Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally speech on Aug 17, 2008

August 18, 2008 by admin
Filed under: Current Affairs 

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally speech on Aug 17, 2008

Part 2

To address that problem, we’ve got to keep our economy competitive, we’ve got to produce more, be more productive. Therefore earn more for ourselves, then we can raise our standard of living despite increases in oil and food prices.

The well-being of Singaporeans depends not just on bread and butter issues but also on our human and social environment, which means on how we behave, how we relate to one another as Singaporeans. How can we make Singapore a more gracious society? We’ve done many things over the years to improve ourselves. We’ve got all sorts of campaigns and initiatives – queue up, be courteous, no spitting, please flush toilets, most recently, service excellence – Go the Extra Mile for Singapore.

Sometimes people laugh at us. But actually these are things which we can work on and improve. And if we make people aware of their behaviour and conscious of the impact on others, we can educate them and gradually they can learn new habits and they will respond and our social norms will upgrade.

And we have made progress. For us living in Singapore seeing one another day by day, you don’t notice. For people who come here once in a while and see us at long intervals it’s like on one of these speeded up movies, they can see the difference. There was a letter in The Straits Times forum page recently which was very interesting and I was very moved reading it.

It was from a Sri Lankan lady who had visited Singapore 40 years ago when she came here on her way to America to be a post-graduate student. And she came back again recently, now much older and she needed a wheelchair at the airport. And she spent a few days in Singapore. And she was especially moved to write this letter which The Straits Times published, and let me read a little bit of it:

“From the moment I landed until I left, the city impressed me… Everywhere I met only kindness… I was in a shopping centre and asked a young girl the way to the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) station. She offered to show me the way, and taking my shopping bags, led me to the station…Shopkeepers gave me water to drink, people waiting for a bus walked with me to the correct bus stop, and people helped me cross the street. I have never experienced this sort of kindness anywhere else in the world.”

I think she must have been a very nice lady. But the people who behaved so well to her flew the flag for Singapore. We don’t know who they are but we should thank them. We can do even better of course. We have a Singapore Kindness Movement and it conducts surveys of social behaviours that Singaporeans consider important and not important. And they showed me a list of the different things – quite interesting. Not important, considered not important doesn’t mean really not important. But considered important at least shows me where some of the problems are.

So, some of the things we’re good at is sitting properly at the cinema – don’t put your feet on the chair in front of you. Very difficult for tall people like me. Say “thank you” after being served – that people remember.

But other things not so good. Say “please” – not so common. Clear tables and return food trays – need to improve. We’re trying to inculcate this habit. I don’t understand. Every national serviceman knows exactly what to do in his cookhouse. Maybe need more reservist training. But at Suntec City no reservists, no NSmen \[national servicemen\]. So it’s going to take time to change the mindset, because the mindset is, I go to the foodcourts to eat and not to clean tables.

So I got a letter recently from somebody, a lady, an e-mail, talking exactly about this, about how we should make Singapore a more happy place to live. And she mentioned this. She said: “Actually we should feel quite embarrassed to leave our dirty plates and dirty tables for the next diner. In my mum’s house, after eating, we will clear our plates and clean the table… This is a good habit we should adopt outside the home.”

Then she went on to add: “Oh yes, most importantly no fines, no fines. Dishing out fines hurt relationships and no good image for PAP (People’s Action Party) government.”

So I thanked her for her good wishes which I’ll try and find some way before thinking about fines. One of the ways we’ve thought about, which MediaCorp thought about, was to hold a contest on Morning Express Class 95 FM. And we have the DJs, famous people Glenn Ong & the Flying Dutchman who are here tonight. And they invited listeners to send in their videos of the best and the worst Singaporean habits. Tremendous response. So I asked Mediacorp to compile some highlights, good & ugly, to share with you.

This is staying on one side of the escalator going up, so people can pass you.

The cab stealer.

This one on a bus, public transport.

This one crossing the road, red man flashing, all over the shop.

“My grandfather’s road, mah!”

This one gets the gold medal.

So there you are. I think the film-making is outstanding, the conduct can be improved.

I think the best way to focus our efforts is when there is a major event and we’re put to the test. And we’ve done well before – the International Olympic Council meeting in 2005, the IMF (International Monetary Fund) and World Bank meetings in 2006, and we put on a really good show, not just to impress people but because that’s the way we want to be.

And now we’ve to prepare for other major events: F1 next month, Apec (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation) next year, Youth Olympic Games in 2010. Let’s use these opportunities to improve our social graces.

This is how other countries have done it. The Olympic Games Sydney 2000, it set a very high benchmark. The show was very good. But what really impressed visitors was the genuine warmth and the sincerity of the Australians. There were 47,000 volunteers. They cheered, they drove buses, they manned checkpoints, they greeted visitors, they were friendly, effective, polite. They said: “G’day mate”. And after a while you know what that means and you feel welcome, created a whole atmosphere of friendliness and hospitality.

China is now hosting the Olympic Games. They’ve made a huge effort to welcome the athletes and the visitors. And you watched the opening ceremony, that’s spectacular. But what you may not have noticed, that they had launched large-scale civility campaigns to educate people. And they designated special days of the month for special movements.

So the 11th of the month is queueing up day – ‘pai dui re’ – because 11 (one one). The 22nd of every month is give your way to others, give your seat to others day – ‘rang wei re’ – because 22 looks like two chairs side by side.

For the games they mobilised 100,000 volunteers, mostly young men and women, university students, others. And tremendous pride in their country and every willingness to go the extra mile impressing the visitors, that here is a people who are proud of their country and who want to make visitors feel welcome.

So we too should mobilise ourselves for the YOG (Youth Olympic Games). It’s the first time ever the games are being held. So let’s make a special effort to make sure that it is an outstanding YOG (Youth Olympic Games).

We mobilised very successfully to support the bid when Teo Ser Luck went around – he’s not here, he’s in Beijing tonight – and Singaporeans from all walks of life spontaneously organised themselves to participate: schools, youth groups, companies, taxi drivers. And I think this grassroots participation impressed the IOC (International Olympic Committee), and so we won the bid. So let us rally together again, show what Singapore is about and welcome the world with our spirit and our warmth.

