Salaries for a Capable and Committed Government

Debate resumed.

Mr Teo Chee Hean: Much obliged, Mr Speaker. Sir, I have requested the Clerk to distribute a summary table of the recommendations made by the Committee. This is in Handout 4 and it is also the same set of recommendations as in the White Paper.

Sir, I have taken this House through a rather technical discussion on the recommendations of the Committee. It is a complex subject. My purpose is to help ensure, to the extent possible, that the debate we have in this House is informed by what the Committee has actually recommended and why. I would of course be happy to make any further clarifications or explanations that Members may request.

But, Sir, we should step back and look at the bigger picture – at what we are trying to achieve.

Singapore has progressed to where we are today, due to a committed Government made up of capable, honest leaders, working in concerted effort with our people.

While we may have different views or suggestions on how to achieve this, I believe that we are all united in wanting to have in place a framework that will help ensure that Singapore continues to have capable and committed leadership not just for today, but more importantly for the long term, for our children.

This debate is important because it is part of the open and transparent process that we have engaged in over the years to try to determine political salaries in Singapore. Ultimately, the technical details are not the most important points of debate. Instead, what is most critical is the emphasis that Singaporeans place on having a system that will help us to bring in a steady stream of the most committed and able Singaporeans to ensure the future of Singapore and Singaporeans.

The Government and this House have been grappling with this issue for some three decades. On the one hand, we are clear that political service is first and foremost about service to the people, our people. We all agree on that. But we also need to have salaries at a level that will not deter able persons from devoting the prime of their lives to political office, so that we can maximise the pool of people whom we can draw on to form the future leadership for Singapore. Sir, there is no perfectly "right answer" to this complex issue. It is ultimately a judgement call.

The Committee has deliberated deeply and consulted many. They have exercised their collective judgement to put forward recommendations for the long-term good of Singapore. Their recommendations strike a balance between the ethos of public service with an appropriate salary. The Government accepts their collective judgement.

The framework will have to be re-examined from time to time to assess whether it remains appropriate, and whether there are improvements that should be made. The Government accepts the recommendation of the Committee for regular reviews to be carried out by a Committee appointed by the Prime Minister every five years to ensure that the framework remains relevant.

More important than the actual numbers arrived at by the Committee are the key principles that the Committee has distilled after its long deliberations. The Committee has re-affirmed the key principles underlying how salaries for Singapore's political leaders should be determined: competitive salaries so that people of the right calibre are not deterred from stepping forward to lead the country; maintaining the ethos of political service which entails making sacrifices and hence providing for a discount in the pay formula; and a "clean wage" with no hidden perks.

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I hope that Members of this House, and Singaporeans in general, can see the long-term reason why we need to have such a framework in place, and will accept the recommendations of the Committee.

Let me end by placing on record, the Government's appreciation to the Committee for its hard work in this important area of political salaries.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I would now like to call upon this House to endorse these recommendations on "Salaries for A Capable and Committed Government" as the basis for setting salaries for those holding political office. I look forward to hearing the views of honourable Members regarding the proposed changes. Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

Mr Speaker: Order. I suspend the Sitting and will take the Chair at 4.10 pm.

Sitting accordingly suspended

at 3.55 pm until 4.10 pm.

Sitting resumed at 4.10 pm

[ Mr Speaker in the Chair]

SALARIES FOR A CAPABLE AND COMMITTED GOVERNMENT

Mr Arthur Fong: Mr Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to speak on the debate on the recommendations of the Ministerial Salary Review Committee.

Being a Member of this august house for the last 10 years, how many times have we heard Ministers and Members of the House, both Government Party and Opposition, speak of the challenges that Singapore faces. Some of these are most significantly the financial crisis and the security threats in the period between 2000 and 2002, the SARS crisis, the concerns faced during the Lehman Brothers fallout that affected the confidence of banks all over the world, the global financial crisis then and what is going on in Euro land now. These are clear and present dangers to one of the vital engines of Singapore's livelihood, the Banking and Financial Services sector.

Sir, we are drawn into all sorts of crisis that present themselves, threatening our survival. How we respond like how we responded after the Lehman crisis will set the stage in how we compete. Bankers in the profession will tell you today that we benefit from our position and the political will we had after the Lehman crisis and we see flows of assets and trades coming through Singapore as they are not being able to be done in Hong Kong. Sir, Singapore leaders need to not only manage well but also have a knack to look around the bend and find space in the traffic to squeeze through and soldier ahead in tough times. To do this, we need political leaders with the competence to navigate us through the worse times. They would also need to have the vision to bring us to new heights. They would also need, in short, men of this calibre who are in short supply and countries, corporations, enterprises and organisations all over the world are looking for such people.

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How we identify, whom we recruit, how we assess and how to on-board our potential leaders invariably involves consideration at some point on compensation. This is a tricky issue. In 1996, Mr S Dhanabalan had explained to the House why he had changed his mind on his initial stand on the pay for Ministers when he encountered a difficult time in recruiting able men and women to serve. Like the English Premier League football, everyone has an opinion. Everyone is an expert. This issue is emotional enough to be apoplectic when people talked about the amount of salary Ministers and office holders get a year. This is because most Singaporeans do not earn even close to the figures bandied around a Minister's salary. Therefore, the recommendation talked about making a discount to their salaries is a good one.

Sir, while I support the recommendations to cut the salaries and also the significance of the removal of the pension for office holders, I would, however, like to sound a caution that upon implementation of the changes, the incumbent government must place even more importance in recruiting potential leaders to keep our future secure.

I think this would be difficult. Whether the Government of the day is PAP or otherwise, we are all in agreement that we need good people not just with a passion and the right motivation to serve but the ability to do so. We need to identify good calibre men and women with qualities early. This is because those who have peaked in their careers with a proven track record will find it harder to move away from their comfort zone.

This would be so regardless of his or her desire and commitment to public service. These good people would have a lot more to consider before making the move to the uncertainty of public office. Had the individuals who are at the prime of their careers continued in their private sector careers, their compensation may eventually be much higher than the entry level Minister's pay. More often than not, we need our Ministers to hit the ground running. We do not have the luxury to mentor our junior Ministers all the time. We also realise that the Minister's responsibility is deeper, wider and includes constituencies, if you will, outside Singapore. For example, the Foreign Minister's portfolio includes – countries friendly or not at different times relevant to Singapore's space in the world; the Trade Minister's constituency of Trading Blocs or areas outside of Singapore that will add or detract from our path of survival. The build-up of experience and relationships with external players takes time and a certain amount of savvy that is more likely to come from a high calibre candidate to begin with.

On the other hand, by approaching an individual already at the peak of his career for a switch into politics the difference in the compensation will discourage him or her to say "yes". Even for MPs, whether PAP or Opposition, the decision to enter politics is usually one made with serious discussion with family members. Consider this, someone who has earned his stripes in the corporate world, it would follow that their compensation and lifestyle might also include having a mortgage and commitments to the family. The difference may make it difficult at that point for the family to meet the financial commitments, for example, to their children's education. These commitments are on-going and comfortably met by their existing remuneration. I would imagine many will simply say a polite "no thank you". They will probably then serve on their own terms and leisure and contribute to the society and not to look towards running a country. To be fair to these persons, I do not doubt that they have a willingness to serve, but the practical aspects to make the move cannot be mitigated at that point of time. I am worried about this. This has a tremendous impact on the well-being of Singapore. This is a problem that the government of the day will face – whether PAP or not. This is a perspective that perhaps my fellow Singaporeans might want to consider as a ball-and-chain in looking for and on boarding potential leaders.

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Sir, I speak in support of the Review Committee, not straying away from our time honoured principle of having a "clean wage". Globally, we may be the odd one out in designing the way we pay not only our political leaders but our civil servants as well. Most Singaporeans, including myself, grew up with a clean wage system. This is the way we chose to organise our society. We pay our political leaders and civil servants with a clean all-in wage. No extra perks and certainly no hidden perks. In some countries, retired Prime Ministers enjoy certain benefits for life. Some of these benefits include lifelong pension, use of a chauffeur-driven cars, a set of staff, all paid by taxpayers. Many of these benefits, while guaranteed by law, are not transparent to the general public. And I understand that Australia has such a practice.

In the Chinese equivalent of Facebook Weibo , a conversation between two Shanghainese provides much food for thought. One parent was congratulated when he told his friends that he was on his way to the travel agency. His friends thought he was going on a holiday during the Chinese New Year. But the man sighed loudly saying that he was on his way to pay for his son's form teacher to go on a holiday to Australia during the New Year. The cost of the holiday was 25,000 Renminbi (about S$5,000) and spending money of 20,000 Renminbi. The man was paying to ensure that the form teacher would ensure his son's third position in class!

Sir, public servants in China are known to be paid relatively low salaries not just compared to Singapore. It is an acceptable way of living in China. Chinese friends I have spoken to are mostly not aware of how much their political leaders are paid. Some do not even question. The advent of the Internet and the mushrooming of social media are paving the way to many raising questions about everything in China. Some questions underlie a lack of confidence in the integrity of their public officers. For example, a director of state land draws a monthly salary of about 12,000 RMB (about S$3,000), yet in the Chinese social media, they asked, how is he able to afford a Swiss watch on his wrist costing about 400,000 RMB (or S$80,000)? If this happened to us here, Singapore would be doomed if there is no confidence in integrity of our political leaders and public servants.

The world is different today and the challenges facing Singapore and our Ministers would be more complex and diverse. Let us take a longer term view in choosing our political leaders. Let us pay fairly and adequately where applicable. I think if we were to be guided by a sense of vulnerability for Singapore, we would look at this in the right perspective. Sir, I support the recommendations of the Ministerial Salary Review Committee.

