Indranee Rajah
Singapore
“Mr Speaker, I would like to make a clarification in relation to two written answers on childcare leave issued by the Prime Minister's Office on 25 September 2025 and 3 February 2026 in response to Parliamentary Questions filed by Members of Parliament Ms Cassandra Lee and Ms Valerie Lee respectively.”
“Based on Year of Assessment (YA) 2025 data, about 9,500 working mothers claimed a lower amount of Working Mother's Child Relief (WCMR) under the fixed-dollar basis than they would have under the previous percentage-based basis, for children born or adopted on or after 1 January 2024.”
“We regularly receive feedback on enhancing child-related leave provisions, including the Member's suggestion. In recent years, parental leave provisions have been significantly enhanced, such that parents now have 30 weeks of paid leave, including 10 weeks of Shared Parental Leave.”
“The Government does not have data on the number of transactions involving multiple units on a single residential title that have not been subdivided. Such properties are treated as a single property for Additional Buyer's Stamp Duty (ABSD) purposes when it is bought, so no ABSD is foregone.”
“The Government publishes data on personal income tax, which is publicly available on www.data.gov.sg. This includes data on the number of course fees relief claimants and the amount of the relief granted. The Member may refer to the website to access the data for the first three questions.”
“In considering the duration of leave, we will look at the need. In this case, as I have explained, there is a difference between those who give birth physically to a child and those who adopt.”
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“Because during my meet-the-people sessions, I have many men who come to me to ask for PRs or citizenships for their wives, or they have difficulty getting permission to marry in some cases. I fully understand that we need to be very cautious in terms of immigration policy because we have to be quite careful about where our society is going. But if we do want to look after the needs of this group, then I think we do have to examine the criterion for immigration policy afresh and see whether there is a way in which we can strike some balance so that at least for this group, they will have a certain measure of access, shall we say, to spouses. For the single women, it is quite different. Although it has been put as the largest group being graduate women, I think the "true" group is actually career women, not so much graduate women, because we can have non-graduate women who are also career women. What has happened, I think, is over the years, there has been a change in gender expectations of one another which has led to this current situation. For the men, they have not really had to change their own roles. Forty years ago, a man was seen as a breadwinner, a protector and a provider, and today he still sees himself in that light. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. For women, 40 years ago, they may not necessarily have seen themselves as career women. What has happened in the 40 years is that they have actually come a long way. We have education, and because we have a meritocratic system, we have been able to advance in terms of careers. So a lot of changes have happened in women's life over the last 40 years and their perception of themselves has changed, and the perception of the role that men play has changed as well.”
“Because now, most childcare centres would be happy to take them in at two years old, some may be at 18 months, but certainly not many that I know of that would take them in at perhaps six months. In the Scandinavian countries, I think they do take them on from six months onwards. So if we want to increase the birth rate, that is something that has to be looked at. That is the first category of people - the married couples. Then there is the group of singles who do not want to get married. And we have to ask ourselves why this is the case. At the Opening of Parliament, in his speech, the Prime Minister identified the two groups where there seem to be the largest problem. For single men, it was those that have secondary school level education and below. And for single women, the largest proportion of the unmarried women was the graduates. What this suggests is that non-graduate women are marrying either graduate men or non-graduate men. So they have a larger pool to select from. And for the graduate men, it also suggests that they are marrying either graduate women or non-graduate women. So they also have a larger pool to select from. And that is why we have the two ends, which is the non-graduate men with secondary education and below and, of course, at the other end of the spectrum, graduate women. Again, the reasons why these two groups tend to remain single are different. For the men in the lower education group, I think it is more difficult for them to marry someone with a much higher education qualification. And if the women with the same or similar education qualification with them are marrying upwards, so to speak, that leaves them with little choice but to look outwards and perhaps to non-Singapore women. But if they do that, they run smack into the SIR.”