But we musn’t just stop at the YOG. We’ve got to work consistently at this patiently over many years, strive for higher standards and a permanent improvement in our behaviour. Not for other people, for ourselves so that we can be proud of ourselves and to make Singapore a better place for all of us.

I’ve just got an update on the game. Singapore zero, China two. The game is still progressing.

We’re creating a better Singapore for future generations to enjoy. So my next topic is babies. This is a very long story. So I’ve prepared a special slide which captures the story.

This is a slide which shows our total fertility rate (TFR), which means the average number of children born per woman over her lifetime. And this shows the TFR from 1960 all the way to right now 2007, last year, coming down like this.

And this single slide tells us about our history, about our economy, about our culture, and about our policies. Let me show you. The history is this graph, from six children per woman in 1960 coming down to the mid 70s to 2.1, which is the replacement level, because you need about two children per woman to replace herself and her husband, and then continuing to go down till it’s about 1.3 today.

It’s the same story which we see in Korea, in Taiwan, in China. All over Asia, as the economy developed, as we educated our people, as women got jobs and they were liberated, they stopped, just having one baby after another at home, and the numbers came down. That’s our history.

But if you zoom in into the last 30 years, you will see more interesting detail, starting with the way our economy is, because actually people have control over when they want their kids.

So when the economy goes down and times are uncertain and people worry about where they’re going to get their next meal, they put off having children. So you look at the graph coming down, but the times when it comes down sharply like here in the mid 1980s, it’s usually because the economy is not doing well. There was a recession in 1985, which was quite a problem.

In the late 90s it’s gone down again. That was the Asian crisis. And then if you look down here, comes down again – 9/11 and Sars (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). So, each time there’s a crisis, people put off having babies. Crisis passes, numbers bounce back up, but never quite go back to where it used to be.

But we can see something else very interesting in this graph. Look at the peaks rather than the low points. Take this one – 1976. Why is that? You take this one, another peak – 1988. Then you look at the next one – 2000. Dragon years. But each dragon smaller than the next dragon. So 2012, I worry for the little dragons.

You can also see our policies in this chart, family policies. In the 1960s the policy was “Two is Enough”. Fabulously successful. In fact, oversuccessful. We had a poster. You remember this. “Girl or boy, two is enough”. Two little girls. We achieved the target. We overfulfilled our plan. Went down.

In the late 80s we had to change our message: “Three if you can afford it”. So this was after the dip here, we got alarmed, we changed. Say, three kids. And it worked, there was some effect. Quite successful, went up, the dragon helped. But it stayed up for quite long. And then unfortunately it came down again.

And then we decided we needed some more policies. So we had baby bonus in 2001, and child development co-savings scheme – that’s the proper name but actually we call them baby bonus. And that unfortunately didn’t work because we were hit by 9/11 and Sars.

And come here, 2004, this is my little contribution, my first rally – marriage and procreation package. You see we’ve given up having a lot of pictures. Just one little infant. And if you study the graph very carefully you can see that in fact there was some improvement. Just a little bit. But you really can’t see it very well. We need a magnifying glass. So if we zoom in with a magnifying glass.

2004 – 1.26; 2007 – 1.29. So improvement. But the target is 2.1. So 1.5 is here, 2.1 is here. We have a problem. So the question is, what more should we do?

I think first we should encourage people to get married. And second, we should encourage couples to have children. The first step is to get the right partner and get married. I am not an expert in this. So I consulted the experts, those with the experience, and I talked to some of the matchmakers. We have SDU (Social Development Unit), we have SDS (Social Development Service). We have quite a number of private dating agencies now which have come along. So I talked to several of them.

And we had a very lively lunch exchange. I learnt a lot from them. And it’s fabulous material for a TV studio discussion, which one day they will do. They told me so many interesting stories. They put it graphically in real people’s lives the practical problems and how it works and what the difficulties are. So let me just summarise the main learning points because tonight is a lecture, not entertainment.

First of all and encouraging, many singles want to get married. They’re not happy to be single, they want to get married. They are serious, they are not just out to have a good time. But they face difficulties. What are these difficulties? Some have never dated. They didn’t date in school, they started work. Once they settle into a routine, they are older, no chance, no social circle at all, no opportunities to meet new people.

So one matchmaker told me that one conversation he had, he talked to this lady: “What do you do after work? First of all, what do you do?”

She says: “I work.”

“After work, what do you do?”

“I go to the gym.”

“Weekends?”

“I stay at home with my parents.”

“Do you go out?”

“Yes, I bring out my nephews and nieces.”

So he says: “Oh dear, everybody will think that these are her children and will not chat her up.” “So have you met any new friends last week?”

Dead silence.

“How about last month?”

Again dead silence.

So they have a problem – how do you break out of this? Some people date but they start too late. And the dating agencies tell me that the women in their 30s have a big problem. They join up, they sign up, and there are men in their 30s too who sign up.

But the men in their 30s want to look for women in their 20s. Why? They make a very practical calculation: “You see, I’m 30something. Supposing I marry a woman who’s 30something, takes me a year to get to know her, we get married, we want to enjoy ourselves for a couple of years before we think about having babies. Then we think about having babies. You add it up, I’ll be 40something, my wife will be 40something. How?”

So therefore the 30-something-year-old looks for the 20-something-year-old girl. And the 30-something-year-old girl has a big problem. And I feel for her because I had a dialogue with some women, the Women’s Wing organised it for me. And one such lady stood up.

She had great courage. And she stood up and she spoke and she explained her problem, that she regretted. She started off putting her career first. She worked, she built up her career. After she got her career sorted out, in her 30s, she started thinking about looking for a partner. She joined, signed up dating agencies. Tried, no joy. And she was sharing her experience with us and with the room. She still hopes to find someone but it will be quite hard. So that’s a real problem.

The good news is that more people are prepared to seek help from the dating agencies. And the women are more willing to look for help than the men. The men are macho, sensitive about their ego, they don’t want to be seen going for help. The women are more prepared to go. So most dating agencies have more women than men – 60:40. That’s an encouragement to the men to sign up.