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4.21 pm

Er Dr Lee Bee Wah (Nee Soon): ( In Mandarin ): [Please refer to Pg 906 for Vernacular Speeches.] Mr Speaker, Sir, firstly, I want to commend the Prime Minister for being willing to accept a complete review of Cabinet Ministers' pay and to make public the review Report. This shows that the Prime Minister is transparent in handling this issue. Regardless of the yardstick used, the salary cut recommended by the review Committee is indeed significant, and surprised many. I am very proud of how clean and open the Singapore Government is, as this Government is willing to listen to every issue that has been brought up by the people.

The review Committee has done well to analyse according to the job scope of Government officials, and decided on the salaries accordingly. This makes the issue of rewarding our leaders more transparent, and gain greater confidence from the general public. In addition, what impresses us was how the Committee tirelessly explained the reasons and rationale behind the pay cut recommendations. I hope this is enough to prove to the sceptics that what the Committee has done is not just a superficial show to appease the public.

The review Committee recommends that the individual performance bonus be linked to the growth in median real wages of Singaporeans, growth in real wages of low-income Singaporeans, unemployment rate and GDP growth. This is a wise move, as one of the key responsibilities of the Government is to ensure that the nation progress together, that no one will be left behind. Indeed, protection of the livelihood of the people and the future of our nation is in the hands of the leaders. Such an important mandate must be given to people with a strong spirit of public service and a strong sense of mission. I am pleased with the outcome of this review and would like to comment on the pay cuts.

( In English ): Mr Speaker, Sir, let me share my views on the salary review. First of all, the salary cut should not in any way be viewed as an indication of demotion, penalisation or an admission of anything amiss. Dedication and service to the country and its people is priceless. Such service can never be measured, let alone be equated to a monetary value.

Rather, this pay reduction should be regarded as a pledge of further sacrifices that the leaders are willing to commit to in the interest of our country and our people. Forty over years ago, Singapore gained independence against a background of an unstable economy and social chaos. The problems were greater, and the monetary rewards were paltry compared to the responsibilities that they had to shoulder. Yet, we had passionate leaders coming forward, their motives purely to serve the nation and steer her out of dark waters. They did an impeccable job managing the country and despite our lack of natural resources, we prospered. Many of us have become self-sufficient, well educated, lead dignified lives and have our basic needs more than fulfilled. All these achieved within less than a century from our independence.

Of course, times have changed. Standards of living have gone up, businesses boom and people are understandably attracted to the private sector where there are many opportunities. With globalisation, really, the sky is the limit.

Today, the responsibilities on the political office bearers are not lighter or less daunting. The challenges are now different and so too are the demands on the ability to deliver a set of solutions. As the world becomes almost borderless and interlinked, the problems across continents will inevitably find their way to our shores as though there are not already enough at our own doorsteps that require attention – bird flu, economic crisis, H1N1, etc.

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We should ask ourselves what kind of Ministers we need for Singapore. We need a team of good leaders, men and women of calibre, who can not only engage with the home ground, tend to their domestic issues on the one hand, but also concurrently communicate, negotiate and earn the respect of the international community. They have to understand the complexity of economic and political issues, exercise brinkmanship and seek best solutions for Singapore and its people. We need people of a certain calibre to do this task.

For years, Singapore has benefited from the practice of meritocracy. Prestige and wealth go to those who work hard and seize the opportunities that globalisation offered. Increasingly, it became more difficult to attract talented individuals to come forward to take the reins of our country. How many men and women with calibre, talent and experience are willing to throw away their careers, their materialistic comforts and freedom to become biblical disciples and serve the nation? My guess is: there are not many.

Against this backdrop, the salary scheme was drawn up to attract the right calibre candidates to hold office. Getting to feel the pulse and getting the right reading of what is a fair salary to pay the office bearers has been a hotly debatable issue. To the majority who are not in the high income bracket, looking at the zeros in the numbers understandably left them in a tizzy. But my friends who are successful in the corporate world or business circles think otherwise. In fact, very often, whenever I meet them, they keep reminding me that our Government should not go soft.

Then some raised the argument: why is it that in Europe, the US and elsewhere, there are countries that have leaders who are willing to take public office for compensation that is almost half or less than what we are paying our leaders? My answer is each country is unique. Look at the stories about politicians who misused their entitlement to claim expenses unrelated to their public office. Look at the many scandals that have reverberated across some countries of Mr Kick-backs and Mr Fix-it. I think those who have business dealings in the region would know what I mean. There are no lack of examples. In fact, the practice of bribing is seen as a custom.

Singapore is a unique, small country – we are small indeed – and has no resources. In order to stay afloat and prosper, we need first class, capable leaders, wise leaders and hardworking leaders. We need leaders who think ahead, leaders who plan ahead and leaders who work genuinely for the people and the country. Singapore has always been envied for having one of the cleanest governments in the world. The detractors in Singapore have often denigrated the office of Ministers because of the salaries they earned as if the money was the mother's milk of politics. If indeed money was the milk, then it would have been the devil's brew, and our country would be in tatters.

It is a given that anyone who takes office because of his or her greed for money to know better the fate that awaits them in our court house. Singapore is definitely not the place for such corrupt politicians. In fact, my friends in Malaysia always tell me that they would rather have our Ministers with our salary scale, than what they are having. They see value for money.

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Next, in taking office, our Ministers know they have come forward to take up a calling, a calling to serve with honour and distinction, to do their best for the people and for the country. Running our country means looking after people's lives, families, homes, jobs, healthcare, welfare, transport, education, and so forth. Furthermore, our Prime Ministers do not take up assignments that fatten their bank accounts when they retire, unlike those in the West or America.

As widely reported in the UK media, ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair has taken up several lucrative posts since leaving office in 2007. He has a £1 million deal to advise a royal family in the Middle East. He was paid a £4.6 million advance for his memoirs. His public speaking engagements, which are said to earn him £100,000 a time, was estimated to have netted another £9 million. He is reportedly paid about £3 million a year to advise both a US investment bank and a global insurer based in Switzerland. What of our Singapore ex-Prime Ministers? No, they continue to slog hard, travel here and there to market Singapore.

I know our Ministers and other office bearers who committed themselves to politics out of interest and concern for the nation's future. I know their true commitment because I work with them, I am privy to some of their thoughts and concerns and I am proud to be associated with them.

Many of my residents have given me feedback on the outcome of the salary review. The sentiments on the ground are generally positive, and the residents are pleased that the Government is listening and acting on their concerns, making them feel more confident about the Government's ability to guide the country in the looming recession. Accepting the Committee's proposal is a right step towards a more promising future. It helps to boost public confidence in the Government through increased transparency and addressing public concerns. In the long run, it would help to reinforce the notion that personal values and a genuine desire to serve the country are important factors in the selection of Ministers and office bearers for the country.

The revisions to the Ministerial salary structures spell a good start to the New Year. I hope that we conclude this episode and move on to overcome more challenges together as a nation. After all, there is no single formula that can satisfy everybody. Mr Speaker, Sir, in conclusion, I welcome clean government with clean revised wages for its Ministers.

4.34 pm

Mr Chen Show Mao (Aljunied): Mr Speaker, Sir, the Workers' Party views the Committee's Report with a sense of hope because it is a step in the right direction. We agree with the three principles that political salaries should be competitive, that political service is a calling that has its own ethos, and their wages should be transparent.

However, the order by which the principles are applied has produced, in our view, a flawed new benchmark. Because competitive salary is placed as the first principle ahead of political service, the Committee has pegged Ministerial salary to the median salary of the 1,000 top-earning Singaporeans and then applied a discount for political service.

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If the new benchmark is accepted by the Government, it will continue to send the message that top pay is the benchmark by which the calibre of the potential candidates, the importance of the office ought to be judged, and that the value of the political office can, in the final analysis, be monetised. Well, you cannot, not even at the highest income levels.

Political service is a calling. It is a privilege accorded by the electorate to serve as many of our Singaporeans as possible. It is primarily a privilege, not a burden or sacrifice. The principle of political service should come first and not be treated as a discount factor. Because political service is in the genre of public service, we propose a "Whole of Government, People- Up" approach that benchmarks Ministerial salary to MP allowance, which is in turn pegged to the pay of the civil servants, benchmarked to the general wage levels. Because political service starts with our election as parliamentary representatives of the people, MP allowance should be the starting point. The Cabinet is the constitutional extension of the Parliament and the institutional expression that the Legislature has control over the Executive. It is not, the Cabinet is not an extension of the private sector. This "Whole of Government, People-Up" approach is a pragmatic reality in many well-governed developed countries and territories around the world.

Is Singapore unique? Of course but it is not so dissimilar to others that we cannot learn from their best practices and how they apply good principles. For example, the Committee writes, "as its international practice in Westminster parliamentary systems, the political appointment holders will also receive MP allowances as they have their dual roles of being MPs". We agree that the Ministers should receive their MP allowances but that is because Ministers are MPs first. They are not MPs also, not merely MPs also.

We must remember that in our system of Government, Ministers are, first of all, MPs elected by their people as their representatives, not selected by the Prime Minister from the private sector into the Cabinet and then also MPs. Parliament is the highest authority in our system of Government and MPs as electoral representatives of the people should be the starting point for the determination of Ministerial salary.

The Committee's benchmark to the private sector clouds this fact. Workers' Party recommends pegging Ministerial salary as multiples of MP allowance. This expresses the fact that ministers are first and foremost elected as MPs to serve the people.

So, in what multiples should Singapore peg Ministerial salary to MP allowances? We propose that an entry grade Minister's monthly salary be five times the MP allowance and nine times for the Prime Minister.

