Kenneth Tiong Boon Kiat
Singapore
“(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Thank you, Mr Speaker. Last month, I spoke with Teochew residents in my constituency and they asked me, (In Teochew): "Zuo-ni buay sai toi teochew hee?" (做呢唔使睇潮州戏?") Which means: why can we not watch Teochew movies? Mr Speaker, I have three questions.”
“Thank you, Speaker. Residential rooftop solar generates clean energy and reduces household dependence on imported natural gas and provides a hedge against energy price shocks – benefits that EVs, which add demand to the same gas-dependent grid, do not provide. I note that the Minister of State has mentioned the Green Mark scheme.”
“To the extent that there is a court jurisdiction as was the case in Hangzhou in China, I think that there can be made a point to determine whether something is substantively AI-driven redundancy or not.”
“But more than that: no growth where the gains are captured disproportionately by capital and the burden of adjustment falls on labour. Universal access, so intelligence is not rationed by wealth. Strategic engagement, so we are not price-takers in our own future.”
“I would like to ask two clarifications of the Minister. First, why does he believe that the SkillsFuture course enrolment is a reliable proxy for seriousness? I have some of my residents who have gone for some of these AI courses; they are not very complimentary on the content of these courses.”
“The deepest lesson of the last decade of skills policy, here and abroad, is this: the state cannot substitute for the firm as the principal in a worker's training. We have spent 10 years and considerable public money trying.”
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“We can seek this compact if it is possible, for our small retailers. This is a better deal than the fait accompli they currently await. Speaker, in closing, I do not pretend any of this is inevitable or easy. Foreign economic relations are always challenging, with reduced control and increased unpredictability. But we are in a unique moment, where the threat and leverage of market closure from the biggest powers are foremost on our minds. And we are also reaching the limits of our growth on 750 square kilometres. It would be a shame if the JS-SEZ and the tenor of our future cooperation with Malaysia were predominantly foreign direct investments-led, instead of being in service of tackling the true strategic challenges of the decade. The creation of a true middle class in Southeast Asia. An integration of our country, to be indispensable to the future economic geometries of our neighbours. An imperative to increase the complexity and diversity of our value chains. And the fostering of a stakeholder economy and the search for a better bargain for our pioneering generations. This is the model of integration I believe we should seek with the region – one that best maximises the 15 to 20 years Southeast Asia has before it ages out of its demographic dividend.”
“Singapore should take an equity stake in some of these transit-oriented developments the line creates – Bukit Chagar and the 32 e-ART stations – and negotiate, in the same deal, reserved positions for our small retailers inside those developments, inside the podium of those malls. This has happened before. When Singapore and Malaysia resolved, in 2010, the 20-year impasse over the 1990 Points of Agreement on the railway lands, it was not settled in cash but in co-ownership. Khazanah and Temasek formed a joint company, 60:40, and built Marina One and DUO in the city centre. I am proposing a similar instrument. The footfall these developments capture is largely from Singapore, so the deal has logic on both sides: Johor gains a committed capital partner for a network it is building anyway; we gain a share of where our own spending lands and a place in it for the retailers that spending leaves behind. Thus, we can give every exposed small retailer who rents rather than owns their premises – on the order of 40,000 provision shops, eateries, personal-care operators and so on – a tradeable entitlement: a priority claim on a reserved position in these developments, to take up or assign to another small operator. Or for those who would rather not move, a cash floor drawn now or set against rent – enough to fund a real relocation or a year of rent. It should go to the tenant and not the owner of the unit since the renter carries lost footfall with nothing to fall back on. Retail is a more protected part of Malaysia's economy, so the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and MTI would need to negotiate this within the same bargain. Since Malaysia has already carved foreign firms into Forest City, it is not unprecedented. We speak about the stakeholder economy.”
“It was set up in 2004 for exactly this, enhanced in 2023, relaunched in 2024. As far as I know, it has not been used. So, we should give it a fresh purpose: competitive seed awards into the first recognised Malaysia-Singapore ventures – many small bets, fast answers. Next and third, on the RTS. Integration will arrive as a train in 2027, up to 10,000 passengers an hour each way. Walk our heartland shops today and you can feel the dread coming. The provision shop, the Traditional Chinese Medicine shop, the noodle stall, the barber, the tailor. They read the same reports we do. There is gallows humour in those shops now about the RTS and what it will do to Singapore retail; and a question: "When the RTS opens, what will happen to us?" DBS puts the leakage at $1.5 to $2.1 billion a year – 3% to 4% of retail sales, everyday with food and personal services hit hardest. Eleven million Singaporean trips into Johor in the first seven months of last year alone validate this. The Government's answer so far is to make retail more attractive at home – visual-merchandising programmes, placemaking grants, neighbourhood centre upgrades, vouchers to spend at home. I support these initiatives. But we should be honest with ourselves: for a generation of retailers, it will make little difference. I believe we can offer a different deal. Johor is planning the Elevated Autonomous Rapid Transit (e-ART) system as a dispersal network out of Bukit Chagar, and I speculate that transit-oriented development will be done in the vicinity of their 32 stations. If so, I propose we invest in that plan: as part of the JS-SEZ bargain.”
“So, first, we should allow Research, Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) funds to lease or rent Singapore-based fab lines so that we can put real silicon in front of the region's designers. While those fabs are still under construction, we should supplement investments to expand directable fab capacity where possible, prioritising Singapore businesses but open to Malaysian ones as well. This, I think, is the best way to validate the viability of a chip design ecosystem while giving it the best chance of success – iterative prototyping feedback inside the same regional corridor, especially if one is understandably hesitant for a full-scale US$15 to US$20-billion two-nanometre fab rebuild. Second, the talent pipeline: our universities, the Nanyang Technological University and National University of Singapore, should seek to set up an embedded institute in the Selangor cluster carrying a joint credential, with firms operating on both sides of the zone sponsoring net-new training places whose employment options are exercisable in Johor, Selangor or Singapore, producing new engineers for the region. Third, I believe we should recognise in law a Malaysia-Singapore business entity, defined by a minimum stake on each side – 30-30, 40-40, 50-50 – and give it closer-to-local, pseudo-local treatment in both countries' grants, financing and procurements. When people from both countries own part of the same success, each has reason to grow its own capability rather than to poach it. We should seek to create rails that work for a recognised category of bilateral joint firms across the two countries, and crowd in the private sector. Fourth, in service of crowding in, we should reactivate the Malaysia-Singapore Business Development Fund.”
“But here, using the instrument of the zone may be an impedance mismatch, as in my view Penang's semiconductor cluster is unlikely to relocate beyond the Klang Valley. So, we will need a broader set of instruments. What can we hope for from semiconductors as joint industrial policy? In Singapore, we host. Our IC-design strength is mostly the design centres of foreign firms on our soil. We have not grown a chip-design champion of our own, and we sold our indigenous foundry, Chartered Semiconductor. Meanwhile, Malaysia is building some of what we lack. Its National Semiconductor Strategy puts indigenous IC design – about half of a chip's value-added – at the centre, with RM25 billion behind it and a 60,000-engineer training goal. Selangor's IC-design park, the largest in Southeast Asia, turns out hundreds of designers a year; the Penang design house whose listing I described came out of this push; and Singapore's own state-linked capital is already backing Malaysian design start-ups. We have more reason to complement each other than to compete. Singapore hosts what the region's designers require: wafer fabs to prototype on, advanced packaging, capital and customers. They hold some of what we require: design talent, by the hundreds, at a fraction of our cost. Neither side has a complete owned upstream stack alone. First, I believe MTI should foster a design-to-fab-to-packaging chain that runs through Singapore – access and equity as one instrument: structured prototyping on the fabs hosted here and packaging lines, tied to a stake for our investors, public and private. Since we sold Chartered, we have no fabs of our own.”