“And if the purpose ultimately at the end of the day is to allow a mother some time to rest, allow her some time with her child, then I think we should have maternity leave for this group of people too. I do not think if we had paid maternity leave for unmarried mothers, that it would suddenly result in a rash of children born outside of wedlock. Because I think the societal pressures are still strong enough that people would prefer to have children within marriage and not outside. So that is the first thing that would help. The second thing is greater childcare facilities. What is the one thing that will make a woman want to have more children? If she has a child and she wants to work, the thing that would really help is her feeling that the child is looked after while she is at work. There are many mothers who choose to give up their jobs. That is not a problem. If they are happy to do that, that is okay. They stay at home and look after their children. But like I said, we have under-estimated the desire of many Singapore women to want to work. If we force them to choose between having a child and maintaining a career, they may very well choose the latter, and that results in a falling birth rate. So something that would help them is better childcare facilities. And knowing Singapore parents, it is not just childcare facilities where they can just drop their children, and that is it. It would have to be childcare facilities that are good in terms of the people who look after the children, the kind of not only teaching but care that they can give their children, and also the age at which they look after the children.”
“This leads to a very inconsistent situation because for Employment Act women, first and second child, it is protected in the sense that a woman cannot get terminated when she is on paid maternity leave. And for all women under the Children Development Co-Savings Act, they get paid maternity leave. But for women executives, for their first and second child, they are not protected, because legislation does not provide that they have maternity leave there, and certainly not for the fourth, fifth, sixth child. So we have got this very incoherent policy. The thing about maternity leave is that it is not supposed to be regulating the number of babies one churns out. The thing about maternity leave is that at the end of nine months of carrying a child - mind you, I have no personal experience, but I have it on good authority that it is very tiring - the woman needs some rest, and she needs some time with the child to bond, and that is the purpose of maternity leave. The trouble is that we use paid maternity leave as a means to regulate the number of babies that a woman has, but that misses the purpose altogether. And I think if our target is to encourage more women professionals to have babies, this is an area that needs to be looked at. The other thing I should mention is that maternity leave should be across the board, not just for first, second, third child, but for any child, and it should also be for unmarried mothers. I know that, as a matter of policy, we do not wish to encourage people to have children outside of marriage. That is true, but mistakes do happen. These things do happen and we cannot ignore it.”
“They are not baby-making machines. It does not work that way. It is not correct to think that financial or fiscal measures will address the problem. So then, what will? I applied some thought to this. I certainly do not have all the solutions, but there are a couple of ideas which I think may help. One is a more coherent approach towards the issue of maternity leave. There are currently two pieces of legislation on maternity leave. First, there is the Employment Act which provides for two months of maternity leave for employees who are covered by the Act. I have no issue with two months of leave. But when you look at the Employment Act, the provision was enacted at a time when it was a stop-at-two policy. So that allows for paid maternity leave for the first and second child, and it provides for protection against termination of employment during a woman's maternity leave for first and second child only. Then somewhere along the line, we decided that having a third child will be good. So we have the Children Development Co-Savings Act. What that Act does is that it allows for paid maternity leave for a third child and it imports the provision of the Employment Act. So it provides for protection against termination of employment for the third child. The thing is that the Employment Act does not cover professionals, executives, managerial or confidential staff. That means women professionals, executives and secretaries are excluded. They do not have the protection of paid maternity leave. I know in the market many employers do follow the Employment Act, but it is not compulsory for them to do so for the non-Employment Act group of women workers.”
“One, they look to see whether or not they are ready, because having babies is a heavy responsibility. And, increasingly, we find amongst young couples that they actually want to spend some time with each other first before they actually have children, and that is why they put off the decision to have children. Of course, if they wait too long, they could run into medical problems, but that is another area altogether which I do not intend to touch on. Secondly, it is whether they can manage their work commitments if they have a child. This is perhaps less so for men who are expected to be the breadwinner. But I think we constantly underestimate the desire of women to actually continue working even if they have children. So we have to take this into account if we want women to have children. The other thing that they take into account also is time and stress. The pressures and demands of work in Singapore are enormous. This pressure has been exacerbated by the use of information technology. Generally speaking, Singaporeans have very little rest. We cannot escape, because there is SMS, there is e-mail and there are all sorts of things. We just cannot switch off, and work follows us everywhere - back home, to the office, in our car, when we are on holiday, work comes with us. And with all this kind of pressure, people are so busy just trying to live their own lives, let alone think about having children and worry about that additional responsibility. These are the three main factors. The other thing about our policy regarding financial incentives to have children is that it has a very off-putting effect to Singaporeans. It is off-putting because many of them feel that when we do this, it is as though I give you money, I pop it in and out comes a baby.”