As Deputy Prime Minister said, there are no right or wrong answers and this is ultimately a judgement call. We propose these multiples based on the increased responsibilities, additional capabilities and experience required of the different political offices.

We also believe that it is where the principles of competitive pay and transparency can come in to take into consideration some of the factors cited by the Committee as to why the system of Singapore may be different from those in other countries. In the words of Deputy Prime Minister, we believe that the pay should be sufficient to not deter potential political office holders with desire and ability from serving in political office without undue concern for their standards of living.

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Of course, we would like to see capable men and women in the Cabinet but we do not believe that our best people for political office are only those who make the most money. Many of our former and current Ministers did not come in from the private sector or the top earning professions and that is as we would expect.

Many of them were public servants who heeded the call of political service by standing for elections. Political service is in the nature of public service. We believe that MP allowance should be set with reference to the salary of senior executives in the regular civil service. This is consistent with the general practice in many countries and territories we surveyed.

The starting salary of entry grade senior civil servants in the regular Civil Service, the director of MX9 grade in the Management Executive scheme of the Civil Service outside the Admin Service is approximately $11,000 a month. In our proposal, MP allowance would be about $11,000 a month. Ministerial salary would range from $55,000 a month for entry grade Ministers to $99,000 per month for the Prime Minister. We support a clean wage proposal for transparency in which compensation is fully accounted for and there are no hidden items.

In addition to the fixed 13th month salary that is keyed into MP allowance, we propose that Ministers and the Prime Minister receive variable pay of different bonuses that add up to no more than five months in any year, compared to 13.5 months for the Ministers as recommended by the Committee.

Many Singaporeans may take home up to three or four months' bonuses in a very good year compared to the 13.5 months that the Committee has recommended. In fact, if the maximum bonuses recommended by the Committee were awarded, the reduction in entry grade Minister pay would be 8% and not the 31% calculated by the Committee.

In our approach, since Civil Service salary is aligned to general market conditions faced by Singaporean workers, MP allowance and Ministerial salary would move with the income levels of many more Singaporeans than with the total employment and trade income of the top-earning one thousand including their bonuses, their commissions and their stock options.

The Workers' Party's benchmark will better help our leaders empathise with the majority of Singaporeans and not just the very few. The Workers' Party's proposed approach aims to enhance inclusivity and sensitivity to the progress of Singaporeans rather than discounted exclusivity pegged to top earners.

We believe the Committee has taken the right step forward with the three principles. It is up to the Government to go further and apply the principles in the right order by recognising that political service is the first principle anchored in the primacy of Parliament. Let us place Ministerial pay on a sound footing in order to ground political leadership in a strong sense of service to all Singaporeans.

( In Mandarin ): [Please refer to Pg 907-908 for Vernacular Speeches.] We agree with the three principles that political salaries should be competitive, that political service is a calling and has its own ethos, and that wages should be transparent.

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Unfortunately, the order by which the principles are applied has produced a flawed new benchmark. Because competitive salary is placed as the first principle ahead of political service, the Committee has pegged Ministerial salary to the median salary of the 1,000 top-earning Singaporeans and then applied a discount for political service. This will further entrench the current misunderstanding that the value of political office can be measured in monetary terms.

We certainly do not hope those who are keen in politics to be deterred by low salaries. However, the prerequisite must be that the person wants to go into politics not because of high salaries but for the purpose of serving the country and the people. This should be our number one principle.

After being clear about the essence of the public service, we should adopt a "whole-of-Government" approach that benchmarks Ministerial salary to MP allowance, which is in turn pegged to the pay of the civil servants.

Under our constitutional framework, our Cabinet is an extension of Parliament, not an extension of the private sector. This whole-of-Government, people-up solution is adopted by many countries in the world. Although Singapore has its unique situation, it is not so dissimilar to others that we cannot learn from their best practices and how they apply good principles.

The Committee's Report reflected a political blind spot. The Ministers are first of all MPs elected by the people as their representatives, not selected by the Prime Minister from the private sector into the Cabinet and then also MPs. Instead, they must first be an MP and then a Minister. Therefore, Ministerial salaries should be based on MP allowance, not pegged to the private sector.

After getting this clear, we can now move on to the second and third principles. In what multiples should Singapore peg Ministerial salary to MP allowance to ensure competitiveness? The Workers' Party proposes that an entry-grade Minister's monthly salary be five times the MP allowance, and nine times for the Prime Minister. This is still higher than the international standard, sufficient to reflect Singapore's uniqueness.

Another misunderstanding is to believe that the best politicians must come from the top 1,000 income earners. Among our current and previous Ministers, there are many who are not from the private sector or top-earning professionals. Many of them come from the public sector. Some started from being MPs and accumulated experience over the years and then become a Minister.

To use income as an indicator for political capability reflects the narrow elitist mindset that prevails in our society.

In summary, we suggest that the whole-of-Government approach, with MP allowance as the basis for Ministerial salary and the MP allowance equal to top civil servants' starting pay, around $11,000 a month. As civil servants' salaries are dependent on the economic situation and the market condition, just like the rest of the workforce, this approach will make sure Ministerial salaries will not become disconnected with the general wage level. Rather than discounting from the salaries of the top 1,000 income earners, we think this people-up approach, with civil servants' salary as the basis for MP allowance and Ministerial salary, is more appropriate.

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We support the transparent clean wage system. However, the bonus suggested by the Committee is obviously too high. According to the Report, Ministerial salary will be reduced by 31%, but that is based on an average of seven months of bonus. However, a Minister can receive as high as 13.5 months of bonus. If he takes them all, his salary is only reduced by 8% compared to before.

Therefore, the Workers' Party proposes that in addition to the 13-month pay, that the Ministers and the Prime Minister receive variable pay of different bonuses that add up to no more than five months in any year. In this case, in a good year, Prime Minister and Ministers can receive as much as 18 months' salary, not the 26 months recommended by the Committee.

The Workers' Party hopes that the formula for Ministerial salary should be more inclusive and sensitive to the progress of Singaporeans. It should not be pegged to a small circle of elites and then do a discount.

The three principles are laudable. Next, it is up to the Government to go further to apply the principles in the right order to ground political leadership in a strong sense of service to all Singaporeans.

4.52 pm

Ms Denise Phua Lay Peng (Moulmein-Kallang): Sir, ask 10 different people how much they think their political leaders should be paid and you are likely to get 10 different responses. Sir, that was my experience when I consulted Singaporeans in the public, private and people sectors through desktop research, face-to-face discussions and polls.

To the passionate who are fighting for causes they deeply believe in, sacrificing part or all of their salary is not an issue. To the low-wage worker who earns $5 an hour, a million-dollar pay is unimaginable. To a PMET (Professional, Manager, Executive or Technician) earning the median Singapore income of less than $3,000 per month, the million-dollar pay is an unattainable dream.

There are others who are concerned with the Golden Parachute effect of entrants to politics who enjoy big windfalls in pay although they had no prior appropriate leadership experience. Yet to some others in the private sector, the Ministers' pay is a bargain, compared to the typical $3 million to $7 million annual CEO packages of local banks, telcos and others. On the ground, someone quipped that the annual pay of a specific local CEO, which in a good year can skyrocket to $20 million, could pay for more than half the Cabinet. The Straits Times reported recently that the annual incomes of even second tier senior executives in some big local companies amounted to between $1 million and $2 million.

Sir, the mixed reactions reminded me very much of the parable of "The elephant and the six blind men". Each man described the animal according to the part of the elephant he was touching. And according to the poet, John Godfrey Saxe's poem of the same parable, all men "disputed loud and long". The truth of the matter is that all of them are right except that each view is but a partial view. The same can be said of Singaporeans' descriptions of the Ministerial pay issue. The disputes are similarly "loud and long", and Ministerial pay is one of the most divisive subjects in our country. To heal our land, it is critical that each one of us takes the time and be open enough to find out and accept that there are other perspectives.

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On leaders who are worth the millions: when the subject of Ministerial and Top Civil Servants' pay was debated upon in April 2007, I was very uneasy. Till today, I believe that there are successful people in Singapore who are willing to put aside their corporate perks and power suits to serve in a cause they believe in.

Sir, five years on, I have learnt to recognise my view, like the blind men describing the elephant, is but one perspective based very much on my own values and season in life. Mind you, there are indeed people who would still give up successful careers to do what they believe in. In fact, just last week, another young banker hung up her corporate suit and joined the charity I run. But there are not enough of them. I could not find enough of them who had the right mix of passion and technical and leadership competencies I need to help me construct our dream 21st century charity and special schools. Finally, through a mix of monetary and non-monetary measures, such as culture-building, we were able to attract and retain barely enough talents to sustain our rapid growth in the sector that I work in.

Sir, I can imagine how the challenge of attracting sufficient people with the right character and skill sets to enter politics is multiplied. The "new-normal" political culture appears to call for "superhero" politicians who are an even rarer species. Ideally, the political leaders of the future should be able to:

(1) inspire our people (especially those who have options to leave our country) to not only physically stay on but also actively construct our dream country together;

(2) connect and engage their constituents both face-to-face and in cyberspace;

(3) facilitate, gather differing perspectives and resolve multi-faceted issues with stakeholder groups who sometimes have opposing interests;

(4) harness continued support of their constituents and team members and do well at the polls; and to me, most importantly, my dream politician should be able to exercise not only courage to question but also have the skill sets to provide solutions and exercise reforms in sacred-cow areas which are complex and deeply entrenched in our country; that if nothing were done about them, will lead our country to demise.

I am talking about the complex challenges, such as (a) trimming the $700-million tuition industry which appears to be a grudgingly accepted feature of our education landscape; (b) the creation or re-designing of jobs to elevate the incomes and dignity of vulnerable citizens, such as the elderly, the disabled, the lowly educated; and (c) the potential of transforming private enterprises in essential services, such as public transport to social enterprises.

