how much the people disagrees. It is an affirmation that Singapore is not a democracy but a regime at the mercy of one party’s whims and fancy.
How do we trust someone who admits that he doesn’t have 20/20 vision to make the right population policies? The disaster of PAP’s early population control policies makes it clear to us never again to place our faith in the PAP to make population policies. In their rush to address long term problems, are they not creating more long term problems instead?
Who we are is not as complicated as PM Lee makes it out to be. We are Malay, Chinese, Indian and Eurasians or at least that was what we used to be. We never needed to have all sorts of people, but PAP changed that. Zurich, Tokyo and Hong Kong are important financial centres like New York and London. There was never a need for Zurich, Tokyo or Hong Kong to go for broke to become more open and vibrant, I wonder why Singapore has to be different. Why do we have to struggle so hard to overtake New York and London? Why can’t we just be contented to be like Zurich, Tokyo or Hong Kong? Why must we be No. 1 in everything even when it hurts?
No one is saying that economics is unimportant. But just because the PAP can’t grow the quality of our economy doesn’t mean we therefore grow our economy by quantity. No one is saying growth is unimportant. But force feeding a chicken to make it grow faster is not the way to grow Singapore. No one is saying improving incomes is unimportant. But what is the point of improving the price of cars and houses much more than improving incomes? In the end, affordability decreases, quality of life decreases. Unless we implement minimum wage, low income Singaporeans will always have their wages depressed by the flood of foreign workers imported. In the end, increasing wages for low income earners remains lip service. Experience shows that the real wage of low income earners have stagnated despite claims otherwise. Low wage is not as big a problem in many European countries because they have minimum wages, more effective unions and shorter working hours too.
The founding generation was the one in 1819, not 1965. The distinctive Singaporean identity was forged over time since 1819, not since 1965. The Singaporean of 1965 was only incrementally different from the Singaporean of 1964. There was no big bang change in our habits, customs, speech and way of life going from 1964 to 1965.
If as PM Lee says, we should have a big heart in welcoming new immigrants, then shouldn’t we have welcomed the Rohingya refugees also? Somehow, PM Lee’s concept of big heartedness is confined only to welcoming professionals, not refugees. That’s not big heartedness.
PM Lee’s speech suggests that we will go ahead to bring in the numbers while continuing to talk about associated problems. In other words, we can talk all we want and he will do just the same.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew may have vowed to make Singapore a metropolis 10 years from Separation in 1965. But LKY had already acknowledged in an Aug 1967 speech to American businessmen in Chicago that we were already a metropolis [2]. Singapore couldn’t have achieved metropolis status in just two years. In other words, Singapore was already a metropolis or nearly so back in 1965 so LKY was merely vowing to make Singapore into what it already was.
Having built a nation together doesn’t mean we therefore have no fear. We must fear that the policies we make may end up destroying the nation we have built.
Thank you.
.
Ng Kok Lim
[1] Straits Times, 9 Feb 2013, The right policies to ensure success
I refer to the 9 Feb 2013 Straits Times report of PM Lee’s parliament speech [1].
PM Lee need not strive to bring us peace and happiness. We would be immensely grateful if he doesn’t mess things up more than he already has. He shouldn’t deceive himself into thinking that his policies make every generation do well when it is obvious that skyrocketing property and car prices can only mean that each subsequent generation will get worse, not better.
The White Paper is not an affirmation of faith in Singapore’s future but an affirmation of the PAP’s power to do as it pleases regardless of how much the people disagrees. It is an affirmation that Singapore is not a democracy but a regime at the mercy of one party’s whims and fancy.
How do we trust someone who admits that he doesn’t have 20/20 vision to make the right population policies? The disaster of PAP’s early population control policies makes it clear to us never again to place our faith in the PAP to make population policies. In their rush to address long term problems, are they not creating more long term problems instead?
Who we are is not as complicated as PM Lee makes it out to be. We are Malay, Chinese, Indian and Eurasians or at least that was what we used to be. We never needed to have all sorts of people, but PAP changed that. Zurich, Tokyo and Hong Kong are important financial centres like New York and London. There was never a need for Zurich, Tokyo or Hong Kong to go for broke to become more open and vibrant, I wonder why Singapore has to be different. Why do we have to struggle so hard to overtake New York and London? Why can’t we just be contented to be like Zurich, Tokyo or Hong Kong? Why must we be No. 1 in everything even when it hurts?