“But, partly, I think it is also a result of the somewhat incoherent policy that we have had in trying to encourage the birth rates to go up, and I will explain exactly why I say our policy has been incoherent. There are two groups of people we have to look at when we are looking at falling birth rates. One is the group of people who choose not to get married at all. The second group is those who are married but choose not to have children. And we must never confuse the two groups, because their reasons are quite different. I will take the second group first, which is married couples. When dealing with married couples and encouraging them to have children, the problem with our policy is that the measures so far have been essentially financial or fiscal. We have treated what is, by its nature, a social problem as if it is an economic one, and that is why we have not been successful. Because Singapore, as a country, is excellent at economic policy. We are very good at fiscal measures. And over the years, we have restructured, managed, boosted, designed, tweaked, pruned our economy using financial and tax incentives. We have pioneer tax status, we have ERP, we have car ownership, and somewhere along the line, we have come to believe that Singaporeans have an almost pavlovian response to cash stimuli. We put a monetary incentive and Singaporeans will react. That is fine when, ultimately, the end objective is profit. They will react in that way. But when the end objective is a social thing like having children, then money has very little to do with it. And if we want to address the problem, we have to ask ourselves what are the things that people actually think about when they decide whether or not to have children. There are various reasons.”
“And for the older workers with lower levels of education, it will still be extremely difficult for them to find employment. So, as far as this segment of people is concerned, the GST offset is a short-term solution but, ultimately, we have to find a way to make them employable and keep them employable. In that respect, I was encouraged somewhat by hearing the Minister for Manpower talk about the skills upgrading programme and the amount of money that we spend on that. This is something which I think needs to be taken further. The second thing, of course, is to change the employers' mindsets. I am not sure that subsidies alone will do that, but it is a mindset change that employers have to go through. Thirdly, to identify certain types of industries where these older workers would be more suitable to participate in. But, clearly, we have to do something in that regard. That was my second point on GST offset. My third point is on the falling birth rates. Financial policy is wonderful if we are planning to build the economy, we are planning for the future. Of course, if we have falling birth rates, there may not be many Singaporeans left by that time to enjoy the fruits of what we are planning now. I had noticed that in the Budget Statement, no specific things were put in the Budget to address this concern. The Prime Minister, at the opening of Parliament, had very kindly responded to my plea for housing for singles and, in the course of addressing that, he said that the greater problem was the falling birth rates. Our birth rate in 1988 was 1.96. It has been on the downward trend since then. In 1999, it was 1.48; in 2000, it was 1.59; and in 2001, it was an all-time low of 1.42. And we have to ask ourselves why this is the case. Partly, it is a personal decision.”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to participate in this debate. I would like to say, at the outset, that I thought that the presentation of the Budget by the Finance Minister was an extremely good presentation, and that it is a Budget which is deserving of praise. I do not think it is necessary for me to highlight all the good points about it, because so many of my colleagues in this Chamber have done so before me. So, what I intend to do is just to raise three areas in which I have specific comments. The first is, of course, my concern that it does not sufficiently address the needs of the SMEs. For that, I had prepared a segment, but here I want to thank Mr Inderjit Singh for saying some of the things which I had considered and many more things which I had not, and I would like to endorse what he has said and fully support that. The second point is on the GST offset. I understand the need for the offset. Government financial policy is not like Newton's law of gravity. It is not a situation where what goes up must come down. When you are trying to balance a budget, clearly if something comes down, something else must go up, and I think we fully understand the need for it. The only thing though about the GST offset is that it is, in its very nature, a short-term solution. It does not address the problem which is really the employability of older workers, especially those who have a lower level of education. I have heard it said in this House that, ultimately, we hope that with the restructuring and with the financial and fiscal incentives, in due course, the economy will recover and there will be jobs. This is true, but the way we are trying to restructure our economy is to attract the high value-added industries.”