Sir, the Ministry of Education has developed a framework of the 21st century competencies essential for the survival of our students; our political and Government leaders need the framework, too. The dream leaders who are closer to the ideal profile I just described are worth many millions. That is the additional perspective I wish to offer to the topic of the Ministerial pay review.

Page: 849

Sir, I would like to turn now to the specifics of the Report on the Ministerial Pay Review, from my leadership and HR professional's perspective. Sir, I hold this glass of water in my hand [ indicating ]. Is it half-full or half-empty? Some of us optimists will say it is half-full. Others, who are less positive, will say it is half-empty. The cynics amongst us will wonder who drank the other half. I say it is both. It is half-full and half-empty. And that is my assessment of the report.

Although I do not completely agree with the recommendations carried in the Report of the Ministerial Salaries Committee, I cannot, in good conscience, say that the Committee has done a poor job. By boldly recommending pay slashes of up to 50%, measures which are hardly cosmetic, the Committee has moved in the right direction. Like many in Singapore, I thought it was important that if reference was drawn from what I felt was a more punishing private sector in terms of pay and accountability, then it was only right that common compensation principles in that sector be applied. I am heartened that some of the recommendations I made in April 2007 were considered and applied and, in some cases, enhanced:

(1) An independent and external Salary Review Committee was set up for the first time, so that executives do not write their own paychecks;

(2) The line of sight linking an incumbent's pay to his performance is now clearer;

(3) The previously simplistic link of bonus to GDP growth rate is now expanded;

(4) The salary benchmarking formula now targets a much bigger group of 1,000 instead of 48 top wage earners; and

(5) Keeping the annual base pay package to comprise only monthly salaries and a 13th month bonus by removing items such as Special Allowance, Public Service Leadership Allowances, so forth, is a much more acceptable compensation practice, amongst others.

Sir, to help further fill up the glass, I would like to offer five additional recommendations.

Recommendation 1: to peg political pay to a broader base of income wage earners and discard the discount feature. The proposed salary benchmark of the entry level Minister is now pegged to the top 1,000 wage earners, instead of 48, in Singapore. A discount of 40% is then applied.

Sir, the selection of the 1,000 top wage earners, albeit more reasonable, is still arbitrary and still smacks of elitism because the base is about 0.05% of the workforce, assuming a workforce size of two million. The application of the discount – whether the current one-third or the proposed 40% – is also arbitrary and often forgotten and unappreciated.

I propose that political leaders' pay be pegged to a simple top percentile income bracket, for example, 10% or 20% of Singaporeans. Then discard the discount feature. A quick poll I conducted revealed that many Singaporeans are likely to understand and accept that their political leaders belong to the top 10%-20% income bracket in our country. So, a simpler formula.

Page: 850

Recommendation 2: to further strengthen the line of sight between pay and performance. Let us remove one of the three components of the Variable Pay Component, that is the Annual Variable Component (AVC) which is one month or so, and retain only (i) Performance Bonus which relates to the performance of the individual portfolio; and (ii) National Bonus which is linked to how our country performs. And then publicise the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for individual portfolios so that Singaporeans have a better understanding of how they are linked to performance bonuses of the office bearers. Developing and publishing KPIs that relate to both the routine operations and new initiatives in the especially essential services such as housing, transport, social services, and education, are important for better understanding of the size of the individual portfolios and promote better quality dialogues. And (iii) expand the National Bonus indicators which are now 100% linked to jobs and incomes. This is to reduce the potential of excessive risk-taking or undesirable tactics to boost the numbers of these composite indicators. For example, starting a third casino to boost the economy may well boost all four components of the National Bonus – the real median income growth rate will increase; the real growth rate of the lowest 20th percentile income will increase; the unemployment rate will be lowered; and real GDP growth rate will be enhanced if we only start a third or fourth casino; but the move may well be an easier path or lazy way to not develop our own tourism products and is detrimental to the long-term competitiveness and social well-being of our people.

Recommendation 3: review the benefits package and let us not over-extend the "clean-wage" principle. Sir, it is a little ludicrous that the dental benefit of our Prime Minister and our Cabinet Ministers is $70 per year and their outpatient subsidy is capped at $350 a year. Consider the provision of common benefits such as car and annual health screening packages that are typically provided to executives in our country. Let us not over-extend this application of the principle of "clean wage" so that it becomes artificial.

Recommendation 4: clarify the job scope and expectations of political appointment holders. Sir, one of the underlying factors leading to the constant unhappy undertone when this subject of political pay is discussed in our country is the lack of awareness of the duties of political appointment holders from Members of Parliament to Ministers and even Speakers.

Members of Parliaments have differing views of their roles. The latest episode during which several Opposition MPs opine that it is the job of Government and not MPs to directly help the poor and needy and therefore referral is the key strategy, caused a debate of its own outside the House. The clarity of duties and goals would be useful even to MPs of the ruling party. The man in the street, for instance, does not understand the role of the Speaker of the House and does not have sufficient information to comprehend how it equates to a Cabinet Minister.

Clarity is also useful in the case of office bearers who hold multiple portfolios, sometimes up to three roles. It takes more than a human being to do three roles effectively and leave little time and space for the incumbent to reflect and reform policies where needed. Sir, instead of sweeping these rumblings under carpet, it is needful to clarify the job scopes and expectations of political appointment holders to our people.

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Recommendation 5: conduct a review of the Civil Service leadership pay. One of my deepest concerns is that this Review excluded the some 300 top civil servants in the elite Administrative Service (Admin Service). The title of the Report is entitled "Salaries for a Capable and Committed Government" but the review has deliberately excluded top civil service leaders, specifically the Permanent Secretaries and others in the elite Admin Service; I think 300 of them. This is the group that has often been kept below the radar from public eye although they play a significant role in our country in supporting the Prime Minister and his Cabinet in the development and execution of national policies. Due to their critical role, some of these elite talents are pegged on the same salary band with our Ministers.

Sir, if and when the recommendations of the committee of political pay review are accepted, some civil servants will receive much higher packages than their Ministers. Unlike the political appointment holders, they will also continue to enjoy the retention of benefits such as the pension schemes which will be removed from the Ministers' packages.

Sir, paying for top talents especially for those who opt for a career in the civil service is not an issue. However, the same principles of rigour in job evaluation, job sizing, accountability for KPIs and disclosure must also be applied. If private firms and charities are expected to disclose the highest paid executives and their salary bands, there is no reason why there should be a cloak of secrecy over the Admin Service incumbents. Sir, I ask the Prime Minister to commission an independent review of top civil service leadership that will go beyond pay to attract, develop and retain talent for a capable and committed government.

In conclusion, Sir, the review of political salaries is a work-in-progress. It needs refinement but it is moving in the right direction. To reject it and to wait for it to be perfect and acceptable to every interested Singaporean, simply means the current system stays. And that to me is not an option.

Like our opinion on this glass, some will continue to insist that it is half-full whilst others will insist that it is half-empty. And then there are those who will provide constructive ideas on how to completely fill this glass and make future reviews even sharper and more acceptable. This is the group who will help in the healing of the differences that have arisen out of the controversial subject of political pay in our country.

On this note, I wish to thank the Prime Minister for beginning to slay one of the sacred cows that has been a source of division and unhappiness amongst Singaporeans. I also want to thank him for graciously donating all of his pay rises in the last five years, in order to defend the policy of attracting and retaining talents to run our country. Finally, I urge all of us, as leaders of this country, to develop a dream for Singaporeans that is so compelling that more leaders with both character and competence will come forward to serve, come what pay.

5.10 pm

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song (Non-Constituency Member): Mr Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to take part in this debate. Like my hon colleague, Mr Chen Show Mao, I believe that the White Paper's approach in benchmarking Ministerial salaries to top income earners is fundamentally flawed.

Page: 852

The proposed benchmark pegs entry-level Ministers' salaries to three-fifths of the median of the 1,000 highest earning Singaporeans. This group represents the top 0.06% of Singaporean income earners. It represents no significant shift from the previous two-thirds M48 formula which pegged Ministers' salaries to two-thirds of the median among a small group of 48 professionals, comprising top bankers, lawyers, MNC chiefs and others.

This new formula still benchmarks Ministers' salaries against the richest of the rich, reflecting an approach that appears to be based on a number of questionable assumptions.

Firstly, it assumes that Ministerial talents should first be found among the highest income earners. The Paper states that the benchmark "reflect(s) the calibre of the people which Singapore needs for good government."

Secondly, it expects most Ministers will be parachuted in from the top echelons of the private sector, rather than going through the paces of being first elected as MPs, gaining experience on the ground, before being promoted to junior Ministers and finally full Ministers.

Thirdly, it assumes that potential Ministers are often reluctant politicians, who consider entering politics to be a sacrifice and a burden, rather than a privilege to serve the nation, and, therefore, need to be coaxed with monetary incentives before stepping forward.

I would like to thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his explanation during his speech earlier. He was concerned that if we drastically reduced Ministerial salaries, it might shrink the potential pool of talents to draw from. Mr Speaker, selecting political leaders is not a game of chance. It is most important that we are able to identify and recruit good leaders. The goal should not be to enlarge the pool of people to draw from. In fact, by filtering out individuals who are – to put it bluntly – in it for the money, we could actually streamline the process of identifying capable and passionate political leaders who can take our nation forward.

The Deputy Prime Minister also expressed concerns that if potential Ministers waited 10 to 15 years before entering politics, we might miss them in their prime years. I would like to suggest that if people who are truly passionate about serving Singapore in the political arena that they will make the necessary financial plans and adjust their future financial commitments to fit the salary they will be receiving.

