Kuik Shiao-Yin
Singapore
“Northlight's model contains so many wisdoms and insights that mainstream schools can learn from and it is a beautiful symbol of what is possible if we care enough to make things happen not just for ourselves but for others who we do not want to leave behind. 2.25 pm”
“Currently, there is no requirement for a company to accommodate the employee’s changed situation, such as redesigning a job or offering an alternative role.”
“I think the United Kingdom (UK) manages that by saying that leave should be taken in weeks rather than days. Similarly, the same amount of adoption leave that is available to mums should be available to dads. Or alternatively, a longer quantum of gender-neutral adoption leave can be offered for parents to share as they wish.”
“That certainty can only come from the promise of a new story, a story of a "Who" and a "Why" that is bigger than the sum of all of our fears about "What's" and "How's". Our youths need to hear the greater story of all the things that we want to do for love, not just fear.”
“I want to say that I see the heart of the Minister for Finance for the people. I believe in his openness to find new ways forward and I trust his courage to make hard choices.”
“I guess we may differ in our thinking about how much is enough help for people. I speak especially for children with single mothers and foreign mothers. We have talked a long time in this House about the differences of views about why they cannot get adequate housing and all that. I think more help could be given.”
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“It has been ongoing, except everyone is managing it by themselves and cherry-picking their own curriculum and their own teachers. And there are definitely echo chambers forming within exclusionary religious and non-religious communities online and offline. If we do not teach our young people how to build bridges, they will naturally build walls. I understand the resistance to introducing anything resembling RK in the school curriculum ever again because implementation will always be complicated by the challenge of proselytisation. So, can I suggest we develop a faith-and-reason modular programme to be run across schools as well as external community platforms reaching young people? A faith-and-reason programme could have three key characteristics that distinguish it from the old RK programme. First, it is not about understanding religion in isolation but understanding why preserving freedom of religion and preserving the secularity of the state both matter to the common good. Real-life Singapore case studies of clashes between different ideologies, like the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) saga should be discussed and the different stakeholders' responses respectfully debated over. Second, it makes room for the views of the non-religious community. Both religiosity and secularism are growing in Singapore and the region. The non-religious make up 18.5% of our population and more than half are youths. Many in this group do hold the controversial view that religion is irrational and not beneficial to society. It matters that both the non-religious minority and the religious majority learn how to uncover their commonalities and also discuss their differences with compassion.”
“There have been two principles that have helped us maintain a decent level of social cohesion thus far. One, we have always been determined to respect freedom of religion; and, two, we have also been equally determined to let that freedom be limited by our respect for the secularity of the state, as well as our sense of responsibility towards the common good. My concern is that these two fundamental principles are not being effectively passed down to our youths and this gap is showing up in the kind of conversations, or lack of conversations, they are having about religion in society. 7.45 pm A lot of our public education efforts at the school and grassroots levels are still mostly modelling the form of religious tolerance rather than the substance of religious harmony. Checking out different places of worship and sharing religious meals during religious festivals are just the tip of the iceberg. What lies underneath is a far more complex conversation about our beliefs on relationships, life, death, time, work, money, power and more that we need to learn to talk about and listen to. Yes, we have Social Studies and Civic Moral Education, but many youths will tell you few teachers want to discuss race and religious issues in depth. Many teachers deliberately keep discussions at the surface level because they are scared that the answers could be offensive and get them into legal trouble. And that is not a healthy sign. If we do not model for our youths what respectful conversation about religion looks like, someone arbitrarily and potentially dangerous will fill the gap for us. It could be a fundamentalist thought leader, a bigoted website or just prejudiced, ill-informed peers. In some sense, Religious Knowledge (RK) has never been taken out of schools.”
“The coordinators' intervention can not only help to increase the take-up rates, it can also investigate the real reasons why utilisation remains low in the first place. Second, monitoring psychological well-being. The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 2011 report found that long-term caregivers were 20% more likely than non-caregivers to suffer mental illness. That same MSF survey discovered that spousal caregivers and caregivers of lower socio-economic status are more likely to be badly impacted by caregiving. Under siege, these caregivers may slip into depression or even some form of extreme behaviour like abuse of patient or abuse of self. An AIC coordinator can spot early signs of caregiver mental or physical breakdown and provide timely intervention. If we believe family should be the first line of support, we must keep finding ways to better support the very people trying their utmost to live out that value, especially those who are far less financially privileged than us. Jobs and Career Opportunities”
“Much has already been said by other Members of this House before about legislating caregiver leave and giving financial support, so I will not dwell on that but focus on issues of emotional and psychological support. Navigating a fragmented landscape of caregivers' subsidies and services can be frustrating and intimidating to an average Singaporean, let alone one who is already acutely stressed by caregiving or limited in their English language proficiency. Currently, AIC plays intermediary between caregiving bodies and care receivers. Could AIC consider having a team of AIC coordinators who can journey with our caregivers, especially those from the lower-income bracket, from start to end? These coordinators can serve on two fronts. First, making sense of the system. Caregivers need practical help to figure out where to start and how to end. Just trying to make sense of the system might compound the emotional stress they are already under. Frustrated caregivers might not have time or space to explore their options objectively. When they randomly cobble together their own solutions, they end up providing haphazard and even inappropriate care for their own loved ones. So, they do need someone experienced in the system to come alongside, help them coordinate their piecemeal needs to ensure the full range of needs of both caregiver and care receiver are adequately met. Also, though there is a good range of formal care services already being offered in the landscape, from home therapy to adult day care, a Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) survey of 20,000 caregivers shows that usage of these services is surprisingly still very low.”
“So, I am deeply grateful to every Singaporean who is involved in palliative care. It is an incredible gift to the dying, as well as the living. My experience made me wish that more families here could experience the mercy of a good death. So, I have just two simple requests: one, keep up the good work of making palliative care even more accessible and affordable; two, make socio-emotional awareness a core component of training for all healthcare professionals. Training our next generation of doctors and nurses in the art of navigating complex human conversations with humility and kindness should not be treated as less important than technical training. Madam, innovation is not just about investment in expensive technologies, data and subsidies. Those are necessary. But sometimes, innovation can also be found in simply going back to mastery of the basics. In the case of healthcare, it is the art of treating people beyond the science of treating disease. Renowned surgeon, Dr Atul Gawande, contends in his ground-breaking book "Being Mortal" that courageous doctors who help patients explore these three questions achieve far better outcomes for end-of-life care. One, what is more important to you than living longer? Two, what are you scared of? And three, what are you willing to give up to get the life you want in the time you have left? Madam, many of our young doctors and nurses today will get the extraordinary power to write something in the last chapters of our own lives. May we give them the ability to write something that is worth remembering? Provide Holistic Support for Caregivers Second, support for caregivers.”