No one is saying that economics is unimportant. But just because the PAP can’t grow the quality of our economy doesn’t mean we therefore grow our economy by quantity. No one is saying growth is unimportant. But force feeding a chicken to make it grow faster is not the way to grow Singapore. No one is saying improving incomes is unimportant. But what is the point of improving the price of cars and houses much more than improving incomes? In the end, affordability decreases, quality of life decreases. Unless we implement minimum wage, low income Singaporeans will always have their wages depressed by the flood of foreign workers imported. In the end, increasing wages for low income earners remains lip service. Experience shows that the real wage of low income earners have stagnated despite claims otherwise. Low wage is not as big a problem in many European countries because they have minimum wages, more effective unions and shorter working hours too.
The founding generation was the one in 1819, not 1965. The distinctive Singaporean identity was forged over time since 1819, not since 1965. The Singaporean of 1965 was only incrementally different from the Singaporean of 1964. There was no big bang change in our habits, customs, speech and way of life going from 1964 to 1965.
If as PM Lee says, we should have a big heart in welcoming new immigrants, then shouldn’t we have welcomed the Rohingya refugees also? Somehow, PM Lee’s concept of big heartedness is confined only to welcoming professionals, not refugees. That’s not big heartedness.
PM Lee’s speech suggests that we will go ahead to bring in the numbers while continuing to talk about associated problems. In other words, we can talk all we want and he will do just the same.
Mr Lee Kuan Yew may have vowed to make Singapore a metropolis 10 years from Separation in 1965. But LKY had already acknowledged in an Aug 1967 speech to American businessmen in Chicago that we were already a metropolis [2]. Singapore couldn’t have achieved metropolis status in just two years. In other words, Singapore was already a metropolis or nearly so back in 1965 so LKY was merely vowing to make Singapore into what it already was.
Having built a nation together doesn’t mean we therefore have no fear. We must fear that the policies we make may end up destroying the nation we have built.
Thank you.
.
Ng Kok Lim
[1] Straits Times, 9 Feb 2013, The right policies to ensure success
WE ARE not pursuing economic growth blindly. These are not our objectives. These are just our means to the end. Our objective is to ensure that our next generation, in fact our next two generations, of Singaporeans can continue to live happily and peacefully here in this society, in this country. Every generation can continue to do well.
This White Paper is not just a discussion of a difficult problem. It’s really an affirmation of faith in Singapore’s future, belief that Singapore has a future which is worth building, protecting, striving for; belief that Singapore can grow from strength to strength and the next generation deserves to live better lives than this generation.
And to make tomorrow better than today, we have to get our population policies right so that we give ourselves the best chance of success. This is a long-term issue. Tomorrow against today, it’s a small difference. Next year versus this year, it’s noticeable.
Ten years from now, compared to today, the trends have built up and accumulated another 10 years, they’ve become irreversible. Therefore, we cannot wait till a convenient moment. We have to work hard to address the problems, to address the long-term problems, at the same time as we’re addressing the current problems which preoccupy Singaporeans.
But in parallel, we have to deal with this population issue. This is a multi-faceted problem. First, it’s a problem of numbers – how many babies are born, how many people immigrate, how many people emigrate, how many foreign workers we need, what is our total fertility rate? At that level, it’s an exercise in spreadsheets and arithmetic. Anybody can do the sums. Doesn’t mean anybody can make the sums work, can solve the problem. But that is one, only one aspect of our population problem.
Another aspect is identity. Many MPs have spoken about it and I think just now, Professor Eugene Tan was one of them. Who are we to our children, to immigrants, to people who are working, people who are visiting here. Who are Singaporeans? It’s more complicated for us because we are a cosmopolitan city, unlike, say, Japan or unlike, say, China where the populations all look the same, speak the same language and it’s quite clear if you’re Japanese, you’re Japanese. But in Singapore, who are you? We have to be open. We have to be varied. We have to have all sorts of people here. But at the same time we’re not just a city. We’re not just like New York or like London. We are a nation. And so we need both that vibrancy and openness but also the sense of identity and that sense of belonging among citizens that we are Singaporeans together. And that is a very difficult combination to create – to be cohesive without being close, to identify with one another and not be xenophobic, to be open and yet not to be diluted and dissolved. But that is our karma and we have to keep a balance between the two.