Mr Speaker, Mr Chen Show Mao has already articulated the Workers' Party's proposed salary benchmark. I would now like to focus in more detail on the bonuses proposed in the Paper and what the Workers' Party views as a more appropriate way of structuring the variable pay of political appointment holders.

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There are several components of the variable pay of Ministers in the proposed framework: a new National Bonus, an individual Performance Bonus, an Annual Variable Component (AVC) and a Special Variable Payment.

With the new bonus framework, Ministers can expect to get seven months' bonus as part of their "normal" compensation package, and 13.5 months or more in an exceptional year. The latter will more than double their already high base salary.

Sir, the purpose of a bonus is to provide an extrinsic motivation for a worker to perform well on the job, especially when his or her base salary is not high. However, entry-level Ministers' base salary of $55,000 a month already puts them among the highest wage earners in Singapore, so there is little reason why it needs to be supplemented by such a large bonus. More importantly, we need to ask whether our Ministers are the type of people who need such huge bonuses to motivate them to perform well. Did they not all claim to have entered politics to serve the people? I trust that the hon. Members who hold political office will still be motivated to serve the people of Singapore even without such large bonuses.

Even if our Ministers need more than just intrinsic motivators to perform well, in a properly functioning democracy with a first-world parliament, there should be sufficient extrinsic motivators to spur their performance. These include: scrutiny by Members of Parliament, the media, civil society and the public at large. Of course, the most important motivator for the Ministers is the need to convince voters to re-elect them during the General Elections.

I recognise that the bonuses and allowances have been reduced from as high as 26.5 months under the previous framework. However, the proposed bonuses are still excessive. Such large bonuses are usually seen only among senior executives of large corporations which, of course, are the very people the Paper proposes to benchmark the Ministers' salaries against. In fact, bonuses for political leaders are still largely unheard of in the rest of the developed world. Among the 12 well-governed countries and territories the Workers' Party studied, we have found so far that only one country – Japan – makes annual bonus payments to its Ministers. Japan's Prime Minister received the bonus of just 2.6 months in 2011.

I also disagree with the approach of paying out bonuses as high as seven months, simply for meeting targets. Even in the private sector, seven months bonuses are generally only paid when both the employee and the company far exceed their targets. In other words, it is an additional payment for doing much better than expected. It is not a payment for just meeting the expectations of their job – that is what their basic wages are for.

Last year, workers in Singapore got an average of just over two months of variable bonus, including the Annual Wage Supplement. On the other hand, our political leaders are set to receive seven to 13.5 months of bonus, on top of their already high base salaries. This can only serve to accentuate the empathy gap between the Government and the people. To bring bonuses down to a more acceptable level, I propose that the total variable component do not exceed five months, even in a very good year. If all targets are just met, the payment should be around three months. This is an addition to their 13th month Annual Wage Supplement.

Page: 854

To encourage the whole-of-government approach to policy making, the National Bonus should form at least two-thirds of the variable component with the individual performance bonus making up the remaining third.

Mr Speaker, I am glad to see the introduction of the National Bonus. The focus on the income growth of ordinary workers is a welcome departure from the disproportionate focus on GDP growth, which was the basis for the GDP Bonus of the past. The previous GDP Bonus could pay out as much as eight months' salary in a high growth year like 2010. With regard to the performance bonus, the Paper states that it allows the Prime Minister "the discretion to reward a political appointment holder based on performance in his immediate portfolio as well as wider contributions at the whole-of-government level". I would like to see greater transparency on the performance bonus component as well as a lowering of its discretionary element.

Sir, I propose that key performance indicators and KPI targets for each Ministry be defined at the start of the term of government. These KPI targets should be made public and they should be aligned to the goals that the government sets out at the Opening of Parliament. Each year, the performance bonus of the Minister helming that Ministry should be computed based on the achievement of those KPI targets. Since it would be impractical to tie each and every Ministry's performance indicator to the Minister, we could select just the most relevant KPIs affecting the majority of Singaporeans. For example, the Transport Ministry could set KPIs at the frequency of MRT disruptions and commuters' satisfaction survey results. The KPIs could also provide more transparency to the public on the Minister's performance. Voters might find the information useful for making their decisions at the ballot box.

With the introduction of the National Bonus, I see no need to retain the annual variable component and the special variable payment, which are also based on Singapore's economic performance. I propose that we do away with them.

Sir, if we are going to have such large bonuses, then the portion of the bonuses should be deferred rather than having the whole bonus paid out at the end of each year. A deferred bonus could be structured in the form of a bonus bank. This is a concept that some financial institutions introduced in the wake of the last financial crisis to discourage their senior executives from pursuing short-term results at the expense of consistent performance over the long term. Only a portion, perhaps one-third, of the Ministers' National Bonus and performance bonus should be paid out at the end of each year, and the rest deposited into a separate account. If, in subsequent years, performance is good, their bonus bank balance will grow. However, if performance fails to meet targets at any one year, there should be a claw-back which deducts from their bonus bank balance. At the end of the term of government when Parliament is dissolved, the Ministers will get paid what remains in their bonus bank account. If, say, performance has been good in the first year of government but poor in subsequent years, the Minister could potentially lose all that is in his or her bonus bank account. This would help ensure that Ministers always carefully consider the longer term consequences of their policy decisions.

In summary, Mr Speaker, I support some of the proposals in the White Paper, including the removal of pensions and the introduction of the National Bonus. However, I fundamentally disagree that the top-down approach of benchmarking Ministerial salaries to top income earners as well as the principle of paying out huge bonuses to political leaders. Mr Speaker, for these reasons, I oppose the motion.

Page: 855

5.21 pm

Mr Vikram Nair (Sembawang): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have two questions for Mr Giam. The first: this is a very interesting proposal. I just want to check if the Workers' Party actually made this proposal to the Committee back when the consultations were going on. The second question is this: while I understand that the Member disagrees with the method in which the benchmark and starting salary was arrived at, the conclusion the Member reached is that the starting salary should be $55,000 which is actually higher than what is recommended by the Committee of $46,750. Where he seemed to disagree is actually the quantum of the bonus - the range that should be determined. Am I right to say that that is the main point of the disagreement?

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: On the first point, I did not catch which of my recommendation he was referring to.

Mr Vikram Nair: Mr Speaker, I think Mr Ee sent out an e-mail asking all MPs for their comments. And I am just checking if the Workers' Party actually made this proposal to Mr Ee's Committee.

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: My understanding was that the Committee sent out individual requests for input from different MPs, and we did give our suggestions to the Committee. It was a face-to-face interview.

Mr Vikram Nair: Sir, did the Member make this proposal – the Workers' Party's new or alternative method of calculating the salaries for office holders – in detail to the Committee for them to consider?

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: We did make some of these proposals known. We had to read the Committee's report first, before we could conclusively decide on whether we agreed or not with the benchmarks. [ Interruption ] We did make a lot of the proposals to the Committee. Yes.

Mr Vikram Nair: Did you make the specific proposal on the bonus, the way it should be calculated, the claw-back and so on? Because it is a very detailed proposal you put forward, so I am just wondering if you let the Committee consider that.

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: Well, I cannot tell you what exactly we proposed to the Committee because that was under the understanding that it was something we proposed to the Committee. It was not something that was meant to be public.

Mr Speaker: Does the Member wish to move on to reply to the second question?

Mr Vikram Nair: Sir, my second question was really just to crystalise the point of disagreement. In terms of the actual figure you arrived at – you are saying that the starting salary for Ministers should be $55,000 which is higher than what the Committee recommended. But your main disagreement is that the range of bonus should be less. Can I clarify that is the only point of disagreement?

Page: 856

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: Well, that is one of the points of disagreement that I raised in my speech. The more important point of disagreement was actually the approach to benchmarking Ministers' salaries to the top income earners.

Mr Vikram Nair: The number you arrived at is very much the same.

Dr Ng Eng Hen: The Member has asked a specific question – WP's proposed benchmark is $55,000 which is higher than the Committee's recommendation. Does Mr Giam agree that this is his specific proposal?

Mr Gerald Giam Yean Song: I thank the Minister for clarifying. Yes, the quantum of $55,000 for the base salary is actually the same as the Committee's proposal. The Committee proposed a figure, I believe, of $715,000 divided by 13 months. That comes out to $55,000 a month.

Mr Speaker: Before calling the next speaker, can I please remind Members not to bend the microphones?

The Minister of State for Finance and Transport (Mrs Josephine Teo): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for allowing me to speak. I will begin in Mandarin.

( In Mandarin ): [Please refer to Pg 909 for Vernacular Speeches.] Until January 2006, I had never imagined I would play a part on Singapore's political stage. Like all working mothers, I was already feeling stretched. Becoming an MP on top of my demanding commitments sounded like an impossible task. My eldest child was in Primary 2. My twin girls were 5+ and in kindergarten. I questioned what sort of a mother I must be to even think about it.

When I was eventually able to cross my own hurdle, I discussed it with my husband. We had many long and serious conversations. Even though he understood that it would mean significant changes to our lives, he agreed to support my decision to take up political service. But I knew that in his heart, the pressure he felt then was no less than mine.

Why was it so hard to accept becoming an MP? For me, it is because it is a commitment of at least five years, and possibly 20 years. You know you cannot just walk away. Someone else will make the decision for you. But on the other hand, how many countries in the world have the kind of political system that is so unusually clean, serious and fruitful? Having benefited from the Singapore system, did I not have the duty to help preserve it for my children and theirs?

In the last six years, many people have asked me tough questions. Looking back, the toughest one which provoked the deepest reflection was in fact from my father just a few days before I was introduced. Having heard my reasons, he asked gently, "Do you think the sacrifice will be worth it?"