“I declare my interest as an educator in empathy awareness. According to the 2015 Quality of Death Index, Singapore is the 12th best place in the world to die. Benchmarked against 80 countries, we are sixth in the affordability of care, eighth in the quality of care, and our weakest score was in community engagement at 22nd. By 2020, more than 10,000 people a year here are expected to need palliative care. Yet, a 2014 survey by Lien Foundation showed that two in three Singaporeans still do not even understand what palliative care is. Only about 20% to 30% of those who pass away each year use palliative care services when research shows that up to 70% to 80% of all deaths might have actually benefited from such care. This lack of public awareness and hospice referral is partly because our doctors and nurses struggle with handling death. A Lien Foundation survey showed that six in 10 doctors and four in 10 nurses said their basic training did not prepare them to handle patients with life-threatening illnesses. 12.45 pm I can testify to what it is like to encounter such a statistic in real life. A junior doctor that attended to my father in a hospital here exhibited zero empathy in the way he broke the news to us that my dad had terminal cancer. This highly educated, articulate young man told us, "Here is the result, it is not good. You know what that means? You know, right? You know? You know?" I am not kidding. Even when we broke down in front of him, he was completely blank and indifferent, and that is very disturbing to me. Thankfully, the rest of the doctors I encountered on the journey were much more sensitive. My dad passed away in a hospice and it was a very gentle place for him to die, thanks to the staff there.”
“Public perception of ex-offenders and morale of prison officers remain high and our innovative approach has actually gone on to inspire similar experiments in prison systems from Nigeria to Australia. I speak at length about the Singapore Prison story because I see important parallels of the on-going struggles we face in the social sector in the struggle against the poverty cycle. I also see new possibilities in adopting the "culture-as-first-resort" approach pioneered by Singapore Prison. 5.30 pm Right now, many FSCs feel similarly overwhelmed by demand and strained for resources. Many social workers feel burnt out, especially when they see people sunk in poverty, relapsing back into impoverishing behaviours despite intervention after intervention. Many of the poor also expressed demotivation when they − wrongfully or not − perceive their social workers acting more like gatekeepers, working for the good of the system rather than guides working for the good of the people. So, I have three questions. First, do we know how many of our people relapsed into poverty two years on despite our interventions? What is our recidivism rate for poverty? Second, are we experimenting with any broad-based "Yellow Ribbon"-like culture intervention to meet our strategic goal of disrupting poverty? Third, what if Fresh Start was not just a housing scheme but the beginning of a whole-of-Government, whole-of-society movement that engaged all stakeholders to work as one to disrupt poverty together? For instance, what would SkillsFuture for a Fresh Start or Public Broadcasting for a Fresh Start look like? As we work on the transformation of how we help our working elite, let us also transform how we help our working poor as well. Support for the Elderly Poor”
“The story of the Singapore Prison Service (SPS) is a very powerful signpost of what can be achieved when the Government matches culture with strategy. In 1988, SPS faced wicked problems – overcrowded prisons, a severe manpower shortage, overworked and discouraged prison officers and lousy public perception. The recidivism rate back then was high, at 44.4%. That means half the ex-offenders were back into prison within two years of release. There was also a vicious intergenerational cycle – children of inmates were becoming offenders themselves. So, a small group of SPS leaders dared to ask themselves: how was Singapore Prisons creating security for all if it did not do anything to reduce repeat offences? These Page: 90 early adopters pushed through a progressive idea that perhaps the primary job of a prison was not to keep "bad" people in but to get them out forever. At the heart of SPS' culture transformation strategy was the repositioning of prison officers as Captains of Lives with a mission to rehabilitate, renew and restart. And prisoners were repositioned not as problems to control but people worthy of support on a historic quest for redemption. The prison officer was no longer a gate-keeper that worked on minimising the cost of "bad" people but repositioned as a guide that worked on maximising possibilities for people wanting to do good again. The public were no longer empathetic bystanders but repositioned as vital participants who could unlock a systemic second prison. MHA was sceptical at first and worried that this soft "culture-first" approach would not produce results and waste public money. But 16 years later, results still hold. The recidivism rate has dropped from 44.4% to the mid-20s from 2011 onwards.”
“It is called Sesame Street. Sesame Street was born in 1969 as an experiment designed to prepare poor pre-schoolers for school. It was the first time a children's TV show was not just co-created with educators, but simultaneously monitored by researchers. Its producers developed the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) model, a system of TV show planning, production and evaluation based on collaborations among producers, writers, educators, and researchers. Its positive impact on education of kids in America and all around the world has been well documented. It is regarded by some as the most cost-effective and impactful early childhood education intervention ever implemented in the US, and it was essentially the first massive open online course freely available for children. The world has not seen another Sesame Street. But maybe now is the time for one to rise in Asia, and I think Singapore is a perfect place to give it a go. Let it be a gift, not just for the poor in our own country, but to Asia and the world. Bringing Government Closer to the People”
“I declare my interest as a co-founder of a media production agency. I never thought much about Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) until I thought about how we can use it to help disrupt the poverty cycle here. In the 1980s, two psychologists investigated why Head Start, America's programme for uplifting poor children, was having limited success. They discovered that richer parents spend more time reading and talking with their children than poorer parents do. That means that by the time both the poor kid and the rich kid hit four years old, there is a 32-million-word gap that exists between them. And the gap is not just in number, but tone, complexity and type of words as well. I do not have the Singapore statistics, but I am betting we will see similar patterns. Research shows that many children in our poorest households stay at home because going out costs their parents too much money and inconvenience. These kids attend preschool inconsistently and cannot go for enrichment classes like their richer peers. So, they spend their time watching Youtube and TV at home. Our PSB funding can be so much more deliberate in what social good it can achieve. 2.00 pm Growing income and educational inequality is a real problem here. What if we carved out some of our PSB funds to create programmes for TV and Youtube that focused on closing this 32-million word gap? Could the funds encourage producers to collaborate with educators and researchers to deliver innovative children's programmes guided by educational curriculum? What if we also asked for a cast that reflected racial and socioeconomic diversity and a show that promotes empathy and even very basic bilingualism? If you think that sounds way too idealistic or boring, it has actually been done before to tremendous effect.”
“I have a question for Acting Minister Ng Chee Meng about report cards. First, I would like to clarify whether this new style of qualitative report card is practised consistently throughout all schools at all levels because it does not seem to be the experience on the ground. The second question is: how can MOE also work with schools to clarify the mixed messaging that some parents are getting because I have heard of parents who are quite happy with the progressive report cards they are getting but, at the same time, they are also getting these assessment schedules, detailing extensively what is the weightage of grades and all that kind of stuff? Their complaint is that they are both confused about what the system wants from them, the holistic assessment, and there is also an issue of distrust. They are not sure whether there has been a real shift at all. The third question is: I am aware that it is a work in progress, but is MOE working towards consistently connecting the non-academic competencies that they are tracking on these report cards to the desired key stage outcomes that MOE has listed? This is because, for example, at the primary school level, one of the eight desired key stage outcomes is awareness of the arts and, clearly, there are not many primary schools prioritising this as a competency on a large scale.”