The third aspect of the population issue is the economy – how do we keep thriving and prospering. I almost hesitate to make this argument because everybody in the chamber, or so it sounded, or many people in this chamber and many people outside too, have taken the view that economics is not so important and that we have overemphasised economics as a government. But I think I should make my position quite clear. We’re not pursuing growth at all costs.
We’re trying to juggle many different objects, including population, including cohesion, including our social tensions. And we’re trading off, reducing immigration, reducing foreign worker inflows, slowing down the economy significantly, so as to deal with these tensions and pressures, and so as to address other issues which we want, whether it’s quality of life, whether it’s income equality, whether it’s the environment. We accept this because we want the growth to be sustainable, we want high quality growth and we want workers and families to benefit. Finally, it’s for Singaporeans.
Why growth is needed?
GROWTH is not for its own sake. But growth is not unimportant. We can only afford to say that it doesn’t matter because we have already got it. If we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t be so blase. You need growth to improve education and health care, to build better homes and towns, to invest in reliable and convenient public transport. If you don’t have the resources, you will not have the means and you will not that quality of life.
We also need growth to improve incomes. And I say this advisedly, incomes are important. If you are in the top 5, 10 per cent of the population, you may say, well, I have enough, I manage, I can live within my means.
If you are at the bottom 10, 20 per cent of the population or even the median Singaporean – not poor, not rich – I think it would be patronising and cavalier for us to say they don’t need more, growth is unimportant.
It is important for us to raise the incomes of the low income Singaporeans. It is important that we’re able to have growth which enables a broad mass of Singaporeans to improve their lives. And when people say that the cost of living is high, I want help with cost of living, really the best solution is if your incomes can go up and you have more means to afford the things which you want, then you will be under less pressure. But for the incomes to go up, unless the economy grows, I must rob Peter to pay Paul. And somebody has to volunteer, take the money from me, give it to them. And it is not a sustainable solution.
Our experience has shown that in fact when the economy is growing, the low income Singaporeans get benefits, their incomes go up. When the economy crashes or slows down, it’s the low income Singaporeans whose salaries stagnate, and at the top quite often incomes continue to rise. It’s a problem with us. It’s a problem with many countries. And so that is why although we have many objectives, and we are trading off, growth still counts, together with sense of belonging and nationhood, together with work-life balance, together with family-friendly environment.
One of the things we must not forget is we need to make a living for ourselves.
Immigrants add to core
IMMIGRANTS have been critical to Singapore’s success and over the years, many have embraced Singapore’s cause, and made important contributions to Singapore, being the fiercest defenders of Singapore and the most able propounders of our cause and pushing our story worldwide. Rajaratnam was just one of them. That’s how we became a shining red dot. As Mr Rajaratnam said and many of you have quoted: “Being a Singaporean is not a matter of ancestry. It is conviction and choice.”
I accept that the situation today is different from what it was at Independence in the 1960s. The founding generation was brought together by an accident of history at a time of great change, and they were bound together by a common cause of survival and building a nation. And because of them, they built a nation with a distinctive Singaporean identity.
So you recognise a Singaporean. You don’t have to wait for him to speak. You don’t have to hear him. You just look at him, see how he walks, his body language. There’s something about him; you say, I know he’s one of us. Not in Singapore, but you can be in America, you can be in India, anywhere in the world, he is distinguishable.
And therefore, because we’re distinguishable and identify with one another like that, it’s harder for a new arrival to come in and become like those who are born and bred here. Never quite the same. The accent will be a bit different. Your body language will be a bit different. Over time, the accent maybe will become like Singlish, if you come young, especially.
But the first generation has something not quite the same about him. Which is also why he’s valuable to us, because he adds something to us, or she adds something to us. And we still need them to strengthen our core, to reinforce our talent pool and to make life better for Singaporeans.
We expect the new citizens to make the effort to integrate into our community, to commit their loyalty to Singapore. And indeed there are non-Singaporeans who have lived and worked here, who deeply appreciate what Singapore stands for, and they want to contribute to the Singapore Story, by becoming Singaporeans.