“On the Malaysian side, there is the Iskandar Regional Development Authority, Invest Johor, the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) and the Invest Malaysia Facilitation Centre Johor (IMFC-J). On the Singapore side, we have the Economic Development Board (EDB) one-stop centre. We need policy clarity and joint rules of the road over how companies can enter the zone, whether from Malaysia or Singapore, so that the private sector can plan for it. With a joint rulebook, we should measure joint success. In my view that means EDB or the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) should be responsible for total key performance indicators (KPIs) over the JS-SEZ, not just the Singapore-originated investments alone. Of course, a large degree of self-interested thinking is inevitable and even desirable. The instinct in parts of our Government may be to keep the high-value activity here and let the rest go. This is not wrong. But if we want the unfolding of a richer, more complex, more diverse value chain within a 60-kilometre radius than would currently be possible in 10 or 20 years, we will need to take a more collaborative approach. What gets measured gets managed. I believe we should grade ourselves, EDB and the Ministry on the SEZ's success. Next, we face a strategic question. If the zone is meant to be more than just a new method of foreign direct investment, but to foster a vibrant set of Singaporean and Malaysian businesses, in pursuit of broadening the middle class, does it actually build on the current set of bilateral strengths? The foremost candidate for such an industrial deepening is semiconductors.”
“Malaysia's industrial strategy now deliberately targets the design end of semiconductors, setting up the region's first IC-design park in Selangor. The integration is happening anyway – by drift. Two hundred and forty-five million checkpoint crossings last year, three-quarters of them by land. New instruments in front of us: the Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone (JS-SEZ), and the Johor Bahru-Singapore Rapid Transit System Link (RTS Link). If we get them right, we can prove a model of structural bilateral integration that we can extend. I will discuss three points. First, on the JS-SEZ. This economic zone lets two governments run inside the bounded space and experiment. The zone has been a blank slate many have piled their hopes onto. Some ideas put to me were high-tech food-growing zones, an ASEAN Friendship Hospital in Johor, an integrated medical hub on the Shenzhen-Hong Kong model. But hopes need us to bring the zone into greater focus. First, where, exactly, is the zone? Nine flagship areas have been announced, described at the level of districts; I have not seen a consolidated boundary map. If one exists, we should publish it. Second, what does a Singapore company receive inside the JS-SEZ, over and above the new federal baseline? Malaysia's New Incentive Framework took effect for manufacturing on 1 March. If the federal incentives are as good as the zone's, there is nothing special about the zone. Third, I believe we should soon sort out, with our Malaysian counterparts, one standard operating procedure to enter the zone and one rulebook. Right now, there are multiple agencies and points of contact.”
“Because a hub, unlike an owner, can be bypassed. Indonesia or Vietnam, at even half their potential, has the demographic weight to become the heart of Southeast Asia. And we have to outrun potential resurgent nationalisms that could close doors around us. A Singapore that is merely a well-run waypoint – hosting, brokering, never owning anything together with its neighbours – will find that the region learns, in time, to route around it. So, we should help build a Southeast Asian market of genuine middle-class consumers – we do not have one at scale today – because a market we help build is far less likely to be closed to us. And we need Singaporeans and Singaporean firms to own a real piece of the value chains that serve it. To be essential to the region and to share in what the region earns. We must build a deeper, more structural integration with Southeast Asia. Part of what stops us is a posture. In my maiden speech, I asked why Singapore and Malaysia could not build an Airbus together – one enterprise, owned on both sides, the way France and Germany anchored theirs. I know the truer hesitations. It is not necessarily that our neighbours cannot execute. Penang's equipment firms and Selangor's chip designers put that to rest. The real reasons are older: memories of past issues, from water to the railway lands; a reflex to keep control of anything that matters; and a fear of bets stranded across a border if politics turn. But if one is sceptical that the gradient between Singapore and our neighbours will last – and I am – then joint industrial policy is what a country should build while the gradient still favours it. I believe the strongest path to owning things together runs through our closest neighbour, Malaysia.”
“Speaker, Southeast Asia is about 680 million people and a US$4 trillion economy. And it is young where we are old – median age of Malaysia and Indonesia around 31; Vietnam, 34; the Philippines, 27; against our own citizens' median of nearly 44. But youth is a window, not a promise. A demographic window buys a country growth, more workers, not wealth. Since 1990, fewer than one in three of the world's middle-income economies has made it to high income. The rest are stuck. The region has perhaps 15 to 20 years to get rich before it grows old. Singapore did climb that ladder by hosting, taking in large amounts of foreign investment to make goods and services for foreign markets. But it is now hitting a limit. The markets everyone leaned on are being weaponised. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) still trades with itself only about a fifth as much as it trades with the world – 21%, against the European Union's 60%. And about three-quarters of our exports depend on external demand, just as the great powers begin wielding access to their markets as instruments of coercion. A region that produces mainly for markets it does not control can be squeezed at will. And the ground under our own strategy is shifting too. Our hub model carries an assumption: that the gradient between Singapore and its neighbours in competence, in institutions, in trust is permanent. It is not. Penang firms today do nano-level vision inspection that the world's chipmakers buy. A Penang chip designer, SkyeChip, listed this year 95 times oversubscribed, the largest Malaysian initial public offering in 16 years. Vietnam is climbing the ladder. For the region, this is great news. For a Singapore whose business model is to be the main place in the region where things work, it is a deadline.”
“But to balk at that cost means having almost no Singaporean sailors manning Singapore's ports. Ultimately, we need to decide if we are going to create a system to perpetuate Singaporeans in our own maritime industry and ports, to rebuild our own leverage over shipping capacity – whether we are a country that means to own a ship or one content to crew someone else's. Or if we want to be a country that does not have the ships to train our own people in ship-faring and that will, in the next supply shock, stand as a price taker in its own port. Speaker, in conclusion. France was our counterparty and is a mirror. It treats the company CMA CGM that bought our line NOL as a sovereignty asset and it is enlarging its national fleet, while we dismantled ours and called the matter settled. This is not settled. I have three questions for this Government. One, by the same logic that makes SIA the anchor in the air, why does a national carrier stops mattering at the water's edge? Two, if we mean to grow our own seafarers, how do we make a master mariner with no fleet to make him or her on? And who then fills a marine command our own port depends on? And three, when shipping space is next rationed, what capacity can Singapore actually direct? That the sale of NOL was a very poor decision, CMA CGM's ability to turn a net profit less than one year after acquisition clearly proves. My belief is that we must draw a line on Temasek's very poor decision to sell NOL in 2016, move on to rebuild our shipping capacity and make back the time we have lost. Thank you.”