“Principals can collaborate with researchers and staff to develop a policy that grounds everyone in a common Page: 15 agreement on what productive, purposeful homework looks. Homework also comes with clearly marked learning objectives to prevent miscommunication. A succinct and specific set of standards less than a page long makes clear to all stakeholders from the start what to expect from the school in terms of ideology, quantity and quality of assignments. For instance, a school that believes in family-friendly homework policy could say something upfront like, "In here, our Primary 1s get three traditional academic assignments and two unconventional homework assignments that have academic and non-academic purposes". 12.00 pm Differentiated homework policies can help schools build up distinctive cultures appealing to distinctive types of parents. So, I hope MOE can consider piloting a Mindful School strategy. Cultivating Non-academic Attributes”
“We communicate our intentions in three ways: through what we say, what we do and what we reward. And each form of communication is more important than the last, and people always listen to rewards the most. No matter what you say, they will take what you reward as the truth of what you really want. So, if we care about priming our kids in the habits needed for innovation and collaboration later, we have to build in the reward of those behaviours into the school system now. Change across the board is hard. So, I was wondering if MOE could consider collaborating with researchers and just one or two progressive primary schools to prototype a solution trying out these two interventions. First, redesign report cards. They tell us plenty about our priorities. MOE has eight stated outcomes of what a kid should have achieved by Primary 6, including great things like: one, they know their strengths; two, they have a lively curiosity about things; and three, they cooperate, share and care for others. But because every primary school still dedicates the biggest real estate on report cards to subject grades, every stakeholder gets the message that these outcomes do not really matter. If these behaviours are not tracked or rewarded on a report card, it is not going to happen systematically; just accidentally. You can hear few parents freaking out about their child not "knowing their strengths" or stressing about Ah-Boy's lack of "curiosity", even though that is actually more indicative of future success. So, I suggest we give significant space on report cards to non-academic indicators closely linked to our strategic outcomes of innovation and collaboration. Second, develop a homework policy. Progressive American schools have done this.”
“We are putting a lot of hope in SkillsFuture and I do believe it is a potential game-changer. I would just like to clarify: who are the stakeholders who are involved in ensuring the quality of the SkillsFuture courses? This is because my staff and I have attended quite a diversity of WSQ courses ourselves and the quality can be quite varied. Is there Page: 42 also a whole-of-society approach to who feeds back on what are the kinds of SkillsFuture courses we are offering and how that can be changed?”
“Fortunes can come and go but they can be built up again on the bedrock of a thousand strong promises made between husbands and wives, parents and children, haves and have-nots, governments and their people. When threats become real, when the money runs thin, we will see conflict. And we will want to fight, and I pray we do fight. But let it be a fight for each other and not against. A fight to work through differences and partner across the divides. A fight to move out of a spirit of fear and scarcity into a new spirit of ambition and satisfaction. So, yes, the problems that are coming are probably bigger and more powerful than we think. But you know what? So are we! Thank you, Finance Minister. I support your Budget and your call to greater unity. [Applause] 5.37 pm”
“The difference is that the more social and financial capital we have, the easier it is for us to recover and learn from our stupidity. Wealth buys us second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth chances. But for many who are poor, bad choices are more difficult to recover from and good choices are not always available or easy to take. When we show our strong support to the uplifting of parents who made poor choices, we teach not just them but their children, and ours too, the power of grace. That even when we mess up and the consequences must be paid, as long as there are people rooting for us to find our way home, there is a chance for restoration, and that is what sows the ambition for transformation. The Government led the way before when it created the Yellow Ribbon Project that taught us a better way of seeing the ex-offenders in our midst, and that was courageous moral leadership we can all get behind. You do not have to go to a physical prison to be an offender in society. Sometimes, you just have to commit the crime of being somehow second-class in people's eyes. So, let us unlock everyone's second prison of shame. In conclusion, let me end with the same wish I had expressed at Budget 2015 – "Our country spent the first 50 years of our history getting rich. Let us spend the next 50 years charting our course towards becoming truly wealthy." Our unity has always been our greatest source of wealth. Not the riches of Reserves, our fancy buildings or our amazing industries. Those are just outcomes, wonderful results we create through choosing again and again to do things as one people and one Singapore.”
“We know the divisive effects of favouritism in the family. Well, a country is like a family writ very large. Let us do away with any form of structural favouritism in the way we treat our rich versus our poor. At last year's Budget, I asked that we consider giving single unwed mums and their children the same benefits and acceptance we accord to married mothers. MSF has already announced that they will review the inequalities in policies. And that is fantastic news. We are struggling with birth rates, so it is right that all young life that has been given to Singapore should be duly welcomed and all their life-bearers duly honoured. This year, Minister Heng mentioned "all" Singapore babies will receive the Child Development Account (CDA) First Step Grant that can help struggling parents access the State's generous co-savings plan. But the marital status of parents has always been the eligibility criteria for CDAs. So, you can imagine, on that single word "all" hangs the hopes of so many single mums as well as the hearts of us married mothers who are rooting for a win for them. So, I hope we can clarify whether "all" includes the children of our unwed mums, because single or married, rich or poor, many of us mums share the same heart. We want to partner the state in the common mission to bring up our children to become all that they can be, and many of us mums stand as one on this – see us all as equal. See all our children as equal too! I know there is an argument about why not just invest in innocent children rather than invest in the bad parents who make bad choices? But well, then all of us parents in this room stand equally condemned, for we too have made varying levels of bad choices in our lives that messed up our own families.”
“Only when we are deeply satisfied as a people will we want to subtract some value from ourselves to multiply the value that can be had by all. So, I think it is a beautiful thing for the Government to advocate deeper, respectful partnerships between stakeholders as the best way forward. With the state acting as the guide, it challenges us stakeholders to take our place as the "heroes of the story" instead. The outreach to trade associations, Our Singapore Fund, Community of Seniors and Business and the IPC Partnership Scheme will hopefully open our eyes to seeing each other as equal partners in a win-win game on the same quest to solve the same pains. Minister Heng talked about how we must change our paradigm and view our greying population and disabled as a source of strength that can shape our society rather than a weakness to be managed. And I agree. So, I appeal on behalf of our weak and marginalised that in the design of our social policies, we choose to see them not through the lens of a zero-sum game too. As we execute our policies like SkillsFuture, Fresh Start Housing Scheme and KidSTART, let us use this chance to set up more win-win situations for our working poor. How different would our interventions be, if we designed them around a vision for our poor, not as a cost to manage but as a partner, a possible source of strength, who can share the same quest to solve the same pains. Our policies must accord our poor the same dignities and assumptions we accord our privileged. If we do not expect our middle-class families to raise children well in overcrowded conditions, then let us not expect poor families to do any better in overcrowded rental flats co-shared with a stranger. It is setting them up for failure.”