They have seen the world, they have seen how things work elsewhere, they have seen how Singapore is and they say: Yes, let me make this my home and nation.
I say we should have the big heart and the open spirit to welcome such people and help them become Singaporean. Let their children grow up in our schools, let their children be part of the next generation of Singaporeans.
The Singapore spirit
SO WE have to be open in a controlled way and if others accept our values and commit to building a better Singapore for all of us and can make a contribution and can integrate into our society, then we should accept them as one of our own.
Around this Singapore core, our society will need a pool of transient non-residents, people who come to live and work here for a time, not to retire, not permanently. And they serve Singaporeans, build our flats and MRT lines, take care of our elderly, bring skills and experiences that we ourselves lack.
So this is the other aspect of the problem which vexes people, because if the non-residents outnumber the core, then the core asks: Are we being diluted? The young Singaporean, the young girl whom I met in Teck Ghee market asked me this question. I didn’t give her such a long explanation, but after a short explanation she asked a supplementary question. She said: “Will there be a Singapore core in 2030?”
So I said: That is the whole aim of this exercise, that’s what we are trying to achieve, and if your generation have more children – because she’s teenage now, by 2030 she will be well into child-bearing age – then I think it’ll be easier for us to have a core.
There’s a lot of discussion over the percentage. If you go to 6.9 million, then only 55 per cent will be citizens and is that enough?
I think the numbers do matter, and we will track and control the numbers of non-Singaporeans and the inflow of immigrants so that we are not overwhelmed just by the sheer flood of people coming in. But whether the core is strong or not and how the transients fit in also depends on the role which the different groups play in Singapore, how they fit into our society.
For example, if a big group of the transients are construction workers, which is a fact today, I think we have about 250,000 or 300,000 construction workers here temporarily for a project, to do something for us. I don’t think that that will weaken the Singapore core.
They are here, they do a job, we are grateful to them, when the job is done, they go home, provided we can house them and transport them suitably and provided that the numbers don’t cause problems in our housing estates or in our public transport. If we can manage that, this is a transient population. We are not expecting you to integrate; you’re doing a job and we are grateful for what you are doing for us.
So we will watch the numbers. But the Singapore core is not just about the numbers, it’s about the spirit, and when I talked about the spirit earlier and if the spirit is strong we can manage, and I think it’s critical to imbue the younger Singaporeans with the Singapore spirit.
We will always put Singaporeans first and make sure that the benefits of population in our population policies flow to Singaporeans.
First of all, in our society, we make sure that Singaporeans are clearly in the majority, so that our identity is not diluted by new arrivals.
Secondly, in our policies, treating Singaporeans better than non-Singaporeans, especially when it comes to health care, education and housing.
And thirdly, in our workforce, giving Singaporeans every opportunity to upgrade and take up good jobs and enjoy fair and equal treatment from employers.
And I know there are grouses, I heard Prof Eugene Tan talk about his specific issues and Mr Patrick Tay raised this also from a union point of view, but we will make sure that Singaporeans are fairly treated. It has to be so and it will always be so, because the Government is elected by Singaporeans and responsible to Singaporeans.
Everyone plays a role
BUT let me add also that at the same time Singaporeans cannot afford to be just here for the ride – passengers. We are not an oil state, where citizens can live on the oil wealth and non-citizens do the work.
For Singapore to thrive, we Singaporeans must always stay lean and hungry. If we lose our drive we will lose out. Mr Teo Siong Seng, Mr Liang Eng Hwa and others talked about this, but I’d like to underline this point, that it is a privilege to be a Singaporean, it’s a special status which we should be proud of, but we should not think of it as a perk. It’s also a responsibility because we are not just the beneficiaries of the country’s success; we also need to be architects and the builders of our future success.
So we’ve got to fulfil our duties as citizens: defend our country and fellow Singaporeans against danger, especially if you’re an NSman in the Singapore Armed Forces or the Home Team; help one another to build a strong community, and work together to help Singapore succeed. If we retain this spirit and work together, we can create a much better tomorrow for our children. And that’s my promise to all Singporeans.
Three big questions
THIS conversation on population doesn’t end today. Based on the public views and based on the MPs’ speeches I think it’s clear that there are at least three areas which we need to talk about further – further, meaning not just over the next few months but over the next few years.
First, marriage and procreation. What more can we do to encourage Singapore?
