Mr Chairman, fellow speakers, friends, ladies and gentlemen,
I thank the NUSS for this opportunity to address you and for the erudition of the speakers who spoke before me as well as, I am sure, those who follow.
Ours is a society that celebrates wealth. Nothing wrong with that. But when that is all we celebrate, then I submit to you that we are, in fact, not a wealthy people. We are a society starved in spirit, one that is morally bankrupt, and one without a soul.
We are too afraid to speak up when we see injustice, too driven by material wealth to care about what happens to our fellow citizens.
I don't say this lightly. There was an Australian who visited Singapore a few months back and she told me that she was shocked to see an elderly lady clearing dishes and cleaning tables at a hawker centre. And yet for us Singaporeans, we don't bat an eyelid. We take it in our stride and think that that's the natural order of things.
But that's not even the saddest part. Many of such elderly workers are paid pittance. I met a cleaner, Mr Ramli, who was employed by a town council. I struck up a conversation with him and learnt that he was in his mid-70s, worked 6 days a week, starting at seven in the morning and not finishing at about 2 in the afternoon.
His salary? $400 a month.
On the other end of the spectrum we have people who hail themselves as society's talented and that they should be paid top dollar for the skills they possess. I am, of course, talking about Mr de Souza's party bosses, the ministers, who in their infinite wisdom see it fit to pay themselves 500 times the salary Mr Ramli is paid.
The PAP likes to use the term free-market system to describe this horrific imbalance. At the SDP we have another word for it: Exploitation.
We must restore some sanity to our system. We need to inculcate a sense of morality. This is why we advocate the introduction of a minimum wage law to prevent such quite immoral exploitation of people like Mr Ramli. We will be campaigning on this policy in the coming general elections.
Another matter that we campaign on is the lowering of the cost of living in Singapore. We need to reduce the GST, prices of HDB flats and public transport fares all of which conspire to make life unimaginably stressful for working Singaporeans.
Third we will continue to push for a Singaporeans First Policy. I say continue because we campaigned on this issue 10 years ago at the 2001 general elections. We want to see incentives provided for employers to hire Singaporeans first and to retrench them last.
These three policies are among the many that we have proposed in our alternative economic programme. It's entitled It's About You where we lay out a comprehensive, realistic and workable plan to take our economy forward. It's available for purchase.
This programe is, in a nutshell, what I would like you, my friends, to take home with you this evening which is that the SDP has a viable alternative plan for Singapore.
We are not just in opposition to the PAP. We offer Singaporeans a clear and compelling alternative vision, one that provides the people a real choice at the next elections.