But unfortunately sometimes their social graces are not up to scratch. So the dating agency arranged, told me another story, they arranged for a guy to meet a date and the setting was a romantic dinner in a nice restaurant. And the guy turned up in slippers! So he counselled the guy. The guy says: “That is me! I work in slippers. I walk in slippers. I come in slippers.”

So they talked to him, finally persuaded him to buy a pair of shoes, keep the shoes in his car, so before getting down at the date, he puts on his shoes, he goes for the date.

And it worked. So they went a little further. Next thing he knew, the man gave him a call. He said: “What’s happening?”

He said: “I’m outside my girlfriend’s house.”

So he said: “Are you stalking her? Why are you there?”

He said: “No, no, no. She has invited me to meet her parents.”

“That’s good.” So he asked him: “Did you bring a present?”

So he said: “No.” So he was directed, ran around, bought a present, came back, knocked on the door, went in. Eventually it worked, got married. And then the lady said to him: “Quite interesting. Very unlike you to bring a present.”

So I thought to myself, wow, I was lucky. When I was invited to meet my girlfriend’s parents, I didn’t bring a present either. But fortunately we got married.

But you also need to have realistic expectations. You have to make an effort for the relationship to work. You musn’t be carried away by what you see, romantic images from the movies, boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, instantly married, lives happily ever after, maybe have twin babies.

But we’re real people, ordinary people in real life. We may not have instant sparks the first time. But you take your time, discover the person for who he or she is, nurture the relationship, and then maybe love may blossom. That’s how many Indian couples do it. They are matchmade. They don’t know each other very well before they marry but they develop the relationship. And it works.

So when I told this story to the women’s group, there were two Indian women sitting in the front row, nodding vigorously. And I talked to them afterwards. They turned out to be immigrants, both have lived here quite some time, both had been matchmade to their husbands, both happily married. And they said: “Yes, this is the way. This is one good way to do it.”

So I think that we have to take a practical approach to this. We’ll do more to help singles get married, to the extent that we can. We have the SDU, we have the SDS – social development unit and social development section in the PA (People’s Association). They’re working on this. They’re doing a very good job. Now they’re catering to different markets – graduates, non-graduates. SDU – graduates; SDS – non-graduates. I think we shouldn’t be so rigid. I think we should merge the two, have one more critical mass, more activities, and hopefully more pairing up and more weddings – and more children.

A lot of people want the SDU, SDS because government, so they know it’s real, they know it’s serious, they know that this is not some escort agency. It’s respectable. But there are also young people who don’t want the government to know that they’re dating and would like to use private agencies but want quality assurance, because just in case the private agency is not respectable, they don’t want to be trapped.

So we’re going to try to give them the best of both worlds. SDU will go into a new business to certify private agencies that meet quality standards. We have Case Trust. We will have SDU Trust. Put a logo down there.

But young people themselves should take the first step, don’t leave it till too late. Make time, go out, meet new friends, join a dating agency, doesn’t matter whether it’s SDU or whether it’s a private one. You may find someone you’re attracted to. Then you can marry the person you love. And then you can love the person you marry.

Once couples are married, we’d like them to have children. We used to think this would follow naturally. But it’s no longer always the case because couples are having fewer children, having them later, some preferring not to have any children at all. Why?

We looked at other countries. We see it happening all over East Asia, I told you just now earlier. Confucian societies with similar cultural values, undergoing very rapid transformations, social and economic change. So there are powerful social and cultural forces at work which are pushing us in the wrong direction. But it’s not just happening in the East, Asian societies. It’s happening in Western societies too.

In Australia the government is working hard to encourage couples to have more kids. They’ve had a baby bonus. They’ve had tax incentives. They’re introducing them now. They have quite a good slogan: “one for Dad, one for Mum, one for Australia”. Europe has this problem: many countries facing a dearth of babies.

But there’s something interesting in their experience. If you look at southern Europe – Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain – the countries with the more macho culture, the women are less liberated, they’re more likely to stay at home, less chance to work, fewer babies. But in northern Europe – Netherlands, Scandinavia – where the gender roles are more equal, the women are more likely to work, and yet more babies. That’s very interesting. Gender roles and this working is something which modern women put a lot of emphasis on.

So what’s happening in Singapore? I discussed this when I met the women, married, single, young, not so young. And they agreed that gender roles and helping mothers to work are important. And they gave me many ideas on what we could do to facilitate this. So let me share some with you.

First of all, you have to share responsibilities for child raising. Traditionally the husbands go to work, wear the pants, the wives stay at home, have the babies, take care of the babies. And it’s true that women are better and have a better touch with children.

But the situation today is different. And the men can make the effort. If husbands leave everything to the wives, or the women are forced to choose between working or having babies, they are going to go on baby strike. So the husband has to share duties at home.

I was discussing this with some MPs, including a lady MP, and I said: “You know nowadays I see men carrying babies in the markets when they go out.” So she said: “You think carrying babies is enough? We got to wake up at night, feed the baby, change the nappies.”

I used to change nappies in the days before Pampers. You see actually you got to fold the cloth, you got to put it on, you got to put the safety pin. I haven’t pricked any baby yet.

If I can do it, that means anybody can do it. And I think that you have to change these attitudes. We can’t change these mindsets by making speeches, but I think we can shift the ethos, the spirit, maybe in schools when it comes to domestic science, we must teach the boys also some of these skills. Try to influence them to have the right expectations and share the responsibility.

But in terms of things we can do, in terms of incentives, I think there are a couple of small things. We introduced child-care leave a few years ago which can be claimed by either parent. It’s now only two days a year. I think we can push this to six days a year. I see that women are cheering. The men ought to cheer too.

We will introduce one new thing – one-week unpaid infant care leave per year, either parent, until the child turns two years old. So first two years if some things, you need your infant to go for inoculation or some emergency, well, you can take some time. This is the first thing I learnt from the ladies.

The second thing is that we must have a good work-life balance. You must have flexible work arrangements so that it’s easier for women to have both, to work and to have children. And you must have family-friendly employers who will make this happen. So that they make the practical arrangements and their attitude, when you go they don’t make a sour face and they don’t make you feel a little black mark recorded in your annual confidential report. It makes a big difference.