“PIL's moat is a niche – Africa and the global South. It is not fully the academy that we need because our port is an East-West machine – Asia, Europe and transpacific arteries, the largest ships afloat and transshipment at scale that only those lanes generate. So, the real questions are how much of the East-West capability that we gave up with NOL we now have to rebuild and how far up the ladder we are willing to climb to do it. Hard choices face this country again. At the floor, a national mandate over PIL as it stands, a training quota, reserved crisis capacity, a Singaporean crew requirement on the ships that fly our flag for a cost of about tens of millions a year. The next rung, back PIL to climb into the East-West trades. At first, through slot charters and vessel sharing, rebuilding the operational skills our hub actually runs on. At the top, owning mainline tonnage outright, the capital-heavy commitment a serious rebuild demands. Each rung costs more and buys more sovereignty. The judgement is how far to climb. But standing still is also a choice and the one that ends in the port unable to crew its own senior ranks. We should study all proven models. Korea's Korea Ocean Business Corporation is a statutory body charged by law with maintaining an essential national shipping system, financing the fleet and guaranteeing tonnage. We, too, should also consider a binding obligation to train our Singaporean cadets. And to be clear about the costs, scale in the mainline trades is brutal and capital hungry, which is why it needs to be Government-backed, phased and built with patience. Korea rebuilt HMM over five years and several billion dollars. If we were to do it, it would cost us billions, too.”
“While Singapore is still the world's largest transshipment hub, the Maersk Hapag-Lloyd Gemini Network still chose Tanjung Pelepas over Singapore as its most important hub in 2025. The carrier picks its port, but the port cannot pick its carriers. When space runs short, it is the carrier that rations it, not the port. The sale of NOL and the stripping before it, were Temasek's calls. The same Temasek that in 2020 put $15 billion dollars into rescuing SIA. One set of hands kept one national carrier and sold the other. It was a big failure of strategic judgement, and the Government should not have allowed Temasek to sell off NOL. So, let us rebuild. I am asking the Government to treat sovereign shipping as what it is – a strategic capability to be rebuilt deliberately. If we wanted to rebuild a national carrier, we would not start from zero. Through Heliconia, Temasek holds the majority of PIL, our largest homegrown carrier, which has 100-odd ships, profitable and strongest where the giants are thin – in Africa and the Global South. But Heliconia currently holds it the way it holds any company, as an investment for a return. It calls itself, in its own words, an SME-enabler. PIL is run as a profit-maximising line by a professional chief executive under no national duty of any kind, no obligation to reserve capacity for Singapore in a crisis, no Singaporean crew requirement even on the ships that fly our flag, no training quota and the one voluntary scheme it has is winding down – and no mandatory routes that it must run. What it is missing is a purpose. PIL could be given a national mandate, held both for a return and also to train our officers, to hold capacity that can be directed when a crisis comes and backed to grow over time.”
“In the long run, the seafaring core of our own port, our harbour pilots and the marine command above them, cannot be kept Singaporean. It must be staffed, like our own flag already is, by other nations' officers. Second is directable capacity – the difference between sovereignty and dependence in a crisis. Container space is rationed whenever effective capacity is squeezed faster than it can be replaced. The demand surged at the pandemic, when rates rose seven-fold, or risk-driven diversions, like the Red Sea, where rerouting every ship around Africa swallowed a-tenth of the world's capacity. In such a crunch, the market does not serve all comers equally. The carriers still sailing gave priority to exporters under their own flag. Korea ordered HMM to ringfence space for Korean firms. A nation relying on foreign lines is served last, at whatever price is named. A country that owns no capacity in a capacity crunch is a beggar for allocation and will be served with all others. I put this to the Government in April. Its answer was that our supply lines are secured by diversification, our standing as a trusted hub and a wide network of global shipping lines. I respectfully disagree and I think it conflates the role of the port and the carrier. It turns on the ambiguity in the word "node". When we call ourselves a node, we mean "leverage" – some power to bend the flow of trade our way. But a hub port only gives you half of that. It gives you centrality – the power to attract. But it does not give you leverage – the power to make ships that call, serve us first when it counts or to train our merchant navy. After all, a neutral hub holds its traffic only by staying competitive. Even winning that competition, if it wins, is not the same as holding leverage.”
“That sea time is the entry ticket for the shore roles that keep the port's waters safe. The harbour pilot who boards and berths the largest ships afloat, and the surveyors who inspect them must, by the rules, hold those certificates. And above them sits the Port Master, the statutory officer who can order any vessel in our waters to move, stop or stay. Singapore's Port Masters have been a line of master mariners – Captain M Segar, who came up as a cadet and a harbour pilot, then port master, then rose to assistant chief executive of MPA; and Captain Lee Cheng Wee, the harbour pilot in the early 1970s whom the Government held up in this year's Budget debate as an example for the next generation. No one is being made a master mariner by a scholarship. Marine command is the one part of the port that still requires a master's ticket – and we are failing. Fewer than one in 12 officers on our own flag is Singaporean. Our cadets must seek their sea time on foreign ships and may face a lack of access. Britain watched its officer corps age and shrink as its fleet flagged out and then had to pay shipowners, through the tax code, to train cadets again. Australia, down from 100 trading ships to about a dozen, is now legislating a strategic fleet to rebuild the skills they had lost. Ships can be bought or chartered within a year, but a generation of sea-experienced Singaporeans takes a generation to grow. When Temasek sold NOL, it crystallised a financial gain – a one-time figure on a balance sheet – and sold the entire training ground which the whole ladder stands on. Cut the feet away at the foot of the ladder and a decade or more on, the top of it empties. This is what we are seeing. We have been in search of lost time ever since.”
“"For Changi to work well and succeed", it told this House, "You must first have an anchor national carrier – SIA". When SIA neared collapse, Temasek put in up to $15 billion dollars to keep it alive. SIA and NOL were both Temasek operators. We treat the airline, SIA, as strategic and rescue it. But we treat the sea carrier, NOL, as a commodity and sell it. Temasek has since bought into a different carrier – Pacific International Lines (PIL) – but we hold it for a return, not for a purpose. So, Singapore stands as a major maritime hub with no national line of its own. It sold NOL on the argument that container shipping is fungible. The box does not care whose ship it rides in. It does not defend SIA on those grounds at all. It keeps the airline because a national carrier is a strategic asset in its own right: a capability the country controls, the people it trains and the option to direct it in a crisis. The Government has not stopped believing a national carrier is strategic – it has only stopped believing it for the sea. The case for selling NOL rested on a category error: that a shipping line is just freight and freight is fungible. It is not. A national line is two strategic capabilities bound together. First, it is the academy that makes our maritime people. It is a ladder that runs from the deck of the ship to the command of a port, and every rung is built on the one below. It begins at sea. A cadet stands his watches and qualifies as an officer of the watch, then as shift mate and, a decade or more on, as master. The engine room climbs the same way to the chief engineer. None of this can be done in a classroom or bought with a grant because each certificate is a legal product of documented sea time on a working ship.”