“And as long as we understand that, I think it does not matter that they have not been elected. Mr Steve Chia said that the success of the NMP scheme shows the failure of the PAP MPs. I do not agree with that. I do not think there is any other government in the world who actually takes steps to invite people that are not of their party to come into Parliament and give alternative views. So I think the success of the NMP scheme is an indication of the willingness of this Government and this party to hear alternative views and to try its best to solicit from as many areas as possible ideas that are good for Singapore. So, the crux of the matter really, as I see it, is that we are an overwhelming majority. We do need to hear alternative views and I therefore support the motion.”
“But there is a difference between speaking up and voting, and in some cases the Whip will not be lifted. So there is some value still in having NMPs. Secondly, no matter what we say, in the eyes of the public, we are still such an overwhelming majority in Parliament that we have 82 Members of the same party, I think, for the public, it is important for them to know and understand that there are alternative views, and that these alternative views can be aired in Parliament. Make no mistake, I do not make any apology whatsoever for being part of the majority in Parliament. I think it is in the nature of parliamentary democracy, especially party-based politics, that every party tries its best to get as many of its members as possible into Parliament. So I make no apology for being part of the majority. But if you are a majority, it is necessary to hear from others. If the NMPs agree with Government policies, so much the better, because it means that there are people, other than party affiliated MPs, who agree with Government policies. If the NMPs do not agree with Government policies, so be it. At least, we have heard from another voice. The second argument is that we do not need NMPs because we have such good quality Backbenchers, especially this new batch. Thank you, on behalf of all the new MPs who have come in. We may be good but I do not think we are that good, that we are able to cover the entire spectrum of views. I think there is always room for alternative views from different groups. The third argument is that NMPs are not elected and they therefore do not have the mandate of the electorate. That is true, but they will not be here as representatives of the electorate. They will be here, if they are invited in, as people who provide alternative views.”
“Mr Speaker, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to participate in this debate. As I was listening to Dr Tan Cheng Bock, I was very disturbed to realise that I am actually a major obstacle to the NMP scheme because he said we should not have them because we have lawyers - I am a lawyer. We should not have them because now we have more women - I am a woman. And we should not have them because we have more singles - guilty also. I was very disturbed, particularly, Mr Speaker, because I am going to support the motion. Also because when Dr Tan described the degree of hassle and the heat of battle that one has to go through in elections, I was actually privileged to see him in action, because I was assigned to understudy him during the elections at Ayer Rajah. I must say that is why it gives me a certain degree of grief to be disagreeing with Dr Tan, because, in many respects, I regard him as my si fu. Si fu, te pui chi, but this unworthy student is about to disagree with you. I think that we do need to have NMPs in order to have alternative views in Parliament. And when I say "alternative", I mean alternative here to the PAP. We have 85 Members of Parliament, out of which 82 are PAP and only 3 are Opposition MPs. If we had more Opposition MPs in Parliament, my view might well be different. But because we are such an overwhelming majority, I do think it is necessary for us to have alternative views. Three arguments have been made as to why we should not have NMPs. The first is because, or as the allegation goes, the Whip will be lifted, which will encourage more debate and therefore we do not need NMPs. It is true that every Backbencher who sits here understands the need to speak up in accordance with our conscience.”
“If we want people to be more entrepreneurial in Singapore, there has to be a lighter touch on regulation, the environment must be such that it enables them to feel free to be entrepreneurial and they must not feel stifled. There are various ways in which this can be achieved. But the simple point that I am making is that you cannot just snap your fingers and say that we need more entrepreneurs and have them appear overnight. They would not. They are a result of both nature as well as nurture. With this, I conclude my address to this House. Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the motion.”