“And yes, the habit of scarcity is an unavoidable product of our context as a small country of limited resources. And it is true, small countries do not get to be naive about survival and we have little leeway to fool around with our future. But when we keep pushing out the story of how we are the little red dot surrounded by big, bad wolves that want to eat our lunch, we risk reinforcing the zero-sum mentality as the most significant story for Singapore and our best way forward. This is counterproductive to our push for more open and giving collaboration as the best way forward. So, in SG51, what I hope is we can start pushing out a new Singapore story founded upon the opposite of scarcity. And no, it is not abundance, because the paradigm of abundance that there is plenty out there and enough to spare for everybody is not always true. Resources are limited, especially in a small nation and there will always be tough trade-offs which we will all argue over. So, the most honest alternative to scarcity is actually not abundance, but satisfaction. It is the mindset that says, "Whatever we have, it's enough. I have enough. I am enough. So, I'm able to want you to have enough too". It is what allowed that famous "Jackpot Auntie" to give away her casino windfall of $0.5 million not once, but twice to charity. And when reporters asked her why she would do something like that when she was not rich, she said, "I have all that I want". When we are satisfied, we are far more willing to give something of ourselves, and from that mindset of satisfaction flows the desire to share decisions, information, recognition, profits and yes, the tax burden for social spending.”
“It is most toxic when it dovetails with the "kiasu" culture. Scarcity mindset is the belief that there is not enough to go around and the giving of any advantage to someone else is stupid because it comes at the cost of our personal survival or happiness. You see it in the way we push back on whether columbariums have a place in middle-class neighbourhoods or the anger we feel about immigrants – one more foreigner here means one less MRT seat for me. I have seen it in the way some non-profits work in silo, believing it is every NGO for himself in the fight for the limited pie of state and donor funding. And now, you can hear it in the outrage amongst some mothers in the 1% when they discovered, "I cannot claim tax relief on income above $80,000 anymore because we want to support greater social spending." In scarcity thinking, there is no "win-win". It is always a high stakes competition of "win-lose" or "lose-lose". In scarcity, power or profit cannot be shared, even with the very people who help support the position we enjoy. So, nobody wins in this destructive zero-sum game of scarcity. When we adults push back hard on why our domestic workers should be given their right to their day of rest since it impedes on my day of rest, then how can we expect anyone to do any better? Should it surprise us if someday we see many in the next generation grow up refusing to take responsibility for our welfare when we become the powerless ones in our old age? Why should it anger us when our bosses push back hard on why they should be forced to give us our right to more paid paternity leave when it infringes on their right to make more profit? Rich or poor, employer or employee, local or foreign, powerful or not, we will all bear the cost of our collective scarcity mindset.”
“"Kiasu" culture is too costly a culture to put up with and there are huge trade-offs in human development, manpower and time and dollars spent. "Kiasu" culture is also what created the subculture of grantrepreneurs – people who call themselves entrepreneurs but are really just grant-chasers – who seize upon any kind of public monies, like the PIC grant, to use on everything but what the grant was meant to accomplish. Yes, there are genuine "kiasu" entrepreneurs. But the "kiasu" entrepreneur is driven by the anxiety to make short gains rather than a mindful desire to win at a long game, so he will only take the risks that everyone is already taking and innovate what everyone else is already innovating. That is why entrepreneurship here tends to lack originality and is really just a copy-and-paste work of little worth. Yesterday's bubble tea shop is today's hipster coffee joint and cat café. We have a ridiculous number of entrepreneurs in F&B and way too little in industries like marine and construction, which have far more opportunity, profit and need for new blood willing to go where nobody else wants to go or dares to go. Sir, fear is an emotion essentially rooted in the rejection of uncertainty, and its opposite is not courage. When we embrace uncertainty, what we experience is the emotions of mindful ambition and wonder. I suspect our highest innovation and productivity will only come when more of us move beyond the fear of "Die lah, die lah! What must I do to survive?" to the mindful ambition of "I have no idea what lies ahead, but I am still here and I am still alive. What things of great worth do I still get to create for somebody else today?" The other habit that costs us plenty is our scarcity mindset.”
“It really disturbs me that year after year on those funny National Day surveys, we still rank "kiasu, kiasi" as among the top few defining traits of what makes us Singaporeans. We laugh about it but it has been 50 years and the joke is on us. How much longer will we self-identify as a people living under siege? What human potential and opportunities have we lost over the years living as a nation of people scared to lose out and scared to fail? How much more opportunities are we prepared to lose? I do not think "kiasu" culture should be celebrated. In fact, I think we should kill it. Because all these behaviours that we are telling Singaporeans are necessary to take us into the future – innovation, productivity, collaboration, generosity to the needy – they are wholly dependent on a person's desire and drive to generate greater worth and real value to share with the world. "Kiasu" culture does not give a damn about generating or sharing worth and value. The "kiasu" person will even pursue things of questionable worth he himself does not believe in, as long as he sees everyone else is doing so. Nothing illustrates this best than the toxic arms race between "kiasu" parents. The Straits Times discovered four in 10 parents purchase tuition for pre-schoolers. And when asked why, the overriding reason, of course, was better grades. But in the same breath, only a third of these parents said tuition actually improves academic performance. So, by their own admission, they are paying for something that they already admit is not productive. The price is the time and money that could have been spent developing their child in more worthwhile skills.”
“SGInnovate must seek out the local early adopters of innovation culture and work with them to help build up Singapore's thought leadership on innovation. It is galling to me that at our innovation conferences here, we are still getting keynote speakers from everywhere but Singapore. This just reinforces the perception of our own people as well as outsiders that Singaporeans are just not as capable of innovative thinking as Westerners. If we look hard enough, we will find that we already have pockets of people who are just as cutting-edge in their approach to their public, private and people sector work but are also excellent at communicating their views. We need to take bigger bets on our own people and shore up our confidence in Singapore's ability to do things different. There are many cultural roadblocks to transformation, but I will focus on the two that I think have the greatest cost on our economy. They are our national habits of fear and scarcity thinking. Because fear is such a quick and effective emotional lever that galvanises our survival instinct, it has been the favoured motivational tool of many of our parents, teachers, bosses and even politicians. And managed well, fear is a perfectly healthy kick-in-the-pants we all need to force us out of complacency into action. Fear compels us to man up, save more, study hard and work long. And fear, in that sense, is an emotion that does help us take care of our future. But fear loses these powerful, positive effects when it goes beyond a temporary emotion that we feel to a permanent disposition we live in. And when the fear becomes part of our emotional and cultural DNA, we lock ourselves into a habit of self-limiting behaviours. And this is why we need to talk about our "kiasu" culture.”