“Singapore is a maritime nation in the fullest sense – the world's busiest container transhipment port, the world's largest bunkering hub, and by one global ranking, the leading maritime city on the planet. The sea is not one sector among many for us; it is the foundation we were built on. We are an island that imports more than nine in 10 of our calories across the water and we sit astride the Straits of Malacca, through which roughly a quarter of all seaborne trade and nearly half the world's seaborne crude oil moves. A nation this dependent on the sea cannot safely treat the capability to move on it as a commodity to be rented. Yet, over two decades, we quietly gave away one of its core sovereign capabilities – a shipping line of our own. NOL, the national carrier, was sold to France's CMA CGM in 2016, the last act in a long dismantling: the tanker fleet to Malaysia in 2003, the headquarters in 2012, the logistics arm in 2015 and then, the line itself. In so doing, we exited an entire strategic domain. We did this right as every serious maritime nation moved the other way. France is putting 10 of the world's largest ships under its flag as a "strategic fleet" – requisitionable in a crisis, crewed by its own officers – using CMA CGM, the very company that bought our line. Korea, after Hanjin collapsed the same year we sold NOL, poured state billions into rebuilding Hyundai Merchant Marine (HMM) into a top 10 carrier through a dedicated sovereign vehicle. China built COSCO into an arm of national power. Even Australia, down to a dozen trading ships, is legislating a national strategic fleet. These are not nostalgists. They are states that understand shipping is a strategic capability, not a commodity service to be rented. And our own Government knows this – in the air!”
“(In Mandarin): [Please refer to Vernacular Speech.] Thank you, Mr Speaker. Last month, I spoke with Teochew residents in my constituency and they asked me, (In Teochew): "Zuo-ni buay sai toi teochew hee?" (做呢唔使睇潮州戏?") Which means: why can we not watch Teochew movies? Mr Speaker, I have three questions. First, a simple one: which version did the Ministers themselves watch? The Mandarin version or the Teochew version? Second, I would like to ask the Minister to clarify the objective behind this rule. Is the Government's goal to promote Mandarin, or to restrict dialects? These are two different things. If the goal is simply to promote Mandarin, will the Government review all measures that exist purely to restrict dialects, including those relating to film and broadcasting, and remove restrictions that are no longer necessary? Third, dialect courses run by clan associations are currently open only to members of the respective dialect group. Will the Government consider expanding eligibility to a wider audience?”
“Thank you, Speaker. Residential rooftop solar generates clean energy and reduces household dependence on imported natural gas and provides a hedge against energy price shocks – benefits that EVs, which add demand to the same gas-dependent grid, do not provide. I note that the Minister of State has mentioned the Green Mark scheme. Despite the Green Mark scheme, 92% of eligible rooftops are still without solar panels. So, my first supplementary question is, why does she believe that that is currently the case? And my second supplementary question is, would the Ministry consider providing more of the same type of upfront support available for EV purchases to accelerate residential solar adoption?”
“To the extent that there is a court jurisdiction as was the case in Hangzhou in China, I think that there can be made a point to determine whether something is substantively AI-driven redundancy or not. I think in practice, it will probably depend on the composition of tasks that are automated as well as things that perhaps when the employer pays a lower effective remuneration for. But that is why it is very important for there to be an adjudicative process, as I have pointed out in my speech, for workers to be able to better challenge some of these concerns. Of course, I acknowledge that some of these things may introduce friction for businesses. I certainly do not deny there is a trade-off. But if we do believe that there is this potential for AI to foster very rapid employment changes, then certainly, I think we should err on the side of caution.”
“I would like to ask two clarifications of the Minister. First, why does he believe that the SkillsFuture course enrolment is a reliable proxy for seriousness? I have some of my residents who have gone for some of these AI courses; they are not very complimentary on the content of these courses. So, there is a perception that some of the quality of these courses is not as good as it could be. And second, does the Minister not think that universal supply of frontier agentic tools will create its own demand eventually?”
“But more than that: no growth where the gains are captured disproportionately by capital and the burden of adjustment falls on labour. Universal access, so intelligence is not rationed by wealth. Strategic engagement, so we are not price-takers in our own future. And a retrenchment framework where the company that decides to automate bears the cost of that decision before the worker does. I do not think the awe and dread goes away. But in a country that builds for its workers, there is hope for a brighter future. Thank you.”
“I, of course, welcome its intent. But it creates no new powers, no new obligations on employers and no new rights for displaced workers. How does the Government intend for this Council to work? Too often, what workers experience is not a frank conversation about AI-driven restructuring but a Performance Improvement Plan, a process that, in many cases, is a bit of "wayang", designed to paper over a predetermined outcome. I foresee that such potential misleading reasons may be given and workers must have the power to be able to challenge this. I propose three directions. First, a 90-day mandatory transition notice before AI-driven role elimination. Second, a re-deployment-first obligation, retraining or reassignment before AI-driven termination. These provisions will slow the velocity of AI disruption; and velocity is what determines whether adjustment is possible. Third, for workers to be able to substantively challenge the reasons for their termination if they feel they are misleading, so that these AI restructuring protections will be real. Sir, in closing. Finland gave people unconditional cash as income. They were happier, less stressed – and the great majority still walked into the employment office and asked for work. The American pollster David Shor polled Americans this year: three to one, across every political persuasion, they chose job creation over direct transfers. People, when offered the choice between a universal basic income and employment, invariably choose employment. Not because they are irrational, but because a job is where you are needed, and being needed is not something a universal basic income can replace. So, no jobless growth – yes.”
“A company that chooses to automate cannot unilaterally shift the full cost of that decision onto the worker. The company had not shown the contract was impossible to perform and the reassignment at 40% less pay was not a reasonable alternative. The court added that companies should prioritise retraining workers and helping them transition to higher-level roles. The principle, that a deliberate business decision should not externalise its full cost onto the worker, deserves serious consideration in Singapore. If a Singaporean Zhou were retrenched tomorrow under our existing framework, would he win? Our existing Tripartite Advisory on Managing Excess Manpower and Responsible Retrenchment (TAMEM) is advisory, not statutory. An employer can lawfully automate a role and terminate the worker without first attempting to redeploy or reskill them. And the public purse, through SkillsFuture and Workforce Singapore, would pick up the cost of that worker's transition. There is no AI-specific notice period. There is no statutory redeployment-first obligation. There is no individual cause of action for the worker to challenge the reason for his or her termination. The data suggests we are entering the zone where this matters. MOM's own fourth quarter of 2025 Labour Market Report reported about 14,490 retrenchments in 2025, up from about 13,000 the year before. PMET retrenchment incidence reached 10.1 per 1,000 resident employees, above the pre-recessionary norm of 8.0 set during 2015 to 2019. Retrenchments were concentrated in Financial Services, Information and Communications, and Professional Services – the most AI-exposed sectors. Information and Communications employment declined outright in 2025. The Government announced the Tripartite Jobs Council on 30 April.”