And with a bit of effort and imagination, you can do a lot. You can provide nursing rooms so that mothers who are lactating can express the milk and store the bottles. You can allow telecommuting and be flexible about it, so long as the work is done. In fact, one company I know of actually allowed one employee to go all the way to Australia with her husband and telecommute from Australia and continued to be paid and do the work. And then she came back and she resumed her job.

You can find ways around having them physically present. So one catering company which has a lot of outdoor catering over weekends, outside catering, supplied their staff with walkie-talkies and with Blackberries so that they don’t have to be physically there. They can be with their family, they can go out, but they can keep an eye on the catering arrangements, make sure things don’t go wrong. I think such employers we should recognise and thank publicly. And MOM (Ministry of Manpower) and MCYS (Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports) will make a special effort to do that.

The Government will help to share some of this burden of the employers. For example, with maternity leave, which used to be eight weeks. We extended it by four weeks. Now it’s 12. And the extra four weeks the government was paying. And I think it’s been very much welcome by people. So now about three-quarters of women actually take 12 weeks maternity leave.

But if you’ve ever managed a baby, you’d know that actually 12 weeks is not very long. So I think what we should do is to increase it to 16 weeks. And these last four weeks I think we give some flexibility. Don’t make it necessarily all at the beginning. It can be any time in the first year and the government pays for these four weeks also.

But I would say whatever the leave arrangements and what the government carries ultimately the woman or the man must make a personal choice. Do you work 110 per cent on your career or do you set aside time for other activities, for a balanced life? I think each person has to decide his or her own point of balance.

I remember my own experience. I’m a beneficiary of this. My mother was a lawyer. But every day she came home to have lunch with us. So every day we come home from school, three of us, my mother is there, we have lunch. Nowadays you would call it quality time. This was before people invented such big words. All it meant was she had time for us, we had time to talk to her.

And it was a tremendous help. She avoided going out at night for functions. She had to go for, accompany my father, but business functions, very seldom. What it meant is less takings as a lawyer, less work, less conveyancing, but she decided her children were more important to her. And she acted on that and I think she was happy with that. And we’re definitely very grateful for that.

Today it’s harder to do this. The office hours are longer, the pace is more intense. People call them “office hours”. You must put quotes there because it starts in the morning but it doesn’t finish after dinner. And at home you are working, on holidays you’re working too on e-mail or Blackberry or whatever.

But despite this, I think you have to maintain a balanced, fulfilling life and you have to keep a pace which is sustainable not just for one, two years and you burn out, but for a lifetime and you are in balanced equilibrium, and at the end of your life or when you retire you say I’m satisfied, I had a good career, I’ve taken care of my family, I’ve brought up children, this is what life is about.

Work-life balance also applies to the children. I know a lot of parents complain about stress on their children, and especially complain because they say the education system causes the stress. We’ve trimmed the school syllabi – teach less, learn more.

But parents are still sending children, they want their children to do that extra little bit more. So enrichment classes, tuition classes, all sorts of programmes. And before exams, they feed their children chicken essence. So I see advertisements for chicken essence with kids in school uniforms prominently displayed outside schools.

I think some pressure is inevitable. It’s part of Singapore’s competitive spirit. Other East Asian societies are even more ruthlessly competitive. You look at the Koreans with their cram schools, or the Japanese, they have jukus I think they call them, Hong Kongers. I just read one article about the Koreans. They go there, they inspect your bag. No frivolous magazines, no handphones, no lipstick. You go in, no making friends with boys and girls. It’s like a prison. And every day they have one hour of rest, every week they have two hours on the weekend, to get into the right university.

We’re not like that. We have some stress but we should manage it, we should take it in our stride. It’s natural for parents to worry about children and to encourage them to work hard and do better. But we also need to understand them, to know that every child has different attitudes, different talents, to give them space to grow up, to let them learn and mature in their own time. Press them to do better but also know them and let them develop the way their nature inclines them to develop in many directions. May not be academic, may be sports, may be arts, may be music. But let them go with their nature.

Third thing which I learnt from the women is about the financial cost of having kids. Actually I didn’t need to learn this from women. I knew this. It’s a significant expense to bring up children.

First the direct child-raising expenses – the milk powder, the pram, the paediatrician. All those things cost money. But on top of the direct cost you also have to think about the opportunity cost for working mothers particularly and for professional mothers especially.

What do I mean by opportunity cost? When the mother is working, she’s earning money. When she’s looking after the child and she has to work less or less intensively, she has to forgo some income there to look after the child. So her income has come down some. So that’s called an opportunity cost. Less work, sacrifice their careers. And that is why often it’s the professional women, the more successful ones who say that it’s expensive to bring up children. So paradoxically the lower income women feel less opportunity cost, but the higher income women feel it so and say so.

Financial considerations cannot be the motive for having children. I think if you suggest to a couple that you know I give you a bit of discount, how about having more kids?, I think many will be very indignant at this, and rightly so. But it’s right for us to help women to lighten the burden of having children. And that’s why we had the baby bonus, that’s why we had the tax incentives……women to lighten the burden of having children and that’s why we had the baby bonus, that’s why we had the tax incentives.

And we will enhance these schemes. I don’t have the details tonight so you watch the next instalment but for the baby bonus, we will improve it for the first-time parents; for the tax incentives, we will do more in order to encourage mothers to work.

The fourth thing which the women asked me to focus on are early childhood arrangements. This is a major concern of parents, especially if both parents are working. The critical period is from birth to six years when they go to school because after they’ve gone to school, they are in Primary 1, well, they’re mostly taken care of and also a little bit bigger, able to look after themselves. But before they reach school, the first six years, those are critical and you want to have the peace of mind that they are being looked after well.

Most families take care of children at home. Either the grandparents keep an eye on them or they have extended family or they have maids.

But many working mothers depend on formal childcare arrangements and one-quarter of children of this age are in childcare centres and the most popular centres have got queues. You wait one year, sometimes more before you get in.

So I visited one, NTUC Childcare in Jurong, which is one of the popular ones. I’m very impressed with what they were doing, talked to some of the parents who came in the evening to pick their kids up and to meet me and they were very happy to have their kids there. Good environment, they will socialise, they learn social skills, dancing, they were preparing for National Day, they were making models, learning to interact with other kids, get along with other kids and the parents had peace of mind while they were working.