“A person who is under 35 years will not be able to purchase a HDB flat; 35 years and above, as I understand it, they can purchase a resale flat. With respect to rental, there are joint rental schemes but you have to be 35 years and above and you have to find somebody else. In Singapore, especially among the younger ones, the expectations and the needs are changing. There is a greater desire for personal space. They are not any less filial. They just need or want to have some personal space and this is simply a function of the fact that the society in which we live is changing. So you cannot say to a young person, "You cannot have a HDB flat and, by the way, we want you to be an entrepreneur, but please live with your mommy and daddy until you are 35 years old." It would not work. We have to seriously consider and think about how the mindsets of the younger ones are changing. I do understand that public housing is funded by public funds and therefore, it should also meet the public policy. But, as the President said in his Address, no policy is so cast in stone that it cannot be changed and this is one policy which is worth looking at because the numbers of singles are not going to go down. The pressures of the society are such that there is a great possibility that they will increase and they should not be denied access to public housing simply because of their marital status. I then come to the changing environment on entrepreneurship. We have made a call for entrepreneurs but you cannot have entrepreneurs overnight. Entrepreneurs are a combination of two things. One, there are some people, by their very nature and character, entrepreneurial by instinct but there are also others who will become entrepreneurial if the circumstances are right.”
“He is brought up to have someone to look after him, always taking care of the domestic chores and he is socially conditioned to expect that this is going to be done for him and chances are that if it is a woman who is doing it for him, then he is going to have that expectation in life. Somewhere out there, there is a little girl and she has been socially conditioned by her parents that she must get an education, she must become an entrepreneur and she must get a good job later on in life. And one day, they are going to meet. Then you know what happens when the irresistible objects meet the immovable force because they have completely different expectations. We are having more women in Singapore who are being more educated. Their aspirations are different from the generation of women before them. But, at the same time, we need to understand that there are pressures on them because they are expected by the husband, their mother, their mother-in-law, to also, in addition to holding down a job, take care of the children. What we must seek to do is to find a new balance and to understand that parenting and family are a shared responsibility and you need to allow them some space in order to be able to achieve all of their aspirations which, in many cases, is to be able to work as well as to have a family. That is something where we need a change in traditional attitudes. I come to the next point where I think we could also do some change and this is in housing policy. By and large, we have done a wonderful job because we have been able to house a very large percentage of the population. But there is a segment which does not have access or full access to public housing and that is of course those who are single.”
“I think across the board and certainly for some of the minority communities, education for the girls may not be considered as important as it is for the boys simply because there is the traditional perception of a woman's role in society which is that, ultimately, one day, she will meet her Prince Charming who will provide for her and be able to look after her from the day of marriage to the day she dies. Unfortunately, it does not quite happen like that. There are many women out there who either get divorced or are victims of domestic violence or, at some stage in their lives, are not able to fend for themselves. I think education for women at all levels is very important. It is the one single defence that a woman has against poverty, against being dependent, against the kind of vicissitudes in life. It is important for women to have the option of financial independence. If you do not want to exercise that option and if you wish to be a homemaker, that is fine. But there may be circumstances when you are not so fortunate, and in that situation, you do need to have that option. Education for women is very important. On traditional attitudes, there are also the stresses and strains in Singapore faced by professional working women. Let me tell you a story that illustrates the point I am trying to make. Somewhere out there in Singapore, there is a little boy and he is brought up, as in all immigrant societies, because we want our children to have the best, either his mother would wash his plate, make his bed or if he is more affluent, the maid will do it.”
“It is difficult for them to do grocery shopping, find the time to do the ironing or, in some cases, just to do cooking at home. But you do have a lot of the aunties in the HDB areas who are able to cook, able to provide ironing services and who can help with purchase of groceries. But the only thing you need to do is to ensure that there is some kind of quality control. What I think the CDCs could do is, perhaps, help bridge this gap between the demand and the supply and hopefully, come up with a sort of training programme for some of these ladies who are in their late 40s or 50s, who are willing to provide domestic services for which they can earn a certain amount. At least if they provide these services, where there is a demand, they can earn and have a feeling of self-respect, and a feeling that they are contributing and able to stand on their own. That is the first change I would advocate - changing mindsets. The second is changing traditional attitudes. In this respect, I have found in my MPS that there are many poor income families who come to me and yet have many children, and you can just see that this is a cycle of poverty because the parents are poor, the children's education is neglected and the children are going to grow up poor and are not going to be able to advance and progress. The key to this is education. It is extremely important. And in this regard, I would also strongly advocate education for the girls.”