“We need targeted strategy and engagement with frontier AI companies specifically. Fourth, get Singaporeans inside these labs. Once you are in the frontier AI ecosystem, it becomes much easier to circulate within that group of companies. I would welcome the Government doing some fact-finding – engaging our local and overseas Singaporeans already in these companies and roles, understanding how they or their colleagues got hired and disseminating that to our students and technical researchers. Right now, anecdotally, half a million to million-US-dollar salaries, excluding equity, in the US for AI researchers are fairly common. So, it is clearly in our interest to figure out how to get more Singaporeans into this tight labour market. What I would really like to see is a Skills Framework for frontier AI lab researcher. Sir, my last point is about the transition. Let me start with a person. In Hangzhou, a quality assurance supervisor named Zhou joined a tech company in late 2022 at RMB25,000 a month, about S$4,800, reviewing AI model outputs for accuracy and safety. In 2025, his employer decided an AI model could do his job. They offered him a reassignment at roughly 40% less pay. He refused. They terminated him. Zhou went to arbitration and won. The company sued and lost. The company appealed and lost again, at the Hangzhou Intermediate People's Court. The ruling was published on 28 April this year, three days before International Workers' Day. The court's reasoning is worth our attention. The company argued that AI had made Zhou's role obsolete – a "major change in objective circumstances", justifying dismissal under China's Labor Contract Law. The court disagreed. AI adoption, it held, is a deliberate business strategy, not an unforeseeable event.”
“This means accepting that frontier AI access may be a permanently higher line item in the national expenditure and procuring it systematically, because the alternative – citizens priced out of the tools that define productivity – is worse. Second, we trade based on what we have. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has described the AI stack as a five-layer cake: energy, chips, infrastructure, models and applications. In my view, we do not have energy at scale. We do not have frontier model capability. At the application layer, there is little moat outside of the knowledge agglomerations we can build for ourselves. We would be competing with some of the highest cost bases in the world. But Singapore Inc builds good data centres. And we are among the world's leaders in water reuse and integrated water management, which is a binding constraint on data centre expansion across water-scarce regions in Southeast Asia. If we position ourselves as the infrastructure partner of choice for this region, that is real leverage – something we can bring to the table in exchange for access, for pricing and for presence. So, when a company like Anthropic or OpenAI approaches us, we should be their preferred regional bilateral partner in rolling out and scaling their data centre build-up regionally, as well as all the infrastructure needed to make these data centres work. Third, we need to attract real technological presence. We should seek frontier AI companies establishing development offices here – not predominantly sales offices, which was the experience with the FAANG companies in the 2010s. And I would prefer that we be quality-conscious. Most companies that call themselves "AI companies" are not frontier AI companies.”
“Sir, I learnt recently that even AI engineers at the top two or three frontier AI labs are worried about falling behind because they cannot use Claude Code. And having just returned from China, I learned first-hand that one cannot use Claude Code there at all. Anthropic blocks API calls from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau entirely. If even engineers building frontier AI are desperate for access to one another's tools and if entire countries can be locked out, then access is not a convenience. It is a strategic capability. And the question for our country is whether we will secure it or whether we will be price-takers forever. There are, perhaps, three to five companies in the world whose decisions on pricing, access and deployment will shape every economy's AI trajectory. When Anthropic or OpenAI decides what to charge for agent-tier access or whom to serve, that decision shapes Singapore's productivity frontier as directly as any trade agreement. We should therefore treat this class of companies – frontier AI firms that have crossed a threshold of systemic importance – with the same strategic seriousness that we bring to bilateral relations with countries. Not because they are sovereign, they lack the durability and legitimacy of states and remain subject to home-state law, but because their decisions carry sovereign-grade consequences for our economy and we should engage them accordingly. What does that mean in practice? Four things. First, negotiate access at the sovereign level. In the possible future where frontier AI agent costs go up, not down, Singapore should seek bulk licensing agreements for agent-tier access the same way we negotiate energy supply.”
“The Government has partially adopted the 2024 suggestions of my colleague Gerald Giam to provide universal premium AI model access. The SkillsFuture Premium AI Access Scheme, six months of free tools for Singaporeans who enrol in selected courses, is a step in the right direction. Likewise, NTUC's subsidies covering 21 AI tools. These are good starts, but they are unnecessarily gated behind course enrolment and union membership. And critically, they likely will not cover AI agents – the tier where the real productivity gap will open. Why does this matter? AI agents are expensive to run. We may hope agent access follows the cost curve of Internet bandwidth or compute, but there is no necessary reason it should. It is an empirical question. Anthropic's CEO said in January that 80% of its revenue comes from enterprise customers, driven by API calls on a pay-per-token model. If agents remain enterprise-grade by default, then individual citizens – jobseekers, freelancers, retirees – are locked out of the tier where the real productivity gains are being made. Three possible directions. One, negotiate sovereign access – a bulk licensing agreement with frontier AI providers for volume-discounted AI agent access for all citizens. Two, if agent access is employer-provisioned in the market, make it universally so, require companies above a certain size to provide agent-grade AI to all employees, the same way we require CPF. Three, if frontier agents remain too costly, identify a minimal, viable agentic tier and fund that universally. Will the Government make premium AI access a universal entitlement, rather than gate it behind course completion or union membership?”
“There is a spirit of play in working with these tools that every Singaporean deserves to experience. It is an exhausting world it heralds – software engineers pulling 80-hour weeks while running multiple AI agents overnight so that someone, human or machine, is always on the clock. Jobseekers, especially recent graduates in white-collar work, applying to hundreds of jobs without a single interview. Job portals, like LinkedIn, have become memory holds for resumes, where the lived experience is like shooting an application into the void. The pace of change humbles us all. I am suspicious of any assertion that starts with "AI will never", because the shelf life of those predictions tend to be measured in months. What concerns me is not the destination, but who gets left behind on the way there and whether we are building the institutions to ensure no one does. I have three propositions. First, that access to premium AI, especially AI agents, must be universal, not gated by course enrolment or union membership. Second, that we must treat the handful of companies building frontier AI with the same strategic seriousness we bring to bilateral relations with countries, because their decisions on pricing, access and deployment now shape our productivity frontier as directly as any trade agreement. Third, that we must buy time for workers by upgrading our retrenchment framework for AI-speed displacement. Sir, I believe access to premium AI, especially AI agents, is a right, not a privilege. Intelligence, in the sense of uplift, should not stratify according to wealth. I spend a couple of hundred dollars a month on these tools because they are game changing. But for those who cannot afford to, it bakes in inequality from the start. Does it simply disqualify them from the off?”
“Deputy Speaker, I declare my interest as a director of a company that makes AI-enabled applications and consults on the same. In the three and a half years since ChatGPT's release, I have had two moments of awe and dread. The first was in November 2022. GPT-3.5 could iterate on software features, generate ideas, write code. Five years ago, it was received wisdom that everyone should learn to code. Today, coding ability is cheap and abundant. Computer science graduates, even from top schools, like Stanford, are finding it difficult to find jobs. GPT-2 was a toy that generated amusing limericks. Three years later, its successors have made an entire profession's scarcity disappear. We used to talk about prompt engineering in 2023 and 2024. That talk has died down too. The second was in November 2025, when Anthropic released Claude Code, a reliable AI agent paired with a frontier model. I could leave the computer running overnight and there would be work done at the end. It is a different experience from chatting with a chatbot. The chatbot engages you in back and forth, refining your ideas, indulging your whims, red teaming your speeches. The agent, unless it needs clarifications, just goes and does things. It may be off by a bit, but you give your input and it takes another five or 50 minutes before it comes back with the problem solved. A very smart junior colleague. Now we have AI agents, Claude Code, Codex tools, that have made me, if I may borrow Internet lingo, Claude-pilled. I use Claude Code for my own work. I can give it the most wishy-washy specifications, and it returns the most wonderful data workflow or website layout. For someone who could never build a pretty website to save his life, it is liberating.”