So I think that we should do more to build up the childcare sector. It’s important. I think we should do three things: make it more accessible, that means more centres; make it more affordable, that means bigger subsidies per child; and then make it higher quality, raise the standard so that we can work with this. So that way, we will have a better quality childcare centre and we will be able to work.

The kindergartens are another thing which we must do to improve. Not everybody goes to childcare centre but nearly everybody goes to kindergarten. And we have a very lively kindergarten sector in Singapore.

At the high end, I think they can look after themselves. At the middling end, mass market, the PAP Community Foundation centres, standards have improved but I think they can do better. I think that we should put a lot more effort into enhancing the kindergarten sector as well because it’s important for our kids to have a good kindergarten preparation when they go to school. We don’t want the kindergartens to be a pre-pre-school so when you go to Primary 1, you are already pressured; before you reach Primary 1, you are pre-pressured. You have competition to get into the kindergarten but you want a good kindergarten environment. And I think that we should be able to do that.

We’ve got already Government spending money on the kindergartens because qualifying institutions are getting subvensions and help from MOE (Ministry of Education). I think we should push this up substantially so that we can raise the standard, we can raise not just better teachers which we are doing, we can have better syllabuses, better run institutions, higher quality environment so the kids grow up much more confident & particularly for those whose backgrounds aren’t so ideal at home, they will be able to make it in kindergarten and start from a more equal starting point when they go to school.

This is a big move. We have deliberated this over a long time, we didn’t decide because our cut-off point was at Primary 1. I think our cut-off point mainly should still be at Primary 1 but we should begin to do more before kids reach Primary 1 so that we can prepare them for life and for school.

Those are four big things which we need to do. There are two more small things which we will also do which don’t affect a lot of people but which I think we should do. It’s right.

One, couples who have children but can’t conceive. They go for IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) but it’s expensive. So we will offer financial support to lower the costs of the IVF. Secondly, couples with many children. There was a letter in The Straits Times, I think there were five mothers, each of whom have five kids who said, remember us and we have five children, your incentives stop at four. So I think we should remember them and I think we should extend most of the incentives like tax reliefs, childcare subsidies and so on to the fifth and the subsequent child. There are not many of them but I hope the incentives will encourage those who can afford it to have more.

These measures all add up to a very significant packaage. We are talking about maybe $700 million a year. If more babies are born, it’s going to be more than $700 million a year but even that is about double what we are spending today on child incentives and altogether we’ll have about $1.6 billion spent a year or 0.6% of GDP.

Wong Kan Seng is in charge of population policies so he will have a press conference later this week and he will give you the full picture, including the numbers which I think many parents will be anxiously waiting for but please don’t wait for the press conference to pay attention. This package will make a difference to many couples but I can’t guarantee that it will solve our problem. Because this is a deep problem, we have to come back to this, revisit it periodically. Finally it’s about mindsets, personal choices & values. Please put emphasis on marriage, on family, make these your priorities, have a full and happy life.

I’ve got a message. We have lost 0-3. We were up against a very strong China team. I think they’ve done us proud. We should congratulate them and we should rejoice and celebrate.

Our children will grow up in a completely different world and we have to prepare them and prepare Singapore society for this world. One of the biggest changes that would affect us is the Internet. And new media is pervasive and fast-moving. Everyone is plugged in and connected. People are blogging, engaging one another, organising themselves online, doing politics online. We used to talk about grassroots. Now we have to think about net roots, people on the Internet.

And it’s happening worldwide. You look at America, the current election campaign. John McCain says I don’t know how to use the computer, I have no email. But he has a website on the Internet. He has to. JohnMcCain.com. Barack Obama, this is John McCain’s website.

Barack Obama, he uses a Blackberry, constantly texting, communicating, emailing and the Internet is a key part of his campaign. He’s got a powerful simple home page – change we can believe in. And he’s used it effectively to reach out to younger Americans to get them highly energised and participating and rooting for him and helping him to run the system.

So he’s got Chris Hughes. Chris Hughes is one of the founders of Facebook. Twenty-four years old, I suppose must be worth a few hundred million dollars now, dropped out of university, who has joined Barack Obama to help Barack Obama use Facebook technology to organise his campaign; his volunteers, his events, his donations, his activities, his appearances, his emails, the whole lot.

And therefore Barack Obama has a Facebook presence which you can see and like all of his pages, there’s one very interesting button on it which is black red: donate now. And very powerful because people are taken up by this and 1.5 million people have clicked that button and each one small amount but altogether adding up, I think, to about $100 million, maybe more by now. Cumulatively a huge boost to his campaign so much so that he can say, I don’t want government money. I am going on my grassroots money. But it’s still money.

But Barack Obama also runs into trouble on the Internet because all sorts of stories go on like he’s a Muslim or he didn’t do this or he did that and he can’t go around fighting untruths all over the Internet everywhere. So what he has done is to collect all these untruths together to make one website which is called Fight the Smears.

So John McCain attacks him for not visiting wounded troops and then there’s a rebuttal. And if you go in, whole list of all the things which are untrue and all the explanations according to Barack Obama’s campaign. So he is using the Internet but he’s also running into some of the difficulties of using the Internet.

This is America. Let me take another country nearer here, Korea, in Asia. It’s the world’s most wired country, mostest broadband, mostest usage, people do everything on the Internet and it’s had a huge impact on Korean politics.

It’s empowered new groups because they mobilise and they activate on the Internet. So it helped President Lee Myunk-bak in his election campaign last December to win a resounding victory because on the Internet people could mobilise and new groups could form. But on the Internet, we also have rapidly changing moods in the population. So within a few months, after being elected, President Lee was under siege. And there were mass demonstrations. They said million-men demonstrations, maybe a slight exaggeration but if you look at the picture, it looks huge. This is a candlelight picture, in Seoul.

What were they agitated about? Mad cow disease. Facts? Actually rumours. Fantastic rumours. First rumour, 94 per cent of Koreans have a special gene. When they eat beef, they will get mad cow disease. So that went around. Everybody got excited. Calm down. Next rumour. Cow products are used to make pampers, babies wear pampers, babies will get mad cow disease. So videos & pictures circulated online. This is a real event.