Secondly, economy. How to strike that balance between a vibrant economy and our other objectives? How do we restructure our economy to rely less on foreigners? How do we benefit Singaporeans more through economic growth, especially beyond 2020 when the economy is going to be slower?
Thirdly, the question of identity. How do we strengthen Singaporeans’ identity even as we keep our society open?
I think these are deep questions. They are important ones for us and we will have to continue to discuss them and encourage Singaporeans to continue to discuss them over the next few years, including in Our Singapore Conversation.
We are all in this together, as Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong reminded us. This is an issue not just for the Government or the People’s Action Party, but for all Singaporeans, including all political parties and we have to go beyond the rhetoric to develop actual plans that address our challenges and improve our lives. And I ask for your support in doing this.
If we make the right choices, our future is bright. We are in a strong position, with a high international standing. We have overcome long odds before with creativity and fortitude. In our darkest days after Separation in 1965, Mr Lee Kuan Yew vowed to Singaporeans, 10 years from now, this will be a metropolis. Never fear. And we did it.
Together we built a nation. So never fear. We can build an even better Singapore for all Singaporeans.
[2] Peter Wilson / Gavin Peebles, Economic growth and development in Singapore: past and future, Page 26This White Paper is not just a discussion of a difficult problem. It’s really an affirmation of faith in Singapore’s future, belief that Singapore has a future which is worth building, protecting, striving for; belief that Singapore can grow from strength to strength and the next generation deserves to live better lives than this generation.
And to make tomorrow better than today, we have to get our population policies right so that we give ourselves the best chance of success. This is a long-term issue. Tomorrow against today, it’s a small difference. Next year versus this year, it’s noticeable.
Ten years from now, compared to today, the trends have built up and accumulated another 10 years, they’ve become irreversible. Therefore, we cannot wait till a convenient moment. We have to work hard to address the problems, to address the long-term problems, at the same time as we’re addressing the current problems which preoccupy Singaporeans.
But in parallel, we have to deal with this population issue. This is a multi-faceted problem. First, it’s a problem of numbers – how many babies are born, how many people immigrate, how many people emigrate, how many foreign workers we need, what is our total fertility rate? At that level, it’s an exercise in spreadsheets and arithmetic. Anybody can do the sums. Doesn’t mean anybody can make the sums work, can solve the problem. But that is one, only one aspect of our population problem.
Another aspect is identity. Many MPs have spoken about it and I think just now, Professor Eugene Tan was one of them. Who are we to our children, to immigrants, to people who are working, people who are visiting here. Who are Singaporeans? It’s more complicated for us because we are a cosmopolitan city, unlike, say, Japan or unlike, say, China where the populations all look the same, speak the same language and it’s quite clear if you’re Japanese, you’re Japanese. But in Singapore, who are you? We have to be open. We have to be varied. We have to have all sorts of people here. But at the same time we’re not just a city. We’re not just like New York or like London. We are a nation. And so we need both that vibrancy and openness but also the sense of identity and that sense of belonging among citizens that we are Singaporeans together. And that is a very difficult combination to create – to be cohesive without being close, to identify with one another and not be xenophobic, to be open and yet not to be diluted and dissolved. But that is our karma and we have to keep a balance between the two.
The third aspect of the population issue is the economy – how do we keep thriving and prospering. I almost hesitate to make this argument because everybody in the chamber, or so it sounded, or many people in this chamber and many people outside too, have taken the view that economics is not so important and that we have overemphasised economics as a government. But I think I should make my position quite clear. We’re not pursuing growth at all costs.
We’re trying to juggle many different objects, including population, including cohesion, including our social tensions. And we’re trading off, reducing immigration, reducing foreign worker inflows, slowing down the economy significantly, so as to deal with these tensions and pressures, and so as to address other issues which we want, whether it’s quality of life, whether it’s income equality, whether it’s the environment. We accept this because we want the growth to be sustainable, we want high quality growth and we want workers and families to benefit. Finally, it’s for Singaporeans.
Why growth is needed?
GROWTH is not for its own sake. But growth is not unimportant. We can only afford to say that it doesn’t matter because we have already got it. If we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t be so blase. You need growth to improve education and health care, to build better homes and towns, to invest in reliable and convenient public transport. If you don’t have the resources, you will not have the means and you will not that quality of life.