“Thank you, Speaker. Three supplementary questions. First, many parents I have spoken to are worried about cognitive offloading – the phenomenon where children offload their thinking to AI. Metacognition, the ability to notice when you are wrong, is built through struggle and not through receiving correct answers. And the evidence is that students who encounter difficulty before resolving it, develop stronger self-correction capacity. So, how does MOE intend for our learners to encounter productive struggle to build these metacognitive skills? Second, Sweden's Karolinska Institute advised the Swedish government, and I quote, "There is clear scientific evidence that digital tools impair rather than enhance student learning", end quote. That conclusion drew on multiple peer-reviewed studies covering reading comprehension, distraction, executive function development and equity outcomes. And the Swedish government acted on this, reversing its digitalisation strategy in 2023 and investing over €200 million to reintroduce physical textbooks and removing mandatory digital tools for young children. I am sure the Minister is aware of this, so what are his points of disagreement with the Swedish example? And number three, some parents have also asked if they will have the option of opting out their children from specific aspects of AI tool usage in classrooms.”
“Thank you, Speaker, and I thank the Minister. First of all, the Minister says that MyCareersFuture has 60,000 postings. It aspires to 100,000. There is a widespread perception that job postings on MyCareersFuture is a compliance exercise rather than reflects genuine hiring channels. So, how would the Minister ensure that more of these MyCareersFuture's postings are genuine vacancies? Second question, the Minister has not addressed my point on sectoral bargaining. Let me put the question more directly. The economic skill formation literature is quite clear that firms tend to under-invest in deep skills training when they face poaching risks – they lose the worker, the day after they have spent a lot of time training, putting them through expensive training. Wage compression through sectoral bargaining is the established solution. NTUC currently bargains at the enterprise level. So, is it the Government's position that NTUC should not bargain at the sectoral level or that sectoral bargaining is unnecessary? Thank you.”
“The deepest lesson of the last decade of skills policy, here and abroad, is this: the state cannot substitute for the firm as the principal in a worker's training. We have spent 10 years and considerable public money trying. The next 10 years should be spent designing the system in which sectors and firms – and the workers themselves, through their unions – are forced to care about the answer. Sectoral co-governance with named accountability. Sectoral bargaining where tacit knowledge is deep. Engineered knowledge diffusion where it is not. And an order-of-magnitude expansion of how we send Singaporeans to where cutting-edge knowledge actually lives. Capability is tacit knowledge. It deepens inside sectors and firms, which is why we need sectoral architecture that holds workers there long enough for it to form. And it circulates through an industrial commons – which is why we need engineers, instructors, and Singaporeans abroad moving through that commons, carrying knowledge with them. The state is an orchestrator, it builds the architecture in which both happen. Thank you.”
“Teacher rotation through industry should also try to be a statutory requirement. Polytechnic and ITE instructors can currently take industry attachments as a form of voluntary continuing professional development, but the mechanism is discretionary, not structural. I propose a pilot: 12 months in industry for every 60 months of teaching. This is the first task: making the knowledge already inside Singapore circulate. The second task is to go to where the knowledge is being created. The Overseas Markets Immersion Programme (OMIP), launched in 2024, is the right vehicle in form. In substance, it is far too small. The initial target was 250 individuals over two years; about 120 had been supported by early 2026. Salary support of up to 70% for nine months, capped at $5,000 a month, with a minimum salary threshold of $4,000 a month effectively restricts it to PMETs. If I had to name one programme that could be reframed tomorrow at low cost and high return, it is OMIP. Three changes. First, expand it by an order of magnitude – from a 250-person pilot to a 5,000-person annual cohort within five years. Second, remove the minimum salary threshold for technical and operational roles in priority sectors, so ITE-trained engineers and polytechnic graduates can be deployed to cutting-edge manufacturing clusters in China, Japan and Europe – not only PMETs in regional roles. Third, reframe the strategic purpose. OMIP is currently designed as outbound business development support – helping Singapore companies expand into new markets. It should also be inbound knowledge acquisition – sending Singaporeans to where manufacturing knowledge is being created, to bring it back. The architecture is broad enough to hold both, if we choose to use it that way. Sir, in closing.”
“But the curriculum stops there, with no intermediate or advanced progression. If we are serious about life-long learning, MakeIT needs a vertical curriculum – Stage 2 and Stage 3 modules, project-based, progressing from operating the machines to designing with them and using them more intensely – not just a wider menu of first lessons. Our industrial clusters are well-designed. But co-location is necessary, not sufficient. Knowledge does not diffuse simply because firms share a postcode. It diffuses through people. Tacit production knowledge – the working understanding of why a process line behaves the way it does, what failure modes to watch for, which suppliers to trust – does not transfer through papers or seminars. It transfers through people, on the floor, over months. Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is the clearest example: between 1973 and 2008, 13,000 ITRI staff moved into Taiwanese industry, many of them seeding what became TSMC, UMC and the wider Hsinchu semiconductor cluster. Engineer circulation, not patents or licensing, was the primary transmission mechanism. To speed up the rate of knowledge diffusion, I also propose an Industrial Commons Rotation: a statutory obligation on large firms – Government-linked corporations and major anchor MNCs – to second mid-senior technical staff into SMEs within the same sectoral cluster for six- to 18-month rotations, with reciprocal SME-to-large-firm flows so the small firms' problem-solving feeds back into the larger firms' processes. We can do this as a pilot in the tacit-knowledge sectors I named earlier – semiconductor backend, aerospace MRO, petrochemicals, marine and offshore. If we want an industrial commons, we must make the people circulate.”
“The model is Munro and Associates in Michigan, which has spent close to four decades disassembling competitor vehicles down to the last fastener and producing the detailed cost, design and process reports that the global automotive industry treats as authoritative. Japan's National Institutes of Technology teach 15-year-olds to disassemble electromechanical systems in formal "Reverse Engineering" courses. The US military reverse-engineered the Iranian Shahed drone and fielded its own version in Venezuela at $35,000 per unit, versus $1.3 million for a Tomahawk cruise missile. Understanding how things are built is not a hobby. It is a strategic capability. There is no reason it cannot exist here as public infrastructure. I propose we establish physical teardown facilities at our ITEs and polytechnics – not as one-off workshops, but as a vertical curriculum progressing from guided disassembly to design analysis to cost modelling. We should reverse-engineer frontier hardware – electric vehicles, batteries, solar, drones. Structured public reports should feed the industrial commons. Such facilities could also be housed at A*STAR's centres, which I understand already runs model factories and joint industry labs. Partnered with ITEs and polytechnics, with structured access for SMEs, they would form a strong starting point. For ordinary citizens, the National Library Board's MakeIT at Libraries – its free maker-space programme run with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), offering 3D printing, digital cutting, robotics and coding classes in selected regional libraries – teaches the basics well. I have observed 3D printing and robotics classes there, and the starter sessions are well-designed.”