Here’s another one. There are some even ruder which I thought I shouldn’t show you tonight but you can find them. And then from the Internet, it comes back, people get agitated, demonstrations go back on the Internet again. So President Lee Myunk-bak calls this ‘infodemics’, anonymous false information, create discontent and unhappiness, spread like an epidemic in the real world. But President Lee calls it infodemics, one Korean newspaper who doesn’t have to be so careful with its words calls it mad cow madness. That’s Korea, that’s a negative example.

Malaysia is another interesting example where the Internet has become an active space for information and engagement. There’s lively debate, serious contributions but also more doubtful stuff and there are blogs, chatrooms, there are alternative news sites like Malaysiakini which is very popular and I know many Sporeans visit it. And it has quite a lot of news.

And the politicians themselves actively participate in cyberspace. So Dr Mahathir has a blog now. He uses the name Che Det.

He started in politics and he went in to have a blog. Other people start with blogs and then go into politics. We have heard about Jeff Ooi, famous blogger, stood for election, elected. So in the recent elections there was a mass of materials circulating, blogs, SMS (short message service), YouTube and the public went to cyberspace to get what they couldn’t get from the mainstream media.

The opposition was there, all over. I show you Anwar Ibrahim’s website. Pictures of him. Videos of him, pictures. BN (Barisan Nasional) also has a website, like that. And so the battle went on in cyberspace. It wasn’t just cyberspace of course. There was also real-life politics in Malaysia because the opposition raised many hot issues in their ceramahs, in their meetings: rising cost of living, poor public service delivery and perceived inequalities in the government’s policies, to put it delicately.

But these were issues which were picked up in the new media and then virally distributed, one shares with two, two shares with four and it multiplies. And everybody gets the message and the result was March 8th when the elections were held.

Even in China which has the world’s largest number of Internet users now, more than America, the Internet has become an important factor.

After the Sichuan earthquake, netizens mobilised to raise funds and to show support for the victims. So I show you one slide. (Chinese phrase) and it had an impact on the mood and the sense of patriotism and unity which the Chinese developed after the Sichuan earthquake. So their leaders are now engaging on the new media and President Hu Jintao had his first web chat recently, answered a few questions.

So these are other countries. In Singapore, the new media is also quite a big thing. I talked about this two years ago but in tw years we’ve moved on since then.

Today more than 80% of households have broadband. There are six million handphones in Singapore. You think about that, 4.5 million people, six million handphones. More handphones per couple than babies. No wonder no time to have babies.

But the young people are totally immersed in this medium. They are reading the print newspapers less. They are getting the information, discussing issues online so the ST website, people are participating, CNA website, the same, Zaobao has Omy, ST means the Straits Times website. Zaobao has Omy, also a very interesting new approach to presenting the news and engaging the audience. And people are writing their own content, sharing it with others, organising interest groups.

All this has changed the way the Government works. Our services have gone online, 24/7. You want a passport renewal, you can do that. You want to incorporate a new business, set up a new company, 20 minutes, it’s done. You want to pay your taxes, IRAS (Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore), no trouble. And the Government is also communicating and engaging with Singaporeans online.

We are not just pumping out stuff. We have some quite interesting stuff which we are pumping out. We have some video clips. I think MDA (Media Development Authority) showing the way. Some of you may remember Christopher Chia who’s the CEO (chief executive officer), turns out he’s a very good hip-hop dancer.

But also two-way engagement & participation. And REACH (Reaching Everyone for Active Citizenry @ Home) is at the forefront of that because REACH, Feedback, they need to engage people. So they’ve got a website which is popular and they’ve got blogs, online chats and so on.

And they also participate on Facebook. And you get quite a lot of participation. For my rally today, I got a lot of feeback from REACH and the subjects which I’m talking about are the subjects which are hot on REACH. So you look at this, their homepage, what do you find? Rising cost of living, hot topics.

So that’s the way the Government works, that’s the way Singaporeans work and that’s the way we will have to adjust in order to conduct our politics.

We have to adapt to this, get used to this, turn it to positive effect, use it to inform, to educate, engage people. And each of us has to learn. It’s not something which you learn to mouse-click you are there, you must learn how to be savvy cyber-citizens.

Don’t get taken in. Be discerning about what you see on the Internet. When people say click here, check first before you click. When people say this is true, don’t just send it to all your friends. Ask first, is this true? Set prudent limits so that we can flag problems and we know where the dangerous ground is. Participate actively by all means but don’t get swept away. And please don’t catch mad cow madness.

Our rules governing politics also must keep up to date. First of all, party political films, that means films about political matters. Right now they are totally banned and for a reason. Because politics is a serious affair, we want voters to consider issues rationally, coolly, detached, think through decisions which affect your future and make a considered judgment.

And our worry is that films are an emotive medium. The impact of seeing something on a flim is quite different from reading something in cold print. It hits you viscerally. It engages your emotions before your thinking processes can kick in and if you are watching it in a crowd, even more powerful. Then passions can get stirred up and people can get carried away.

I think this is a valid concern but I don’t think an outright ban is still sensible because this is how people communicate on the Web in daily life. They make videos, they pass clips around.

You saw the clips just now from the Flying Dutchman. Even my NDR,, National Day Rally, NDR speech is now NDR multi-media super show. Has to be because that’s the way you’ll have to communicate & after the speech, videos, blog responses & people make these things. Anybody can do this any time anywhere. Let me show you.

I have a handphone here, it’s an ordinary Nokia handphone. It’s a handphone which has a little programme loaded in it called Qik. And what Qik does is to turn this handphone into a video camera. If I click it, it will turn on, become a video camera and furthermore it will stream the picture immediately onto the Internet, onto my website.

So if I turn on the camera now and I’m filming you now, you look on my website, you can see yourself. And I think we must make sure we see the upstairs people too. Slow, delay but it works. So please wave, you’re on Candid Camera. There you are, simple as that. I’ve just made our first non-political video.

So we’ve got to allow political videos but with some safeguards. Some things are obviously alright – factual footage, documentaries, recordings of live events.