( In English ): Sir, many jobs involve some sort of sacrifice. In my previous role in the Labour Movement, I had great respect for my colleagues, especially the Industrial Relations Officers. The IROs keep long hours. They are often caught in the crossfire between the workers and the employers. It is emotionally draining. Many of the meetings with union leaders can only take place after usual work hours. Most events to bring members together are held on weekends. This impacts their family lives. It is a tough job. Without passion and willingness to serve, IROs cannot last long. But even those who are passionate will from time to time wonder if the union really values their contributions. This happens if the union has resources but allows staff salaries or career progression to fall far behind that of their peers working elsewhere. If the union is serious about retaining its most passionate and talented people, it cannot avoid the questions of salary and career progression.

Page: 857

This is also true of scientific research. In the Agency for Science and Research (A*STAR), I was involved in grooming young Singaporeans for future leadership of our research institutes.

One day, I received a phone call from the father of a bright girl who had been offered a scholarship to pursue her undergraduate degree and PhD in a prestigious university. Her father asked me, "How much will her salary be after she returns from her PhD?" I explained that we took into account the approximate five years she would take to complete her PhD. Her salary thus assumed five years of relevant work experience. After he heard the figure, the man asked, "Do you know that if my daughter became a lawyer, she would by then earn double that amount?"

Some may say it was just as well that the girl did not take up the PhD Scholarship. She might have wanted to do research, but could she live up to the expectations of her father or other family members? It takes great passion and determination to succeed as a researcher. Nonetheless, before a person chooses to commit a considerable part of his life to scientific pursuit, it is reasonable to ask what is involved and whether he would be severely advantaged by going down the path. While A*STAR can dismiss a few cases as "not committed enough", it cannot bury its head in the ground and neglect to keep up a competitive salary regime.

Let me state upfront that pay alone will not get you the right people. To do that, a good selection process must be in place. Thereafter, you need a good HR system that helps good people feel they are appreciated and wanted. The overall package must be right. Paying competitive salaries is also no guarantee an organisation will succeed but it represents the best chance of getting the best talents which will help the organisation to capture the best opportunities for growth and development.

A sensible employer does not begrudge potential recruits for asking practical questions. Once hired, there is no need to doubt the staff's passion and commitment either. In Chinese, we say “疑人不用，用人不疑” – if you doubt a person, do not use him; if you use a person, do not doubt him.

Mr Chen Show Mao, in his earlier speech, said that some office-bearers did not enter politics from the private sector. I think he means, therefore, they were not earning so much anyway and so they do not deserve the political salaries. I know many civil servants. It is true that the skills needed to succeed in the public sector are not the same as in the private sector, but please do not mistake this to mean that civil servants could not have done well in the private sector. In fact, many, when they leave for the private sector, do well and earn more. “疑人不用，用人不疑”.

In deciding whether or not to accept the Committee's proposal on political salaries, the Government must consider the level of public acceptance. If the Government does not explain its position well, if public believes that the principles are wrong or the salaries too high or just a way for political leaders to enrich themselves undeservedly, they will make their views known through the polls when the time comes. Because of the potential political cost, it is a subject matter most governments would gladly avoid. But if we do so, we are shirking our responsibility. As awkward as it is to discuss salaries so openly and publicly, we have to find a consensus.

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Many people have said that this debate was based on the wrong question of "how to pay Ministers?" I agree. As is the case of IROs and scientists, pay is just a means to an end. We first decide what kinds of IROs and scientists we want. Then, we decide how to structure pay to get the right people, not the other way round. Therefore, to me, the question before us is really "what type of political leadership do we want for Singapore?" I will put it to you that there are three things we want.

First, we want people with the right character. By this we mean people who are honest and honourable, and can be depended on to act in good conscience and do what is right for Singapore, even if it meets with popular resent.

Second, we want people who are committed. By this we mean people who stick around even when the going is tough, who are willing to give up something dear to them in order to serve a larger good.

Third, we want people who are capable. By this, we mean people with a proven track record of accomplishments, who have shown they have a good combination of skills and imagination to get things done.

In the Singapore context, where the quality of the civil service is very high, you do need a political leadership whose intellect matches up. Some people have argued the opposite. They say that because we have such a good civil service, the political leaders only have to task the civil servants to come up with options, and the political leader just chooses options A, B or C – multiple-choice question.

My observation is that this cannot be the case. Capable civil servants will not accept answering to incapable Ministers for long. It is also not a healthy situation as the Minister is ultimately accountable to the people. You want him, and not the civil servant, to be able to exercise sound judgement on your behalf.

It is equally important to be clear who we do not want. Speaking as a citizen, I do not want in my political leadership people who could not care less about the man in the street. I do not want people who are dishonest or overly clever in appearing "good" but who, once you interact with them a little bit more, realise do little more than appear "good". I would also be very worried if the political leaders seem not to have other options.

Finally, we should not have people who use politics to get opportunities for themselves and their families. This would be a disaster for Singapore.

Having decided what we want and what we do not want, we need to then ask what kind of system of paying political salaries is the right one to reflect our aims. In my view, the Committee headed by Gerard Ee has put forward a proposal that deserves strong support. It is by no means a perfect system because no salary system ever is, even in the private sector. We always struggle with whether we have got the right balance. Even in the private sector, the bosses ask, "Are we paying too much?" We may disagree on a few aspects. But the overall direction, overall package is the right one.

Page: 859

On the pegging of Ministerial salaries to the income of the top 1,000th citizen taxpayer, it is incorrect to label it as "elitist". By itself, the peg says nothing about the value and importance of people at whatever level of income. It makes no value judgement at all.

The correct way to think about the peg is: would we like to draw our top political leadership from that level in our population? This is how sound HR practitioners think about salaries, too. To peg them at the level which you want to draw people from.

Remember that we are talking about people with heavy responsibilities – to oversee defence, our reserves; to manage our economy; to maintain law and order; to educate our young; to plan for an ageing society. Again, as HR people would know, having the right person in charge makes a huge difference.

We can certainly peg political salaries to the 10,000th or 100,000th. But by doing so, we are also expressing a view that it is good enough for Singapore to draw from those levels for our top political leadership. Singaporeans will have to decide if that is so. Can we find people to fill Parliament and Cabinet at those salaries? Yes, I am sure we can. We will find people whatever the salary levels are. The question is whether we will be satisfied with the selection.

Earlier, I had shared with Members that the toughest questions I faced had been from my father. It took me many sleepless nights to find the right answer to whether "the sacrifice will be worth it". I decided it would be too painful to carry around the notion of sacrifice. It will cloud my vision and colour everything I do. Hence, I made the choice not to frame it as a sacrifice. Instead, I choose to see political service as a privilege, just as it is serving in the Labour Movement and the public sector where I was before joining the Labour Movement. It is an opportunity to do something for the children few moms can. I am grateful for the opportunity. And every time I land at Changi Airport, I am reminded of how great our little country is and how much "it is worth it".

Although I cannot claim to speak on behalf of all my colleagues, I believe they, too, made difficult decisions in agreeing to take up political service. Just because they do not go around speaking of sacrifice does not mean that there is none. Let us pause and ask if the proposal is reasonable and right for the kind of political leadership we want for Singapore. Let us ask if it will continue to help us have political leaders with the right combination of character, commitment and capabilities. I am confident that it does. Sir, I support the motion.

5.41 pm

Mr Zaqy Mohamad: Mr Speaker, Sir, the remuneration of our political leaders has always been a sensitive and emotional topic. I would like to thank Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean for his comprehensive statement on the motion and I was heartened that the Prime Minister took the step to call for the independent Ministerial Salary Review Committee to undertake the review of our remuneration framework last year following the General Election (GE).

Page: 860

While the review was called in response to the sentiments of Singaporeans at the GE, I hope that this move is not a knee-jerk political reaction, but one that leads to a longer term remuneration framework that is fairer and more acceptable to Singaporeans.

Few countries in the world have undertaken this motion, because governments know the topic can be politically charged when the incomes, wealth and family dealings of political leaders are up for public scrutiny. So, I would like to convey my respect to all Members in this House – Ministers and MPs – for putting their remuneration up for scrutiny in the spirit of transparency and good governance. I would like to credit the Ministerial Salary Review Committee for taking a step in the right direction towards a fairer remuneration for political office holders and MPs.

Speaking to many members of the public, many were surprised by the degree of the cuts. Others, on the other hand, felt that the salaries were still high. Therein lies the difficulty in bridging the logical benchmarks – the emotive aspects of a political office-holder's remuneration on one hand, and on the other hand, the roles and responsibilities of the political leaders – that is key to the well-being of the country and the individual citizen and the people we need to fill these roles.

I was personally heartened by the changes to replace the GDP Bonus with a National Bonus linked not just to GDP, but also to the socio-economic progress of Singaporeans. I think that this sends a strong signal on our focus to keep unemployment low, improve the real incomes of Singaporeans and still maintain a good enough GDP growth.

For many years, citizens had this perception that the Government is too growth-focused and that was because of the way bonuses for the public service was set up. These were highly dependent on GDP growth. So I support this change as I hope that this will also send a strong signal of what the focus of this Government should be and that it is aligned to our strategic concerns of bridging the income gap, especially at the median and bottom segments, and ensuring that Singaporeans are gainfully employed.

What I also hope is that the civil service will also adopt this National Bonus recommendation, that we also have a more connected civil service to serve Singaporeans with similar values and level of empathy to uplift our people and improve their lot. People equate the civil service with the Government. The civil service is always the first contact point of the people, and how they perform does matter. Be it about housing, education, social help or other issues. And the Prime Minister has rightly pointed out that for the PAP Government, we must get our politics right. It is about touching the heart and soul of Singaporeans. We cannot get all policies right 100% of the time. But certainly we can do more to engage Singaporeans, to connect with the ground and to address their concerns to bridge the gaps. And I think that Singaporeans also recognise that this has to be a whole-of-government principle, and not just for the political leadership.