“Sectoral bargaining fits sectors with deep tacit knowledge – semiconductor backend, aerospace MRO, petrochemicals, marine and offshore – but perhaps not faster-moving industries like AI. Second, co-governance with consequences. Named industry entities and individuals should have sign-off and veto on SkillsFuture curricula, not as advisors, but as accountable parties whose reputations move with employment outcomes. We must also lower the accreditation barriers that keep the most credible practitioners out. The Advanced Certificate in Learning and Performance requires 71 hours of coursework, screening out the domain experts we need and screening in those with time to spare. For faster-moving industries – AI, software, frontier hardware – the fixes above may not work. Skills change too fast; firms are too few and too mobile. What works in these sectors is something different: knowledge spreading through people working near each other. That is how Shenzhen and Silicon Valley were built – rapid knowledge diffusion through firms, suppliers and people solving problems together, carrying what they learned into the next job. We cannot build a Shenzhen-scale agglomeration on 750 square kilometres. But we can do two things. One, engineer knowledge diffusion through people, not papers. To produce an industrial commons here, first, we will need to revive the engineering society ethos. If we are serious about capability over credentials, the most basic question is: do our workers and engineers know how things work? We need to know how things work at the level of teardown and re-assembly because that is the foundation of any serious industrial capability.”
“Industry transformation maps and trade associations do consultative work that touches co-governance, but it is advisory, not binding – no sectoral employer body exercises a sign-off or veto on SkillsFuture curriculum, and no named individual's reputation moves with and is staked on the employment outcomes. As I understand it, NTUC mainly bargains at the enterprise level rather than at the collective sector level. So, I think we have neither true industry co-governance of curriculums, nor do we have sectoral bargaining to achieve wage compression. Some will say Singapore is too small for German-style sectoral institutions. Switzerland, population nine million, sustains deep sectoral bargaining and apprenticeship in pharma, watchmaking and machine tools. Size is not the binding constraint. Institutional architecture is. I have two proposals. First, sectoral bargaining. NTUC's current architecture is attuned to individual employer engagement. That is not the right vehicle for deep tacit-knowledge sectors. These sectors need binding sectoral wage scales, not just floors, but scales that compress the wage distribution. Right now, a firm that invests in deep training risks losing that worker to a competitor the day after certification. Wage compression fixes this. It narrows pay gaps so poaching is not worth it. The return on training stays with the firm that trained. That is why German firms fund three-year apprenticeships at their own expense. The PWM lifts wages for lower-wage workers, and it does so well. But it sets floors, not scales. It says to the worker: train, and you move up. What we need is a structure that says to the employer: train deeply, because you will keep the return. Not every sector is suitable.”
“Whether the credential improves a worker's employability is not measurable at the point of purchase, only in labour outcomes, years later. The system optimises for what it can count, not what it should produce. I think it is desirable to have sectoral associations and firms lead the upskilling journey directly to solve the principal-agent problem and consequently, invest in deep, long-duration training. How do other economies solve the principal-agent problem? Germany's apprenticeship system operates within one of Europe's most mobile credentialed labour markets, their Industrie- und Handelskammer or Chambers of Industry and Commerce certification is portable. The goal is workers who are chosen repeatedly at a premium, not workers who cannot leave. German apprentices earn about 15% more than the untrained two decades after entry, with lower unemployment risk and faster re-employment. Economic skill-formation literature identifies three conditions for firms to invest in deep, long-duration training. First, wage compression – sectoral bargaining that narrows pay differentials within a sector so rivals cannot simply poach trained workers at a premium. Second, portable credentials – standardised, externally certified occupational profiles, so a worker's skill is legible to the whole labour market and the worker is willing to invest their own time. Third, industry co-governance of curriculum – so that what is taught tracks what industry actually needs. Singapore has the second of these, roughly. SkillsFuture certifications approximate portable credentials.”
“Cold callers and fictitious providers followed the money. France spent the next four years walking it back: banning cold-calling, imposing co-payments that have since been raised twice, capping the most-abused course categories. France had the digital infrastructure, had the regulators and had the financial intelligence unit. What it did not have was any party other than the state itself bearing consequences for training quality. The principal-agent problem is not solved by transparency, digitisation or individual choice. The chain of transmission of consequences for an individual credit system, from Ministry to agency to provider to learner to employer, is such that nobody bears the consequences of low-quality training. It is a principal-agent problem. No one is a principal. The Career Conversion Programmes work because an employer is the principal before training begins. The individual-credit channel, by design, lacks that principal and no amount of enforcement can substitute for it. It seems SkillsFuture has unfolded in a similar way. Can we redesign the system so that employers, not individuals purchasing courses, become the accountable parties? Not individual choice, which is what we have, but structured employer accountability: sectoral associations and firms bearing reputational and financial consequences for training quality. This would sharpen the Skills Frameworks too. Employers with skin in the game will push for a fuller accounting of what a job actually requires, not just entry criteria, but the tacit knowledge needed to stay and grow. When funds are provisioned individually, the government defaults to input-side accountability: ensuring providers are accredited, claims meet thresholds and participants receive a certification.”
“I do not think this is an execution failure, but a flaw in the policy idea itself. The SkillsFuture system of the last decade is an example of the individual-credit system: the Government funds individuals to purchase courses from a permissive provider market. Suppliers capture the funds; fraud is possible; links with entry-level capability are weak. The largest meta-analysis of active labour-market programmes – Card, Kluve and Weber, 2018, with 207 estimates across 200-plus studies – found classroom training shows weak or negative short-run effects, with gains emerging only at the two- to three-year mark, and concentrated on the long-term unemployed. The populations best served by these programmes are the displaced and long-term jobless, not mid-career workers who need to shore up against job precarity or climb the wage ladder. In France, they tried this model. In 2015, under President Hollande, they launched the Compte Personnel de Formation, a personal training account. Training hours attached to the person, not the job. The 2018 Macron reform converted those hours to euros – €500 a year, capped at €5,000, with higher caps for the lower-qualified. Then, in 2019 they built an app, Mon Compte Formation, a consumer-grade marketplace where any worker could browse, book or pay for any accredited course in a few taps. Employers and unions were disintermediated and cut out entirely. Twenty-one million accounts were activated. More than two million training purchases a year. It was one of the boldest individual-credit experiments of any major economy. The result is instructive. TRACFIN, France's financial intelligence unit, recorded a five-fold rise in suspected fraud in a single year, from €8 million in 2020 to €43 million in 2021.”
“Speaker, we are asked today to approve the merger of two agencies. I would use this occasion to ask whether the system they inherit is the right one. We often speak of skills upgrading and credentials. The real question is simpler: are we building real capabilities for our workers? Here is where I think the Government has done well. WSG's Place-and-Train Career Conversion Programmes are – by the Government's 2024 evaluation – a success. Close to 18,000 mid-career Singaporeans were placed between 2017 and 2022. Wages rose by up to 6.5% by year four. Employment retention improved by four percentage points. And the biggest gains went to non-PMET and mature workers – the groups the credit-based system has struggled to reach. I also would like to acknowledge the 38 Skills Frameworks that were co-built with industry, unions and professional bodies. They are a useful compilation of the skills and competencies expected for each role in these sectors. But as those who have been hiring managers know: what is in the frameworks sets necessary but insufficient bars. You still need interviews and competency tests to actually hire well. This success of this Place-and-Train employer-anchored programme contrasts with other parts of the system which are not doing so well, such as the credit-based, individual-based SkillsFuture programme. The credit-based side of the system has struggled on both integrity and take-up. In 2017, a syndicate fraud extracted nearly $40 million through fake enrolments. The Auditor-General later found millions more in overpayments and uncollected levies. On demand: the SkillsFuture Level-Up Programme – the flagship of mid-career upskilling, offering a $4,000 top-up – had reached only 28,000 out of 1.2 million eligible citizens by end-2024, which is only 2%.”