We also need growth to improve incomes. And I say this advisedly, incomes are important. If you are in the top 5, 10 per cent of the population, you may say, well, I have enough, I manage, I can live within my means.
If you are at the bottom 10, 20 per cent of the population or even the median Singaporean – not poor, not rich – I think it would be patronising and cavalier for us to say they don’t need more, growth is unimportant.
It is important for us to raise the incomes of the low income Singaporeans. It is important that we’re able to have growth which enables a broad mass of Singaporeans to improve their lives. And when people say that the cost of living is high, I want help with cost of living, really the best solution is if your incomes can go up and you have more means to afford the things which you want, then you will be under less pressure. But for the incomes to go up, unless the economy grows, I must rob Peter to pay Paul. And somebody has to volunteer, take the money from me, give it to them. And it is not a sustainable solution.
Our experience has shown that in fact when the economy is growing, the low income Singaporeans get benefits, their incomes go up. When the economy crashes or slows down, it’s the low income Singaporeans whose salaries stagnate, and at the top quite often incomes continue to rise. It’s a problem with us. It’s a problem with many countries. And so that is why although we have many objectives, and we are trading off, growth still counts, together with sense of belonging and nationhood, together with work-life balance, together with family-friendly environment.
One of the things we must not forget is we need to make a living for ourselves.
Immigrants add to core
IMMIGRANTS have been critical to Singapore’s success and over the years, many have embraced Singapore’s cause, and made important contributions to Singapore, being the fiercest defenders of Singapore and the most able propounders of our cause and pushing our story worldwide. Rajaratnam was just one of them. That’s how we became a shining red dot. As Mr Rajaratnam said and many of you have quoted: “Being a Singaporean is not a matter of ancestry. It is conviction and choice.”
I accept that the situation today is different from what it was at Independence in the 1960s. The founding generation was brought together by an accident of history at a time of great change, and they were bound together by a common cause of survival and building a nation. And because of them, they built a nation with a distinctive Singaporean identity.
So you recognise a Singaporean. You don’t have to wait for him to speak. You don’t have to hear him. You just look at him, see how he walks, his body language. There’s something about him; you say, I know he’s one of us. Not in Singapore, but you can be in America, you can be in India, anywhere in the world, he is distinguishable.
And therefore, because we’re distinguishable and identify with one another like that, it’s harder for a new arrival to come in and become like those who are born and bred here. Never quite the same. The accent will be a bit different. Your body language will be a bit different. Over time, the accent maybe will become like Singlish, if you come young, especially.
But the first generation has something not quite the same about him. Which is also why he’s valuable to us, because he adds something to us, or she adds something to us. And we still need them to strengthen our core, to reinforce our talent pool and to make life better for Singaporeans.
We expect the new citizens to make the effort to integrate into our community, to commit their loyalty to Singapore. And indeed there are non-Singaporeans who have lived and worked here, who deeply appreciate what Singapore stands for, and they want to contribute to the Singapore Story, by becoming Singaporeans.
They have seen the world, they have seen how things work elsewhere, they have seen how Singapore is and they say: Yes, let me make this my home and nation.
I say we should have the big heart and the open spirit to welcome such people and help them become Singaporean. Let their children grow up in our schools, let their children be part of the next generation of Singaporeans.
The Singapore spirit
SO WE have to be open in a controlled way and if others accept our values and commit to building a better Singapore for all of us and can make a contribution and can integrate into our society, then we should accept them as one of our own.
Around this Singapore core, our society will need a pool of transient non-residents, people who come to live and work here for a time, not to retire, not permanently. And they serve Singaporeans, build our flats and MRT lines, take care of our elderly, bring skills and experiences that we ourselves lack.
So this is the other aspect of the problem which vexes people, because if the non-residents outnumber the core, then the core asks: Are we being diluted? The young Singaporean, the young girl whom I met in Teck Ghee market asked me this question. I didn’t give her such a long explanation, but after a short explanation she asked a supplementary question. She said: “Will there be a Singapore core in 2030?”
So I said: That is the whole aim of this exercise, that’s what we are trying to achieve, and if your generation have more children – because she’s teenage now, by 2030 she will be well into child-bearing age – then I think it’ll be easier for us to have a core.