“And if we want to know why collaboration does not happen easily in Singapore, we have to track our behaviours and attitudes surrounding openness and trust. We must match "Strategy with Culture." If you want to see strategies succeed, cultural intervention must always be the first resort. Not the last resort or just one of many resorts; first resort. All too often, companies actually severely underestimate how much strategy's effectiveness hinges on cultural alignment. At any top-down strategy that is at odds with ground-up culture is, at best, hamstringed and, at worst, utterly doomed. Culture trumps strategy every time. Almost every enterprise that has gained peak performance – the Four Seasons, Apple, Southwest Airlines – they all got there by prioritising cultural interventions as their best accelerator for change. Successful cultural intervention is about focusing on just a few critical shifts of specific behaviours, deeply linked with the strategic outcomes that we hope for. If SGInnovate is being tasked to cultivate an ecosystem for innovation, it has to pair its strategic matchmaking with culture-building efforts that connect with its goals. It should take the lead in holding discussions with thought leaders in Singapore's entrepreneurial ecosystem to learn what are the beliefs and behaviours we must encourage or discourage in our youths so that by the time they enter the workforce, they are primed with the habits of innovation. Cultural transformation does not reach a tipping point without winning over a small but crucial crop of influential early adopters. The early adopters bring in the early majority, the early majority brings in the late majority and the late majority brings in everyone else who is still wondering what on earth is going on.”
“At the heart of every frustrating roadblock we will face to our technical solutions is actually a cluster of cultural habits – deeply rooted patterns of behaviour, emotions and narrative that can prove surprisingly resistant to change even in the face of overwhelming logical evidence. The Finance Minister has talked about the need to get precise with solving our economic issues by coming up with bespoke roadmaps for the long-term transformation of specific sectors. I support that approach. My request is that we also get equally serious and precise in the way we resolve the human cultural habits that stand in the way. If we want sustained transformation of our industries, we should be drawing up matching bespoke roadmaps for the long-term psychological and emotional transformation of our people as well. We should treat it seriously as we would with any other priority economic initiative. And treat the observations of cultural analysts as seriously as that of our economic analysts. When we track specific cultural metrics – critical behaviours or beliefs – we can get early insights that signal to us whether we are on track or just seriously off-course. Metrics have to be meaningful. Just telling us "X number of businesses were started in Y years" tells us nothing deep about whether genuine innovation or meaningful entrepreneurship is on a healthy rise. What would yield deeper insight is to also track over the years, qualitative data about the emotions, beliefs and behaviours Singaporeans hold towards risk, failures, possibilities and uncertainties. If we want to know why productivity does not really happen in Singapore, we should track our behaviours and attitudes towards the creation and sharing of value.”
“I declare my interests as an entrepreneur in the field of social innovation and I also ask the Deputy Speaker's advanced pardon for any lapses into informality. It is the language of the heart for youths, and I speak to them as much as I speak to the hon Members of this very formal House. Last year, we celebrated our Jubilee in a big way – as we should. Our dramatic jump from third world to first in 50 years is an outsized achievement we will probably never see again. Already, the future in front of us looks nothing like the past we just left behind. Random terrorism, climate change and all kinds of breakdowns all seem to be part of our new and very scary normal. So, clearly, the year-long party is over and SG51 is in a different emotional space. One of the ways we could try to cope with all this rapid change is to fantasise about our past. But nostalgia, while lovely as a sentiment, is pretty lousy as a strategy. The sobering fact we must all accept is that our world is not our father's world. And we have to find our own way forward. Life is just going to be more complex. Solutions are no longer simple. Success is no longer straightforward, and disruptive change will come for us all. Budget 2016 declares "Transformation through Innovation" as our best way forward. We are asking Singaporeans to just accept the call to arms, to step up and take some risks, be productive, internationalise, collaborate and oh! along the way, please care for the needy, get married, have more kids and do not forget to be resilient. These are all great aspirations, but in the field of social and emotional work I come from, we know this to be true – the greatest barrier that will stand in the way of all these changes we hope to see are going to be fundamentally human.”
“I thank the Senior Minister of State for that response. I was wondering what is the Ministry's take on a 2013 survey done by the Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (HOME) that about two out of 10 maids suffer from mental health illnesses and they are doubly at risk of developing mental health issues, compared to the general population, given the unusually close proximity of the workplace. So, it is a very unusual employer-employee relationship. I was just wondering if the Ministry has a take on that and how it intends to deal with it.”
“I thank the Minister for his response. I really appreciate the details. Just two supplementary questions. The first is with regard to the sharing of responsibility for keeping food affordable for the working class. A lot of hawkers are quite sympathetic to the need to keep food affordable but they find the idea of price Page: 14 caps quite offensive because it feels like the responsibility for keeping food affordable is passed on to them by the social enterprises in charge and, by extension, the agency that endorses them. The perception, and it may be wrong, is: "How can the hawker be the only one held responsible for keeping food affordable?" So, the first question is: can the Ministry clarify how it works with all stakeholders to help them understand how they all share the responsibility of keeping food prices fair? The second question is about price versus value. There is an unhappy sentiment on the ground that the discussion about hawker food at the top is overly centred on price rather than value. The idea being, "What if we are keeping food prices down because of cost-cutting and low quality, low nutrition ingredients?" So, the question is: how does the Ministry work with the stakeholders to not just look at keeping prices fair but keeping the value high, in particular, cultural heritage value and the nutritional value of hawker food?”
“Just a supplementary question. Given how significant online communication is to the average youth today, are there any collaborative efforts between the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) and the Ministry of Education (MOE) that specifically look at educating young people about the social, political or legal boundaries that have to do with communications about race and religion?”