Sir, the removal of the pensions is also timely. For many years, I have found this part of the package hard to defend as almost all ordinary workers have done away with pensions many years ago. So, it is time that the political office-holders get in alignment. I have always believed that Ministers and office-holders should set the right example and be aligned to our workers who have made the sacrifice and adopted the CPF-based retirement savings approach many years ago. We have long said that this puts less burden on our youths of today and the future generations of this country and employers. This is the right thing to do, and I am supportive of this change.

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Much has been said about how the salary benchmarks should be made. The proposed formula considers the median of the top 1,000 Singaporean income earners, taking into consideration a 40% discount. Some say this should have been a multiple of median income or some other complex formula. I refer to Workers' Party's statement earlier. I thank Member Chen Show Mao for his speech earlier and agree that political office is a calling and a privilege bestowed by the electorate. But I also think that personal sacrifice is a sort of commitment any MP needs to take on for the electorate.

In his speech, Workers' Party called for the benchmarks to be applied against MP allowance and in turn pegged to civil service benchmarks. One flaw in this principle is that the civil servants are executives. The civil service benchmark is meant to attract and retain good people in the civil service. This means that civil service has to be comparative to market rates as well, maybe slightly behind but it is still a market-based principle benchmark. As explained by Deputy Prime Minister Teo, they should not be subjected to the discount which politicians or Ministers are subjected to, to sacrifice for the people.

Sir, the Workers' Party's proposed benchmark still puts forth a high base salary of $55,000 yet the benchmark is still market-based and the difference between the proposal accepted by the PAP Government and the one put forth by the Workers' Party is that the latter leaves out the principles of sacrifice and discounts to reflect service to the people.

Sir, the crux of the issue, I think, is really about what a job is worth, whether it makes sense, given the responsibility and the value to having a capable and honest Government. With this benchmark, the Committee arrived at a $1.1 million figure, including estimated bonuses, with an entry-level Minister earning $938,000.

The proposed formula should be seen as one benchmark. While we can debate on the philosophy behind the formula, the core question on everyone's mind is whether the remuneration figure is too high or too low for the value and the roles and responsibilities of the various positions involved. While political observers and many have commented on the formulas, I do not think anyone has put an alternative number that is acceptable to everyone.

Sir, I recognise that Deputy Prime Minister Teo had mentioned that it is not possible to benchmark various political salaries of our peers internationally, but for all intents of fair comparison to rationalise the benchmarks, I also think that the Committee should still attempt to benchmark all perks, benefits, tax breaks and other hidden costs of other political remuneration of other equally developed countries. We can make some assumptions in the gap. Even if the rankings turn out to be that we are better remunerated, we know that from that basis, how much premium we hold on keeping our country competitive despite our small size with no natural resources, and also keeping our Government clean and corruption-free. This does not have to be a benchmark but can be seen as a sanity check and perhaps, in doing so, we may set an example for others to follow. Any electorate demanding that the government be transparent with political remuneration may then turn to Singapore as an example to follow. I think few will argue the need to have a strong and capable government to lead Singapore. And so, in good conscience, we have to ask ourselves, what is needed to keep a capable and corruption-free government.

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One point I am concerned with is that there is just too much emphasis sometimes in justifying the salary review based on whether the new political salaries can attract top talents. In the 2007 debate, I questioned the assumption "that good leadership and visionaries can only consist of the most intellectual and that money can attract them to serve the people of Singapore. If we cannot find 25 good men and women, to serve as Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, out of our population of five million, what values have our policies inculcated in our society?"

I still stand by that position that political office cannot be about money alone. One aspect of the review principles says a lot about the role of politicians here, but it is not emphasised as much as it should be and, that is, that political service ethos entail making sacrifices. And, unfortunately, the messaging and conversations that happen on the ground end up to be too much focused on monetary sacrifice.

In my own experience, politics will entail a lot more sacrifices than just money, I think as Member Josephine Teo has mentioned as well. For example, family time, especially those with young families. There is also reputational risk for those who wish to step forward to greater public scrutiny as well as opportunity costs to careers – as seen in the recent GE politics that this is not an iron rice bowl.

Because of the emphasis on monetary sacrifice, it is sad when politicians are being labelled as money-minded, and coming into politics for the money. In the recent General and Presidential Elections, we had candidates who promised to give a portion of their salaries in return for the vote. I think this is wrong and sets a wrong political culture for Singapore. There is a worth and dignity to this office. And one should get in on the basis of the candidate's abilities. If the person gets elected, it is up to him or her to decide how to give back one's earnings without fanfare. If you are doing it with your heart, should one need to publicise this giving? In Malay, we have a word for this giving – it is called " ikhlas ". Giving with a heart, and not expecting returns. And I know many politicians have done this for many years, and we should uphold the dignity of this office.

Sir, it is one thing to label politicians as coming into office for the money. It is another thing to try to pinpoint which politician in this House put their names on the election ballot for money. The way some segments deride politicians today and cast the image of politicians as being self-serving will deter good people from serving, no matter what the benchmarks say.

I strongly believe all the Members in this House have stepped forward with the intent of serving Singapore and Singaporeans. And I know I did. So I ask Singaporeans to help preserve the dignity of this political office. I do not think money is the sole barrier today. The benchmarks would keep politicians comfortable to focus on the job at hand – and not easily succumb to monetary temptations elsewhere. And I choose to believe that we have talented people among the three million citizens that we have today, who can step forward to serve the country and take this nation forward. And it is up to the political parties, whether PAP or otherwise, to find the right talents, who have their hearts in the right place for Singapore.

One benefit gained from this review and debate, is that the electorate is better aware of the remuneration of the various political offices. Sir, it is also timely that the Government sets about creating awareness of what the roles and responsibilities of the various office-holders are. A recent survey indicated that many Singaporeans did not understand the role of the President. And often, I get asked if I go down to the MPS to meet residents only once a week. Nothing wrong with the statement but people tend to have the impression that this is the only role of the MP. So like many here, I live, breathe, think politics every day, almost every moment – even on leave and at home. But I think we need to continuously bring awareness to the roles we politicians play. I think not many can differentiate between Ministers and Ministers of State, or between Parliamentary Secretaries and Permanent Secretaries.

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A recent comment by Workers' Party Members in Lianhe Zaobao on the role of the MPs and whether the welfare of constituents should be the role of the Government instead of the MP, had some constituents asking how come different MPs practise different standards. My personal view is yes, I have to be responsible for the welfare of my residents – even if it means raising money to bridge the gaps between what Government provides and what the constituents need. But as there is no standard point of reference, I think these things are left subjective.

With a more educated electorate, we can trust their judgement on whether a candidate is capable and can represent their interests if they can weigh the roles and responsibilities versus remuneration. Thus far, the electorate has not bought any of the tactics of candidates to work for free or at a discount. That is a good sign and, with greater awareness, the electorate can make better judgement if a candidate is worth the value of the office.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I think Singaporeans recognise that we need to attract good and capable people to run the government. And given the new political "normal", the onus is now on the political parties – PAP or otherwise – to find not just good and talented people to handle state business and uphold our high standards of Government, but also to find those with a heart to serve and can connect with the people. We have to develop beyond this monetary aspect of the political office and re-establish the ethos of public service that is dignified and characterises servitude to the people.

Political office comes with heavy responsibilities to shoulder when difficult decisions are required that impact many lives and livelihoods. The PAP Government has had a track record of operating on a long-term vision and that we believe in the importance of responsibility and accountability to Singaporeans. This is an important role to fulfil and function to keep Singapore running for today and for the future. How we benchmark the Ministerial pay must not downgrade this significance. Sir, I support the recommendations. Please allow me to conclude my speech in Malay.

( In Malay ): [Please refer to Pg 910 for Vernacular Speeches.] The issue of remuneration for political office-holders is a complicated one and was already hotly debated long before the last General Elections.

The ruling party has taken the courageous step of conducting this review, and this process is the right and appropriate thing to do.

I welcome the revisions recommended by the Ministerial Salary Review Committee headed by Mr Gerard Ee, which has proposed salary levels which incorporate some important considerations. These include ensuring salary levels that will continue to attract competent talent to come forward and serve in political office. However, this does not mean that salary becomes the main attraction for them to come forward. I am sure that those who are sincere to serve the nation will not treat money as their main criterion. Politics should not be seen as a means of career advancement or as a lucrative source of income. The talent who comes forward must have a sense of sacrifice and readiness to serve the people with full dedication.

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So we must ensure that these new revisions will be able to convince the people of Singapore that the principles and policies of remuneration for political office-holders are right for Singapore, for the current and future needs of Singapore.

5.55 pm

The Senior Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Acting Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports (Mr Sam Tan Chin Siong): Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to give my speech in Mandarin.

( In Mandarin ): [Please refer to Pg 911-913 for Vernacular Speeches.] I attended a function of a welfare organisation recently and a Lianhe Zaobao reporter discussed with me the choice of a word to describe the year. I felt that the word "heart" can best describe the positive mindset of the country, the society and the individual. If the Government is confident and resolute, it will be able to implement effective policies, lead the people forward to face international political and economic challenges. If people are more tolerant and more accepting, then the various religious and racial communities will be harmonious and society will be more caring. If we can accept things with an open heart, we will not over react and this will help to build a more rational civic society.

Mr Speaker, Sir, today, in discussing the Ministerial salaries, I will still use the concept of "heart" to elaborate my views.