There’s a lot of discussion over the percentage. If you go to 6.9 million, then only 55 per cent will be citizens and is that enough?
I think the numbers do matter, and we will track and control the numbers of non-Singaporeans and the inflow of immigrants so that we are not overwhelmed just by the sheer flood of people coming in. But whether the core is strong or not and how the transients fit in also depends on the role which the different groups play in Singapore, how they fit into our society.
For example, if a big group of the transients are construction workers, which is a fact today, I think we have about 250,000 or 300,000 construction workers here temporarily for a project, to do something for us. I don’t think that that will weaken the Singapore core.
They are here, they do a job, we are grateful to them, when the job is done, they go home, provided we can house them and transport them suitably and provided that the numbers don’t cause problems in our housing estates or in our public transport. If we can manage that, this is a transient population. We are not expecting you to integrate; you’re doing a job and we are grateful for what you are doing for us.
So we will watch the numbers. But the Singapore core is not just about the numbers, it’s about the spirit, and when I talked about the spirit earlier and if the spirit is strong we can manage, and I think it’s critical to imbue the younger Singaporeans with the Singapore spirit.
We will always put Singaporeans first and make sure that the benefits of population in our population policies flow to Singaporeans.
First of all, in our society, we make sure that Singaporeans are clearly in the majority, so that our identity is not diluted by new arrivals.
Secondly, in our policies, treating Singaporeans better than non-Singaporeans, especially when it comes to health care, education and housing.
And thirdly, in our workforce, giving Singaporeans every opportunity to upgrade and take up good jobs and enjoy fair and equal treatment from employers.
And I know there are grouses, I heard Prof Eugene Tan talk about his specific issues and Mr Patrick Tay raised this also from a union point of view, but we will make sure that Singaporeans are fairly treated. It has to be so and it will always be so, because the Government is elected by Singaporeans and responsible to Singaporeans.
Everyone plays a role
BUT let me add also that at the same time Singaporeans cannot afford to be just here for the ride – passengers. We are not an oil state, where citizens can live on the oil wealth and non-citizens do the work.
For Singapore to thrive, we Singaporeans must always stay lean and hungry. If we lose our drive we will lose out. Mr Teo Siong Seng, Mr Liang Eng Hwa and others talked about this, but I’d like to underline this point, that it is a privilege to be a Singaporean, it’s a special status which we should be proud of, but we should not think of it as a perk. It’s also a responsibility because we are not just the beneficiaries of the country’s success; we also need to be architects and the builders of our future success.
So we’ve got to fulfil our duties as citizens: defend our country and fellow Singaporeans against danger, especially if you’re an NSman in the Singapore Armed Forces or the Home Team; help one another to build a strong community, and work together to help Singapore succeed. If we retain this spirit and work together, we can create a much better tomorrow for our children. And that’s my promise to all Singporeans.
Three big questions
THIS conversation on population doesn’t end today. Based on the public views and based on the MPs’ speeches I think it’s clear that there are at least three areas which we need to talk about further – further, meaning not just over the next few months but over the next few years.
First, marriage and procreation. What more can we do to encourage Singapore?
Secondly, economy. How to strike that balance between a vibrant economy and our other objectives? How do we restructure our economy to rely less on foreigners? How do we benefit Singaporeans more through economic growth, especially beyond 2020 when the economy is going to be slower?
Thirdly, the question of identity. How do we strengthen Singaporeans’ identity even as we keep our society open?
I think these are deep questions. They are important ones for us and we will have to continue to discuss them and encourage Singaporeans to continue to discuss them over the next few years, including in Our Singapore Conversation.
We are all in this together, as Emeritus Senior Minister Goh Chok Tong reminded us. This is an issue not just for the Government or the People’s Action Party, but for all Singaporeans, including all political parties and we have to go beyond the rhetoric to develop actual plans that address our challenges and improve our lives. And I ask for your support in doing this.
If we make the right choices, our future is bright. We are in a strong position, with a high international standing. We have overcome long odds before with creativity and fortitude. In our darkest days after Separation in 1965, Mr Lee Kuan Yew vowed to Singaporeans, 10 years from now, this will be a metropolis. Never fear. And we did it.
Together we built a nation. So never fear. We can build an even better Singapore for all Singaporeans.