“A recent poll by the Obstetrical and Gynaecological Society of Singapore discovered that almost half of our obstetricians say they will stop delivering babies within the next five years. A quarter of them actually say they will stop delivering babies within the next 11 months. What has changed? Apparently, it is insurance. A person has up to 24 years from birth to sue a doctor for any negligence or accident that caused permanent damage. Doctors protect themselves from potential multimillion dollar lawsuits through insurance. Most of our doctors are insured under London's Medical Protection Society but the Society has just decided to lower their coverage. Given the suddenly higher cost of practice, many now feel it is either (a) not worthwhile to carry on; or (b) they need to seriously jack up their patient fees to save up for future coverage. Our private sector insurers are unlikely to offer a solution because it is not commercially viable, so MOH may be the best solution. If it is a national imperative to keep our birth rates up, then we must make sure there are enough doctors to deliver the babies. Can the MOH help provide post-retirement protection that will help obstetricians stay in the business? And as a Plan B, would MOH also train and elevate more qualified midwives to stand in the gap for less complicated births? Healthy Living Masterplan”
“Who is to say our kopi and kopitiams do not stand an equal chance? Submitting our Botanic Gardens for UNESCO to recognise as a World Heritage Centre demonstrates our belief that we have local cultural heritage worthy of international protection. Can we seek that same honour for our hawker heritage foods as well? Page: 33 Heritage and Cultural Institutions”
“If we focus on just serving up $2 options, we will inspire more race-to-the-bottom market tactics that you already see happening now: inferior techniques, inferior ingredients and the prevailing use of pre-mixes. We must not lose the plot of what our hawker centres could be – a showcase to the world and to ourselves of our culture at its very best. It is unrealistic to request hawkers to depress their prices to serve customers who can range from low-income to upper-middle class. Those of us who can and already happily paying $6 for sub-standard western seafood pasta in a mall, must learn not to begrudge paying $5 for handmade fishball noodles. Allowing our hawkers to charge realistic prices for their food gives them due honour for their craft and better mitigate rising cost. Affordability of food for the poor may be better solved through a system of food vouchers. Third, let us accord our master heritage hawkers with national level recognition, tied to both rewards and responsibilities that help solve existing continuity issues. What if we rewarded our selected master hawkers with a kind of Culinary Cultural Medallion? Perhaps, they could have access to a Culinary Cultural Medallion Fund that gives practical support for their continuation of culinary pursuits and compensates them time taken to pass on distinctions of their craft to younger chefs and hawkers. This compliments SkillsFuture's focus on encouraging mastery and mentorship. How we honour our food artisans matters. The reason why the world reveres Japan's sushi masters as master craftsmen is because Japan respects them so. Japan submitted their food culture for UNESCO's 2013 Intangible Cultural Heritage List. That same year, Turkey did the same for its own Turkish coffeehouse culture.”
“Madam, finding good, old-school hawker food has become surprisingly difficult over the last 10 years. It is not that the majority of our hawker food tastes terrible. It is that it tastes so average. Most hawkers have already gone down the road of generic pre-made factory food in the name of cost efficiency and productivity. It is an economically understandable but culturally unsatisfying answer to our rising cost and manpower issues. The difference you taste between a hand-crafted curry puff from a hawker stall and a generic one bought in the mall is not just sentiment. It is the difference between mastery and mediocrity. Preserve our hawker heritage and you preserve a cultural touchstone of all our pioneering values – a shared reminder that we are all capable of creating greatness even through simple things and simple circumstances. Page: 32 I want to focus on three practical things we could do to help protect our hawker heritage. First, provide appropriate representation at state level that specifically looks at protecting heritage and documenting hawker craft. Historically, the main reason why hawker centres fall under the NEA and HDB is because they were just a solution to health and environmental issues or street hawking. But these agencies, by default, will prioritise issues of food safety, environmental health and affordability rather than cultural preservation. Safeguarding our hawker heritage requires cultural, historical and aesthetic distinctions. Would this task fall more appropriately under an agency that already oversees culture and heritage, like the National Heritage Board? Second, do not make affordability the most significant KPI of hawker centres. Authenticity and excellence of offering have to count, too.”
“If we want young people to learn how to build a common narrative and integrate with each other, it is not going to be just through piecemeal events like Racial Harmony Day. At 50 years old, we are still in the middle of writing our national story. So, let us help the next generation write a really great one together.”
“People are reading, writing, interpreting, criticising every day and the problem is too many of them are doing it really badly. Literature teaches us how to interpret subtexts through evidence, not just emotion. Literature teaches us the patience to read through thousands of words, a skill you need to process an entire white paper or a ministerial speech. Literature teaches us to spot those who used hyperbole to stir us to hate and empowers us to use words with sensitivity and nuance when we respond back on Facebook, trying to spread peace online. Literature helps us to negotiate different perspectives, empathise with different characters and form thoughts for opinions and where, in an increasingly partisan political environment, he who knows how to tell the best stories wields the greatest influence. The impact of literary awareness cannot be underestimated. An unliterary society will be a politically and culturally immature one. Invest in the literary education of our young people and you invest in the possibility of more informed citizens and objective voters as well. So, we should rethink the role of literature and, for that matter, social studies in school. We need a radical linkway forward to understand a radical new kind of nation. Perhaps, literature, as a new sort of social studies, is one answer. We can study local narratives, fiction and non-fiction, understand character and conflict, identify biases, explore local themes and deconstruct local narratives. Identity, like integration, is built through a sum of choices, the kind that you learn through an extended programme or a curriculum, not ones of experiences.”
“The Swedish system even caters to a diversity of working arrangements, like overnight centres for children of single parents who have to do shift work. This empowers more parents to stay in paid employment. A 2011 OECD study discovered that countries like Sweden which invested in services, such as childcare, versus giving money away to families in subsidies were much more successful at reversing declining fertility rates. So, it looks worthwhile for us to follow suit. Reimagine Integration Programmes My second cut is on reimagining integration programmes. Madam, everything is story and every one of us sitting here in Parliament and outside of it is a character. Every single moment, someone is reading and interpreting us and writing another story of their own and how fair and accurate that narrative may end up with completely depends on their skill of interpretation and this is why Singapore needs to bring back the study of literature again. Page: 74 The skillsets that literature teaches may be exactly what we need to help young people deal with a growing climate of conflicting narratives that are sowing confusion, fear and division. I could have filed this cut under MOE but I filed it under PMO instead because I do think the declining literature rate does impact on our ability to integrate as a nation. From 1992 to 2012, we saw a 80% to 90% drop in youth studying literature and the cost of our declining sophistication in language is invisible and it does look insignificant, but it is not. You see the cost play out every day in ugly Facebook status updates and all those xenophobic comments on The Real Singapore. This is what happens when people do not appreciate the creative and destructive power of words.”
“The quality Page: 73 of the child's care then depends on how educated and conscientious the mother herself, grandparent or maid is and this current situation then creates inequalities from the onset because, really, it is mostly the children of higher income working couples who benefit most from early exposure to professional education at our best commercial childcare centres versus children who only experience babysitting of varying degrees of quality. Second, what if we also focus our resources on incentivising fathers to be equally present for their children? Research shows that more involved fathers lead to more positive outcomes on children's well-being across all income classes. The countries which successfully reversed their trend of falling fertility rate were also the ones that most aggressively used policy to encourage fathers and mothers to co-parent equally. To inspire such change, we cannot just offer a token one week of paternity leave. Many modern dads want to be involved. Let us incentivise more involved fathers by converting more of our maternity leave into shared parental leave that either parent can opt to take. To equalise the early education of all our children, I hope we can consider plotting our way towards the Swedish strategy of increasing fertility by creating an excellent ecosystem of universal, affordable educational childcare. Most Swedish children go to a preschool of trained educators, even when there is a parent still at home because nurseries are seen as high-quality places to be. And since parental leave is so generous there, almost every child is simultaneously being cared for by both their mum and dad, at least until their first birthday as well. So, Swedish children get the best of both worlds.”