I think National Day Rally, surely no problem. But I think some things should still be off limits. If you make a political commercial so that it’s purely made-up material, partisan stuff, footage distorted to create a slanted impression, I think those should still be off limits.

In between what is ok and what is not ok, there will be grey areas. But I think we can deal with this. Just as we deal with it for non-political films, we have censorship, we have classification standards. It depends on subjective judgment but we’ve worked out a workable system, a panel applies their minds, they make a judgment. I think we can work something out but the overriding consideration is to preserve the integrity & the quality and the honesty of our political discourse. Keep it straight, keep it serious, think carefully about serious matters which concern our lives.

The second thing we should change are the rules for political material which can be put onto the Internet during elections. The rules we now have were settled before the last GE (General Election) so for example, they are very restrictive. No podcast, no videocast & most people can’t post materials during the election period. Only the parties, only the candidates, their agents can do that.

By the next GE, five yrs would have passed. Now cyber years are like dog years. One year in cyberspace equals to seven years in real life. That’s the pace at which things change. So five years times seven means 35 years in the real world, means our old rules are way way out of date, means we have to change to new rules, liberalise, to allow people to participate more actively & flexibly.

So you must allow podcasts, videocasts, must be allowed to post other election materials also but we have to maintain or try to maintain accountability and responsibility somehow. It’s not easy to do this. Do not think that other countries do not face these problems, they do. The Koreans are very exercised about this.

Every time I meet them, I exchange notes with them and they ask us how we intend to deal with it and I ask them how they are dealing with it. They don’t have an answer but it’s a real problem.

We have an Advisory Council on the Impact of New Media on Society (AIMS). Mr Cheong Yip Seng is chairing it & is studying these issues in detail. We have been thinking about this I think for quite many months now. I look forward to seeing the recommendations.

But let me say that beyond cyberspace, politics is about people’s lives in the real world. You can’t vote for an avatar on Second Life. We are talking about real life, not second life. We have to get a direct feel for a person, do you trust him, is he capable, is he honest, will he work?

So you got to talk, you got to argue, you got to persuade and then you got to mobilise and work together for what you together believe in. And you can’t just do this online, reading emails or even reading, listening to podcasts or watching vodcasts. You have to do it face to face.

And we do this all the time. Grassroots sessions, dialogues, meetings. We are a small society so it’s possible for us to interact and get to know one another well. You cannot have make-believe because if your Prime Minister is just an image on the screen, everybody will know he’s just an image on the screen.

He has to be here in real life and you have to feel the person and then you will know. So that’s how politics has to be done. We have a few restraints because we can’t afford to take chances with race and religion but by and large, Sporeans are free to engage, to talk, to mobilise, to influence one another, to do nearly everything, especially indoors where we lifted the limits a few years ago.

There’s one remaining restriction and that’s on outdoor demonstrations. We still don’t allow this and our concern is law and order and security. It comes back to race and religion again because one incident could undermine our racial harmony and confidence in Spore.

But again like political videos, valid concern but we have to move away from this total ban and find ways to allow people to let off steam a little bit more but safely.

How? We have a Speakers’ Corner at Hong Lim Park. Well-defined location, accessible, near the MRT, not so many speakers but if you want to go there, there is place. Just put your name down & you can speak. So I think that we should allow outdoor public demonstrations also at the Speakers’ Corner.

Still subject to basic rules of law and order and still stay away from race, language and religion. I think we’ll still call it Speakers’ Corner, no need to call it Demonstrators’ Corner.

But we will manage it with a light touch. So I think there’s no need for the police to get involved. We will hand this over. Mah Bow Tan has agreed, NParks (National Parks Board) will take over. And NParks, you know their green fingers, everything will grow nicely, it will be well in hand and I think we should look into online registration for Speakers’ Corner so you don’t have to go to their office.

The overall thrust of all these changes is to liberalise our society, to widen the space for expression and participation. We encourage more citizens to engage in debate, to participate in building our shared future and we will progressively open up our system even more.

If you compare today with five years ago or 10 years ago, it’s much more open today. And we will continue to feel our way forward. We can’t just progress by copying others blindly.

We’ve got to think through our own problems ourselves, find the right path for Singapore. Crossing a river by feeling for the stones, step by step, as Deng Xiaoping said. But please remember, even in the cyberage, some things don’t change.

In 50 years’ time, Spore will still be a little red dot. To thrive as a nation, we will still need the cohesion to stay united, the ability to outperform others and the will to survive and excel and occasionally win medals. And that means a hardworking and well educated population, a capable effective Government, outstanding people at all levels, totally committed to Spore. Then however the world changes, our children will still have a bright future.

Before I leave this subject on new media, I want to do one more demonstration.

Hello, team Singapore.

Good evening, PM.

Hello, Eng Liang.

Yes, I’m the chef de mission of the Spore Olympics team in Beijing. Sorry, PM, we just lost the gold medal to China. They are a better team with better skills and techniques but our paddlers tried their best and they did play well.

Thank you, we heard the results earlier. I shared it with my audience earlier. Our paddlers have done very well and they have done Singapore proud. Please thank them from us, Jia Wei, Tianwei, Yue Gu but also the whole Team Singapore in Beijing, you’ve done us proud, you’ve carried our flag high. (applause)… (unclear from Eng Liang) … flag of Singapore and I think with this silver medal, we have achieved the objective. Thank you for your messages.

Thank you. Send our greetings & congratulations to the team.

Yes, I will do that.

Good night, Eng Liang.

Good night, bye.

That was my last special effects for tonight.

I’ve discussed some key issues that affect our future, immediate concerns like inflation and cost of living, long term issues, living graciously, raising families, opening up our society. We’ve got to get these right to keep our economy growing, year after year.

Sometimes people criticise us for putting too much emphasis on economic performance because GDP (gross domestic product) growth, employment, producivity, so on, they appear just as so many statistics, so many numbers, decimal places. But actually growth is critical.

It gives us the resources to solve our problems. It creates opportunities for our workers to secure better jobs, for our young to receive a first-class education, for all of us to improve our lives and fulfil our dreams. So it’s not just abstract numbers, it’s changing people’s lives for the better. It’s about the Singapore story, as lived in the lives of all of us.