“I hear, for example, from the Central CDC that someone in Bukit Merah was offered a job in Marine Parade but did not want to go there because it was too far. In a situation like that, it is very difficult to say to that person "I can give you financial assistance", because that person has the option to earn. So we do need changing mindsets on the part of employees. But having said that, there are some people who are willing to work but cannot find work, and this is because the employers do not change their mindsets. There are many employers out there who do not want to employ people in their 40s and 50s because they feel that they are old, difficult to retrain and simply would not take them. I met a woman in my constituency the other day who had been looking for a job. She had applied to the CDC, she had gone for an interview, but in the end, they did not want her because she was too old. She had been turned down in some other applications that she had made. And what she said to me was, "What is there for someone like me? The only thing that I can do now is to sit here and wait to die." She is in her late 50s. I think that was one of the saddest things that I ever heard. I would do something and try to see what I can do to give that woman a job or to find one. It is a very difficult thing for people in that situation when they are honestly looking, honestly wanting but cannot find a job. In this kind of situation, what we need to do is to try and see whether there is something out there for people who fall within this age group. One thing I can think of is this. There are many young people who do not have the time to do their domestic chores, simply because they have a lot of work.”
“" And we stand at a very similar crossroad today, in slightly different circumstances where we are a bit more affluent. But the challenge is exactly the same. It is how to overcome odds that are put before us. And in order to do that, Singaporeans today need to have a certain mental toughness, a certain resilience and the ability to overcome the odds that face us. We must not back down in the face of difficult circumstances. We must be, really, like bamboos: firmly rooted in our constitutional principles, but able to bend with the wind. We do not break. We bend but we stay firm. And that is what we need in the modern Singaporean mindset. President John F Kennedy once famously said, "Ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country." I do not agree entirely. I think there is no good reason why a Singaporean cannot ask what the PAP Government can do for him. The PAP Government says it can do lots of things, so by all means ask. But, at the same time, the Singaporean must also ask himself or herself "What can I do to help myself and what can I do to help others in Singapore?" It is a two-way street. It is not just the burden of the Government, it is not just the burden of the Ministries. It is a challenge that faces all of us and something which all of us work and pull together. Coming to the subject of employment and how we can change mindsets here, there is a need to change mindsets because, for some employees whose jobs have gone, I think they have to accept that these jobs are gone and will probably never come back. Not in the same form. So what the employee has to do is to be able, ready and willing to try an alternative employment.”
“Mr Speaker, Sir, I support the Motion by the Member for Marine Parade GRC absolutely and completely. The President, in his Address, touched on many aspects of the things that we are facing today, and it is quite clear that we are at a crossroad. We are facing a great deal of change. The only question is, in Singapore, how do we respond to this change? Well, for those of you who studied in the 1970s, there is a Billy Ocean song "When the going gets tough, the tough gets going", and that is what we in Singapore must be like. We must be able to respond to the changes that face us today and to be able to find a new balance to deal with the changed circumstances. There are three areas I would like to raise in respect of how we can change. The first is changing our mindsets. In many ways, we in Singapore are the victims of our own success. We have come from a Third-World country that was poor and had a lot of low-income people, to a country which is affluent in the region. What has happened as a result is that Singaporeans, especially young Singaporeans, have taken success and economic prosperity for granted. That, in turn, results in a certain complacency of thinking and a feeling that there will always be jobs there, there will always be comfortable situations and circumstances. But modern Singapore did not come into existence just like that. If we think about it, what are we? A very small red dot, or so we are told, with no natural resources. The only thing that we have is our people. The making of modern Singapore is very much an act of will. It was an act of will of a small group of people who sat down and said, "These are the overwhelming odds, but we will make it.”