“Madam, the commitment to equalisation of opportunities is one of the most powerful promises we ask our children to make every morning when they say the pledge. To build a city based on justice and equality, we have to be constantly vigilant in closing the gaps of inequality, rather than widening them by giving further advantage to those who already have more. During Budget, I talked about how between what we say, what we do and what we reward will always speak the loudest to our audience. So, no matter how sincerely and how often the state says that all children are supported equally in Singapore, as long as there is such a high-profile difference between how we reward the single mother and the married mother for what is essentially the same act of childbearing, people will disbelieve. The Baby Bonus and Child Development Account alone can represent up to $12,000 worth of benefits that could be spent on a child's welfare. That is not an insignificant or theoretical difference to any mother, let alone a single working mum raising a child of special needs. I see two possibilities that not only communicate more accurately our commitment to equalisation of opportunities but, apparently, more effective in bringing up the fertility rate anyway. First, what if we focus more of our resources on making high quality childcare even more affordable and universal instead of doling out cash subsidies or tax rebates as rewards for births? Currently, since childcare subsidies favoured dual-income families, many stay-at-home mums and single mums opt to care for their children themselves or outsource it to a grandparent. In fact, many working mums still opt for foreign domestic workers to take care of their kids as even subsidised professional infant care is beyond their budget.”
“For instance, when we fund films beyond just ROI at the box office, could a KPI be the number of positive mentions Singapore got in the international press, as well? In the 1990s, when South Korea saw that box office revenue of Jurassic Park equalled the total earnings from the sale 1.5 million South Korean cars, they made big policy changes to coordinate and scale their culture-making industries. Two decades later, they became a cultural giant in Asia – and we could be too! Our local cultural makers are the hungrious in Singapore to innovate and internationalise. Could we show that we will support them in this effort? Support Local Cultural Goods”
“Sir, investing in our cultural goods is a double win. It builds international reputation, and second and more importantly, it builds local identity and affection for Singapore. I have three suggestions to help our cultural goods innovate and internationalise. First, let us right-size support with our creative micro-entrepreneurs in mind. The same arguments about how our smaller SMEs do not have the capital cash flow or headcount to make use of all our innovation grants apply many times more so for our micro-enterprises. Many of our best culture-builders today are still one-man operations or have tiny teams. But they could be tomorrow's SMEs if they had right-size intervention. Today's top La Salle fashion student could be the next Charles and Keith. How about we explore making micro-loans available for a designer wanting to buy a 3D printer to prototype a new jewellery line? Or a SkillsFuture scholarship for the photographer who wants to understudy a Magnum photographer? Or maybe even a Block 71 for cultural-building start-ups that provide access to free rent, community mentors and venture capitalists that will help our hungrious high-potential creatives break through into the international market? Second, maybe we could look at building up local demand for our cultural goods with an export strategy in mind. We should begin with legislating quotas or subsidising prime-time airplay of local content, like music, music videos or short films. This is a tried and tested strategy – New Zealand, Canada, Australia, UK, all did it to prepare their cultural goods for export worthiness. Third, let us revisit the KPIs for the development of this sector. Funding for our culture-making industries cannot be judged just on quantitative but qualitative aspects as well.”
“Singapore should not be afraid of taking the moral stand that our workers must not be treated as productivity units but as people who are and will always be part of a family. The well-being of our workers is intrinsically tied to the well-being of their family. So, can we legislate caregiver leave so that all our workers who need to care for their dependents are able to do so with peace of mind? Flexible Work Arrangement”
“Yet another cost to take into account". I am in the Food and Beverage (F&B) sector and it is one of the most pressured profit margin industries in Singapore right now, so I know it is hard. But look, we are not just business owners, we too are human, we too have family. Nobody came into this world alone and everybody has dependents. What you do for Page: 89 your workers will be what you hope will be done for you or yours. These past few months when I have to care for my newborn, my father was simultaneously diagnosed with terminal cancer. If not for the flexible nature of my siblings' and my work, supportive co-workers and for my mum being a stay-at-home mum herself, there was no way my family could have been fully there for both dependants when they needed us most. My four months of legislated maternity leave ended up being conveniently caregiver leave as well, in some sense. So, not everybody has that flexibility and not everyone will have employers who are willing to give them that option. Legislation sends a very strong message to employers that the need to support our caregiving workers is by rule. Mdm Chairman herself has called for legislation of eldercare leave before. The Deputy Prime Minister, too, has spoken about the need for cultural transformation in Singapore with regard to how we view our workers. So, let us jumpstart that cultural transformation. Legal norms and policy norms are there to lead the way to where we believe our social economic norms need to be. We like to say that Singapore has no natural resources to boost our Singapore economy except our human resources. Well then, we should protect the integrity of this precious resource.”
“Our dependency ratio is rising and someone needs to take up the cost and responsibility of caregiving for our vulnerable. We still hope for that first someone to be from the family rather than the state and that is right. But the problem is this: not every family can. An NTUC survey of 3,600 people discovered that although 60% of them have multiple dependents, 62% did not have flexi-work benefits and 77% did not have eldercare leave. Many working caregivers are forced to use up their annual or sick leave or just take the career reputation hit of arriving at work late and leaving early. In the absence of a supportive workplace, how some families currently solve this situation is to have one family member leave paid employment to become the caregiver and the longer the caregiving stint, the bigger possibility that this caregiver himself will end up being a dependant, having less funds for his own retirement. Given a shortfall of local manpower faced by certain industries as well as our worries about helping individuals manage the cost of retirement, it is strategic to help our working men and women who are doubling up as caregivers to either stay in or re-enter the workforce if that is what they want. We should just not talk about the social value of "family take care of family first" but empower those who are trying to live out that value. And one of the most significant first steps to doing so is to legislate caregiver leave. Public bodies have already set this example by providing its employees with eldercare leave since 2014. The private sector is currently not obliged to do so. I am a multiple business owner myself, so I know this not a small thing to ask from businesses and it may be unpopular. And some fellow business owners will hear this and think, "Alamak!”
“Unlike the Sports and Drama CCAs, many student clubs like Library, Gardening and even Student Councils do not have big national competitions for the students to gun for. So, this proposal is particularly great for them because it now gives them a national level challenge to engage in. Use CCAs to help kids frame the exploration of personal passions with the broader perspective of "How can my individual passions actually help solve a community problem?" Second, form a consortium of civil society leaders and future-forward civil servants that can strategise about what are the top national social issues to work on where students can actually make a dent in. Turn it into a programme that every school can execute through their CCAs. So, let us teach kids to converge their personal interests in serving a country's needs. Kids want to be part of a big picture. If we are going to give them $20,000, let us show them how big that picture can be and help them make a real obvious difference rather than an imagined "feel good" one. Promote Outdoor Activities”
“I declare my interest as a social innovator with the Thought Collective. Values in Action or VIA is good. Let us talk about how to make it great. What stops VIA from having a bigger social impact is that though it gives kids content about values, it fails to give kids context surrounding the problems all these values could help solve. Teach a kid to be generous to the poor without grounding him with insights into why not all social solutions or situations are created equal and he might end up either cynical or, maybe, just not helpful. The problem schools face in creating more impactful VIA programmes is not a lack of good intent. It is a lack of a strategic network of support. Teachers do want to do good, better, but they need outside expertise. So, what schools need are trusted partners from the civil Page: 62 society sector with whom they can co-create and consult. The core business of schools is the holistic education of our children, not the holistic understanding of how to make great social impact. That is the core business of civil society and they are the missing link who could help. These are the people who know and care for these social problems inside out and they spend their entire careers thinking of solutions. So, roping in your academics, innovators, thought leaders, who hold a strong future vision for social sector solutions but having no avenue to engage you to share where the biggest possibilities for an impact are. So, two suggestions on how socially driven innovation can be nurtured in schools. First, let us recast an exciting new socially oriented vision for co-curricular activities (CCAs). CCAs should still be primarily a fun avenue for kids to develop their non-academic interests. But let us add a social goal for them to accomplish as well.”