“Thank you, Sir, and I thank the Minister of State for the assurances of vet representation on the Council. So, can I just ask the Minister of State to clarify why vet representation is not codified on a statutory basis, unlike the Medical Registration Act of 1997 and the Dental Registration Act of 1999?”
“Since no regulation the Council makes can take effect without the Minister's approval, I would urge the Ministry to assess before granting that approval, whether compliance costs fall proportionately on small practices relative to their fixed cost base, and to require the Council to invoke section 87(3) where they do not. Third, the Bill sets the standard but there can be multiple paths to meet it. Singapore has no veterinary degree programme. All 690-plus practising veterinarians trained overseas. When Member Ms Valerie Lee asked MOE in February 2026 about introducing a local veterinary science degree, the reply was that MOE would monitor and assess. I, like my colleague, Mr Louis Chua, and Member Mr David Hoe support the idea of a local vet degree. If the goal is higher standards, why not build a local training path that can better guarantee those standards and give Singaporeans who want to become vets a route that does not need a costly overseas degree. There is a strong regional case for this. No veterinary degree programme in any Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member state currently holds accreditation from the American Veterinary Medical Association, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons or the Australasian Veterinary Boards Council – the three bodies whose recognition permits practice in North America, the UK and Europe and Australasia, respectively. A Singapore-based programme that secures any of these accreditations taught in English within a globally recognised university system would be a unique regional asset. I look forward to the Ministry's reply. Thank you. And in advance of 25 April, I would like to wish all our vets, vet nurses and everyone who works with animals, "Happy World Veterinary Day".”
“Sir, I have three points to clarify on the Veterinary Practice Bill. First, the Bill sets up Singapore's first Veterinary Council and the aim to raise standards is welcomed. But every Council member is picked by a Minister who can remove any member for any reason. He has the final appeal against the Council's recommendations. The Medical Council and the Dental Council both have, by statute, elected members from the profession – 12 out of 27 for the Medical Council and five out of 13 for the Dental Council. Why depart from that statutory elected member model here and what safeguards ensure vets have a real voice in their own oversight? The consultation outcome did promise to include veterinary professionals on the Council but unlike the Medical Registration Act and the Dental Registration Act, the Bill does not make that representation statutory. Second, smaller practices will likely bear a heavier burden from future Council rules than chains like Mars Veterinary Health, which runs at least 19 out of Singapore's 121 licensed vet centres, about one in six. Regulatory costs that are marginal for a large chain can be more significant for a small practice. Section 87(3) states, "Regulations made under this Act may make different provisions or prescribe different fees for different classes of persons or different circumstances", and all regulations require the Minister's approval under sections 87(1) and 87(2). Will the Ministry commit to using the differential fee power in section 87(3) to ensure that regulatory costs do not accelerate the consolidation the vet profession is already experiencing?”
“Thank you, Speaker. The Singapore Department of Statistics publishes retail prices and what consumers pay at the end. I am not sure we track the full cost structure behind the prices – domestic supply chain margins, domestic transport, wholesale margins, retail margins and so on. If you do not have a baseline understanding of the cost structure before the prices rise further, you will not be able to tell later whether a price increase was done by genuine cost pressures or by margin expansion. Will the Government establish baseline cost structure data now for key categories such as food, transport and energy companies, especially the retail-facing ones?”
“Thank you, Chair. My clarifications are on preschools. One, ECDA itself shifted Anchor Operator funding from a centre-capacity model to a per child funding model earlier in 2025. If per-child funding is the right principle for allocating resources among Anchor Operator centres, then why is it the wrong principle for allocating resources among all licensed centres? Number two, I thank Minister of State Goh for his emphasis on play-based learning. Ms Loy Wee Mee, who I mentioned in my cut, is a – if not the expert – on play-based learning in Singapore. So, does the Ministry acknowledge that their operator funding model is making the play-based learning expert's schools, and others like hers, unviable? And what is your message to the independent operators?”
“What is missing is a funding structure that lets parents act on the agreement. I ask that we let parents choose. Supporting Early Childhood Educators”
“This is the same regulator funding one team's player development budget and asking the other why they cannot keep up. The end state – two tiers and nothing in between. Mass market, Government preschools on one side; ultra-premium international schools on the other. The mid-tier, wherein Montessori, Reggio, play-based and inclusive programmes for children with diverse needs actually live, is collapsing. Middle-class families lose meaningful choice. Progress is when what was once a boutique pedagogy becomes the base we build for the next generation. Malaysia is doing this. In December 2025, its government revamped the national preschool curriculum to prioritise play-based, child-centred learning. In April, Kuala Lumpur hosts the World Forum on Early Care and Education, with 500 participants from over 40 countries. Malaysian educators invite Singaporean operators to speak at their forums on play- and project-based learning. They plan study tours here. Their government is actively driving these reforms. Our neighbours are investing in what our funding model makes unviable. If they are right about early childhood, and I believe they are, a pedagogy gap will open across the Causeway, as we drive out the very educators they want to learn from. I have two asks. First, fund the child, not the school. If the subsidy follows a child to any licensed, quality-assured centre, parents, all parents, can choose the pedagogy the Government's own agencies say works. When the gap is $80, parents can weigh the differences. Second, operator-independent teacher funding. If a teacher is L2 certified, why should their salary support depend on which operator employs them? The expertise is here. Our own agency agrees the pedagogy works.”
“Sir, Ms Loy Wee Mee runs Pre-School By-The-Park in my ward. The Early Childhood Development Agency (ECDA) awarded her centre's Make*Believe programme the Innovation Award in 2023. The National Institute of Early Childhood Development (NIEC) featured her as the expert voice on play-based learning. In January this year, her Li Hwan centre announced closure; 52 parents rallied to save it. Two of them, Nicole and Jasmine, believed enough in the school to take it over themselves. We wish them the best. But the structural challenge remains – full-day fees are $1,655 a month, with no Government funding. The Partner Operator (POP) centre nearby charges $650. That is a $1,000 gap. Passion alone cannot close it. Sir, this gap is not market created. It is policy created. When Government subsidy prices 80% of the market at $610 to $650, that becomes what preschools should cost. Parents are not choosing Anchor Operator (AOP) pedagogy over play-based learning. They are choosing to pay AOP prices. At a $1,000 differential, there is no real choice. The squeeze hits labour too. AOP and POP salary targets funded by subsidy becomes a sector-wide wage benchmark. Independents must match or lose teachers, not to better pedagogy but to better subsidised pay. Every time salary targets rise, independents' costs rise with them, but revenue does not. The 20% is expected to innovate, but with what? The differential treatment extends beyond fees. I thank ECDA for extending the Manpower Hiring Grant to independents this January. But it took two years. From 2024 to 2026, only AOPs and POPs had subsidised talent development. Independents competed for the same shrinking pool of educators at full cost.”
“And will OPG consider prescribed fee guidelines for professional donee services, given this is a fiduciary service for the most vulnerable and not a competitive market? Strengthening of LPA Regime”