The older generation of Singaporeans have experienced this. So, take for example Mr Arumugam Jeyapal who works for PSA.

He’s had PSLE (Primary School Leaving Examinatino) plus two years of vocational training, that’s all. He started as a prime-mover driver, earning $250 a month, worked his way up over the years.

Now he’s 58 yrs old, mentor to yard-crane operators, earning $3000 a month and active in the union. And over the years, he’s upgraded from a three-room flat to a five-room flat. He has three children and they are doing well, in different fields.

One is a soccer coach, one is a lawyer in the AG’s (Attorney-General’s) Chambers, a DPP (Deputy Public Prosecutor), a daughter is studying in NIE (National Institute of Education) to become a teacher. He’s now 58. So he says, I have lived the Singapore story. I am grateful for what the Government has provided.

Middle-aged Sporeans have also seen this. I give you another example. Mdm Lim Hui Bin who is a wafer fab specialist. Here you see her all togged up, her face is uncovered because otherwise you can’t see but she’s working in the clean room. She quit her job a few years ago to help her daughter who wasn’t doing well in school.

When her daughter’s studies improved, she returned to work full-time as a machine operator at Seagate, night shift OT (overtime) to supplement the wage but her friends told her she could get a better job at a wafer fab.

But she didn’t have a lobang so how to find a job at a wafer fab? So she resigned, she responded to an ad for E2i. E2i is NTUC’s Employment & Employability Institute. And she went there and the E2i helped her to equip herself with new skills.

And she joined STMicroelectronics as a wafer fab specialist & now she’s earning $1400 a month, more than a third more than before, nearly a third more than before. So at 45, it’s not so easy with children but she’s made that career switch successsfully to a new job with brighter prospects and her daughter is doing well, now in Singapore Poly studying to become an optometrist. That means learning to measure eyes for spectacles. I think there’s a brilliant future in Spore. So many of us are speckies.

Young Singaporeans are writing their own Singapore stories too. They enjoy far more opportunities than their parents ever did. I have this group, Crystaline Tan, Neng Abdul Rashid, David Aw, three of them, SMU (Singapore Management University) graduates, fresh out of school, gone to Dubai, recruited by Fullerton Financial Holdings, Temasek company. And they are taking risks, venturing, seizing opportunities and launched off onto an international career.

Or this young man, Muhammad Fadzuli. He’s not here this evening. He’s a computer games enthusiast. He was addicted to computer games as a boy so I think he must have caused his mother a lot of stress but he went to Nanyang Poly, he did a diploma in Entertainment Technology, he topped his class.

He applied to Carnegie Mellon University in the US which is the best, one of the best universities for computer games. And they took him, they gave him advanced standing, they waived the undergrad degree, he’s gone in to do a Master’s. And he got an MDA-ST Electronics scholarship. So now he is on a three-mth attachment at Disney, he’s not on holiday there, at least I don’t think so. He’s in Disney because Disney has a collaboration with Carnegie Mellon and he’s helping them to develop a new computer game.

Or take this young lady, Brenda Tan. She’s a marketing manager. In school she was playful and lazy. O-level results not so good. But she went to ITE, then she went to Ngee Ann Poly for a Dip. in Business. She got a job at Citibank as a tele-sales officer. She did well, she was promoted, she was posted to Malaysia to set up a new unit there. And she became the manager of the unit, managing 80 people on her staff. And she came back to Singapore. Now she’s progressing in her career.

And she says, I should read this because you should hear this: ITE (Institute of Technical Education) has given many opportunities to people like me who are less academically inclined. This is something unique
about our education system and about the openness and acceptance of our society.

They are not all here but several of them are here. Mr Arumugam, Brenda, Madam Lim, some of them are overseas so I think that we should thank them for living the Singapore story. Take a bow, stand.

This is what we mean when we talk about growth, about investing in our people, about thinking long term. This is what drives us to do the best for Spore, whatever the uncertainties and difficulties. So let’s look beyond our immediate problems, let’s work hard, grow our economy, transform the nation. Then we will create even more extraordinary opportunities for the new generation and together our children will write more chapters of our Singapore story.

Good night.

Tags:

Comments

4 Comments on Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s National Day Rally speech on Aug 17, 2008

  1. christine on Tue, 19th Aug 2008 10:32 am

    2. yes, once again the focus is on giving birth…. how about something for moms with kids. 4 months maternity leave, 6 days childcare leave + whole lot of other super whooper deals to attract you. don’t get con into it because after all this, you are left hanging and dry with your kids and THEY DON’T CARE because you already did your JOB by increasing birth rate. Nothing to help you with your child when they are growing up because to the government, parenting is only about giving birth and young toddlers. when your child goes to primary school, you are left with nothing but frustrations, more bills (for tuitions, enrichment, etc), shuttling (no school bus to fetch your child after school due to CCAs, extra classes), sick children (take your leave to look after them or better still, just continue to throw them in the school even if they are sick and infect every other child – no childcare leave required for these moms), 1st day of school (primary 1) – no need to bother about them, they are now too old for parents to bother and government are just not interested in them PERHAPS GOVT should consider helping these group of parents as well as some incentives as parenting is not about giving birth… a child still needs lots of ooking after till about at least 12 years old and not stop at 6 years?????

  2. The Singapore Daily » Blog Archive » Daily SG: 19 Aug 2008 on Tue, 19th Aug 2008 12:01 pm

    3. [...] dimensional island: PM’s National Day Rally – Sgpolitics.net: Rally speech on Aug 17, 2008 [1] [2] – Sgpolitics.net: PM Lee’s National Day Rally: Political rules to be relaxed & Political [...]

  3. wendy on Wed, 20th Aug 2008 5:21 pm

    4. Rather disappointing to see that Maternity Leave and Baby bonus is applicable only to baby born on or after 1 January 2009. Feel that it should be given to baby born after PM’s speech or at least 1 Sept 2008.

  4. Fleas In A Jar « the Lookout on Wed, 19th Nov 2008 12:26 am

    5. [...] speech this year, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong promised a series of initiatives that would “progressively open up” Singapore’s political space, acknowledging the need for the government to keep in [...]

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!