“The thing about money is that we will never feel we have enough of it – not unless we become very clear about what is the meaning we wanted all that money to create for us in the first place. We cannot be so relentless in our pursuit of tangible success that we sacrifice all the intangible things that we really care about most. Our Jubilee year Budget is a great time to take stock on a national level to discuss what Singaporeans find most meaningful to work towards. I believe, as we find our significance, the "Why" that Miss Penny Low referred to, more of us will find our satisfaction. In conclusion, if Budget 2014's big win was about let us embrace the Pioneer Generation, I hope that the Budget this year and beyond is about embracing and jump-starting the Pioneering Generations that will come. Give us the freedom that allows innovation to happen. Help the needful among us to allow inclusivity to truly bloom. Support our creative efforts that ultimately solidify all our identity as Singaporeans. Thank you, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, for a Budget that takes meaningful steps forward to a Singapore I want to believe in. I support it and I look forward to even more surprising moves in the future [Applause]. 5.59 pm”
“If we are a nation already struggling to replace ourselves, should we not welcome any new young life that has been given unto Singapore with equal honour? Should not all Singapore children be automatically included in the State's blessing? Last, empowering identity. Singapore has never backed down from making dramatic investments in the tangible infrastructure of nation-building. When we see the impact it will make a decade or so down the road, we willingly pay the cost. And I like that spirit. I hope we can see an equally bold spirit – it does not need to be the same investment – but in our intangible infrastructure. Nations are not just built on airports, buildings and transport Page: 121 systems. They are also built upon the stories that we tell ourselves. I will talk more in the COS debates about how we should invest in the creation of our local cultural goods and, in particular, protect our hawker cultural heritage. Music, fashion, graphic design, hawker food, film, brands, memories – these are not petty things at all to invest in. If we leave the fate of our local culture purely to market forces, we risk losing all the small stuff that binds and anchors us to a country when everything in the world is beckoning us to leave. Singapore must dare to invest in her own story and support her story-makers and story-tellers: the writers, artistes, creatives, film-makers, historians, all that. A Budget debate, by nature, focuses on how to ensure everybody in our country is able to have money, make money and access their money. And rightfully so, because money lets us do really, really incredible things. But any discussion about money that leaves out meaning will have no currency.”
“During the madness of caring for a baby, I felt very, very grateful for whoever fought for the extension of maternity leave from two months to four months. Serious props to you. And for a season, cash flow was tight in my own household. So, when I got notices in the mail about "You got Baby Bonus, you got your first one-for-one savings top-up in your child's Child Development Account and there was subsidised infant care", I was very, very grateful for every single one of these policies. The news that this Budget provides even more care for a working married mother like me is great. But all this just makes me consider again and again how much more relief and gratitude a single working mother would feel if she could receive what I had received. I admit I am unfamiliar with all the complexities behind the crafting of this policy, so forgive my ignorance, I would love an open conversation to know more about that. But what I am more familiar with is how the policy makes single mothers feel. Some feel that they are being told that they and their children are not worthy. Some feel that they are being unfairly punished for choosing to take the harder road of going through with the pregnancy rather than aborting the child when their partners chose to run out on them. Some of us married mothers are friends with such single working mothers and we can testify to their work ethic, their refusal to make excuses and how devoted they are to raising their children well. We married mothers will look at such single mothers and just see women who have chosen to soldier alone in a very tough job meant for two and they need all the support they can get. And, moreover, the children of single mothers are Singapore's children, too.”
“But the truth is the more privileged we are, the more automatically included we are into the system and, thus, the more automatically decisions are made for our good. For example, the middle class automatically gets their CPF Housing Grant when they purchase their flats. Paperwork is minimal. The working poor, on the other hand, if they want to get their Special and Additional CPF Housing Grants, they got to submit documents to prove they are working enough and poor enough. And making them go through all of that can be stigmatising. Automatic inclusion, however, says to a recipient of welfare, "I want to help you. I do not need you to keep proving to me again and again that you are worth helping. You are in a hard place and I will neither burden nor shame you any further." It treats the recipient as worthy and preserves their dignity. So, yes, I hope we can explore how to make even more social assistance benefits automatically inclusive. Page: 120 This does not need to undermine Singapore's belief in a strong work ethic and personal responsibility as the best solution of poverty versus mere welfare. In fact, we can use automatic inclusion to reinforce the value of work, for instance, by having any low-wage worker who already qualifies for Workfare Income Supplement to be automatically included for whatever relevant public assistance scheme he would have already qualified for anyway. There is one particular group in Singapore that I hope will be considered for automatic inclusion of some sort as well and, that is, the children of single mothers. Shortly after I was sworn in as a Nominated Member of Parliament, I became a mother.”
“So, it is important for us young Singaporeans to lay down our self-righteousness and admit that we all struggle with inconsistencies – it is not just the Government. We are all a work-in-progress in terms of living out what we value. Many of us who want inclusivity also find ourselves excluding. Some of us may speak compassionately about the poor and powerless but are filled with loathing for the rich and powerful. Some of us may fight lovingly for animals, but we talk hatefully about new migrants. If we are honest, we would admit that we are all inconsistent. But if we are mature, we would also in the same breath say we are not satisfied with being inconsistent and we will always try to stay open to changing how we view the other and creating a place that welcomes them. Inclusivity begins in humility. The young are looking towards us adults in leadership to model what humility looks and sounds like. So, I hope all of us – the people and the state – will be honest, mature and humble enough to keep an open conversation going as we dialogue together about what it means to develop compassionate policies that include everybody – rich and poor, young and the old, strong and the weak, native and the foreigner, PAP and Opposition, the ones who got their act together, the ones who screw up. We are all worthy of being heard and being helped. That is why the Silver Support Scheme is so welcomed in this year's Budget because to automatically include the needy elderly without needing them to go through the stigma of jumping through bureaucratic hoops, signals a new way forward for how we want in social support. Automatic inclusion is not something that those of us who are privileged think much about.”