Since last year, the discussion on Ministerial salaries has been a hot topic. Various people have expressed their views and given their honest opinions. Now, the Government has announced that it is prepared to accept the recommendations of the Committee, not only does this show that the Government is willing to accept feedback from the people, it also shows that the Government is determined to carry out reforms.

Recently, I read an article in Lianhe Zaobao , discussing what is most important in our world today. The article is written by Mr Koh Chin Yee. He felt that in this world today, the most important is the heart of the people. I agree. To any successful government, talent is very important, but the heart of the individual is even more important. However, no government can function effectively without both of them. What will happen to the livelihood and welfare of the people if one of them is lacking in the government? I am sure we all know the answer in our hearts. Hence, money should not be the reason for getting talents to enter politics, but it also should not be the reason for losing the talents.

Mr Speaker, Sir, in history, we have seen many rulers who sought talents. Liu Bei went to see Zhu Ge Liang three times, braving snow and rain, because he wanted to secure the services of Zhu Ge Liang. Liu Bei's sincerity finally moved Zhu Ge Liang, who agreed to help him. Zhu Ge Liang gave his all to serve his country, his spirit became an exemplary model for others, and his story became an important chapter in human civilisation. What moved Zhu Ge Liang to accept Liu Bei's proposal was his sincerity. The Singapore Government's sincerity in attracting talent is no less than Liu Bei's. However, just sincerity and high pay cannot attract enough talent to join the Government. From what we can see in the May elections last year, where the number of candidates from the labour movement and civil service surpassed those from the private sector, attracting well-rounded talent to join the Government is something that the Government needs to work on. Hence, whatever way is required to attract talents, we should not brush them aside lightly.

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According to the Confucian ethics book of filial piety, in the whole of heaven and earth, a person is the most precious. A Tang Dynasty book on politics(反经)is considered a miniature version of the Book of History (资治通鉴). It discussed many techniques of people management. A quotation from the book that left a deep impression on me is, "If you have talented people, the country will prosper. If you lose talented people, the country will collapse". What it means is, if you have the talents, the country will prosper. If you do not have the talents, the country will not do well. Going back to ancient Chinese history, the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties had all experienced periods of prosperity because they had abundant talent. And they all declined eventually because of inadequacy of talents. All these are historical lessons in governance that are worth pondering upon.

Mr Speaker, Sir, to govern a country, we need talent. Whether it is in a country, corporation or social organisations, only a few people will eventually make the final decision. That is why in the Analects, there are specific chapters discussing the saying that one word can make a country prosper, while another can bring it down. So, identifying the right talent, grooming the right talent using the right talents and allowing them to utilise their potential to the fullest is the key reason why Singapore is able to develop from a fishing village to a modern metropolis. Past experiences have shown that positive interaction between the people and the Government can make the entire society more efficient, allow us to surpass neighbouring countries, maintain higher competitiveness and bring about peace and prosperity.

After seven months of discussion, the Ministerial Salary Review Committee has consolidated the views of various segments of the society, seriously and objectively assessed the salary framework of the President, Speaker, Prime Minister and Ministers. And the Prime Minister has announced that the Government is prepared to accept their recommendations. I believe that this discussion should be brought to a close after this parliamentary debate. It takes time to assess if the new system is effective. Furthermore, the Committee also recommends to review this every five years and, if there is room for improvement, I am sure in the next review we can implement changes. With this periodic review, we will be able to further improve the system so that we can fine-tune it. All of us know that Rome was not built in one day. Systems will also take time to build. If we continue to argue about this, it will be counter-productive. So I am afraid that excessive debate will create a more divided situation.

We should not hurt a man's heart, because a heart that has been hurt will not heal easily. If the endless disagreement results in our team of governing leaders becoming overly cautious, because if we do not say anything, then we will be labelled as "heartless"; if we say nothing, then we will be accused of being "brainless". I am concerned that further debate of this issue will bring about more worries, and that people will devote too much energy in the debate, and veer further away from their original purpose of entering politics. It will also deter people with a heart to serve from coming forward. If there is a lack of top talent to serve our country, it will be detrimental to the interests of our country and people.

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I believe that the purpose of entering politics for all those seated here is to serve the country and repay to society. Governing a country is not easy and there are many tasks to accomplish. One must give his best and be very focused. I believe we also do not wish to see a situation where the Prime Minister, Ministers and MPs have to worry about how their performances measure up to other professions in our society, while they serve the country with full dedication.

In the last few months, there have been diverse views on the Ministerial pay review. Some said it is reasonable. Some said that the reduction is not sufficient and there is room for further cuts. Some people said we can even outsource the Government and award to the lowest tenderer. So, the varied opinions reflect the diverse views on this subject.

I had held discussions on the ministerial salaries with a number of people at different occasions in the last few months. There were always enthusiastic responses on the subject. However, when I asked if they are eligible, would they be willing to give up their high salaries in the private sector and accept a public post with a lower salary, almost all of them would say "I do not have any interest in politics, but I am sure there are others who are prepared to go into politics". This kind of response does not surprise me. However, a few young people brought up a point that set me thinking. They said that under the current circumstances, Government officials and leaders have become a target of public attacks. If you do well, nobody will say you have done well. If you have not done well, then everybody will come down on you like a ton of bricks. What is more worrisome is that when the words of Government leaders are misunderstood or distorted by others, they become public enemy. They said this is a common phenomenon in cyberspace. That is why some young people feel that the current negative climate in public opinion is the key reason why they are reluctant to enter politics.

Mr Speaker, Sir, public opinion is one of the important channels to monitor the Government's performance. Rational, fair and balanced public opinion is a clear mirror that can reflect the pros and cons of policies. On the other hand, if public opinion is not rational and fair, it will become a distorting mirror that distorts facts, belittle the effects of policies and cause confusion between truth and falsehood. As an ancient saying goes, "the same person who can bring you success can also cause you to fail". It is a double-edged sword. If irrational public opinion deters talent from entering politics, we will have reasons to be worried about the future of Singapore.

Whether Singapore can succeed in the future will depend on whether our society can remain highly rational and whether the Government and the people can be united and march forward together. We must listen humbly to the views of the people. But the policy of the Government must be fully supported by the people to be effective.

Mr Speaker, Sir, the review of Ministerial salaries has been discussed for seven months. It is now being discussed in Parliament. I sincerely urge all of us to set aside our differences, work together to look for the best people to serve Singapore, to create a better future for our people. In this way, Singapore will continue to prosper and become a bright little red dot in the international arena. Sir, I support the motion.

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6.08 pm

Dr Lam Pin Min (Sengkang West): Mr Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to join in the debate. Ministerial salaries have been a controversial and emotive topic since 1994 when the White Paper on Competitive Salaries for a Competent and Honest Government established private sector salary benchmarks to peg the salaries of Ministers and Administrative Officers. Many speakers before me have touched on the various important issues arguing for or against the recommendations proposed by the Ministerial Salary Review Committee. We have also heard the need to pay competitive salaries to attract talents. Yes, Singapore is a small country and we have a limited pool of talents. Competitive and fair salaries must be paid so that we can attract the right people in their prime to serve the nation.

I remember one of the more memorable speeches made during the last debate in 2007 was made by the hon Member, Ms Denise Phua. The Member spoke passionately of the differences between the public and private sectors. In the public sector, especially for the political leaders, the main difference herein lies in the amount of power, influence which one could wield. The Member warned that concentrating too much of both power and pay would attract the wrong type of people to public service. This is a view which I wholeheartedly agree with. Public service is a calling. High Ministerial salaries or monetary rewards should not be the reason why people are motivated to serve the nation. As Catherine Lim wrote in a Straits Times article in 2007:

"No Singaporean with any practical sense of the real world would want to see a Minister denied a salary commensurate with his status and dignity or living less well than any prosperous Singaporean. But, at the same time, no Singaporean would expect a Minister to feel disgruntled if he is paid less than the top CEO. If the disgruntlement actually causes him to leave his job, then he was not cut out for public service in the first place. Thus, to offer him a matching salary to enable him to stay would be to demean that office."

It is as simple as that. The motivation for public service should not be pay. But should we not then pay our Ministers sufficiently well – a salary that is commensurate with his important role and heavy responsibility as a Minister? Similarly, is it right to demand an immense financial sacrifice from people to serve the nation? By this argument, is it then right to say that we should demand the same type of "financial sacrifice" from teachers, Police officers, military personnel, nurses, judges or our civil servants because they should be serving out of a sense of dedication and devotion to the public good?

I would like to take this moment to share the life of one great political leader. His father was a high official in a small state in British India. He studied law at the University College of London and became a lawyer. When he finally returned to the country of his birth, he advocated non-violence and became the greatest leader India or even the world ever knew. Yes, he was Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. His peaceful non-violent resistance movement galvanised Indians and led to the independence of India. Gandhi earnestly believed that a person involved in public service should lead a simple life. He first displayed this principle when he gave up wearing western-style clothing, which he associated with wealth and success. When he returned to India, he renounced the western lifestyle he led in South Africa, where he had enjoyed a successful legal practice. The practice of giving up unnecessary expenditure, embracing a simple lifestyle and washing his own clothes, Gandhi called "reducing himself to zero".

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When I read the story of this great leader, I thought to myself that this has to be the epitome of the self-sacrificial leader. But let us remember that political leaders in the past, in different parts of the world, served in different contexts from local political leaders today. The scenarios and challenges they faced were totally different from those we see today. But as I read stories of great leaders both in Singapore and elsewhere, I wondered, what were the common reasons that motivated them to serve the public good? What gave them the motivation, in certain admirable situations, to give up everything to serve the nation?

The esteemed James L Perry, distinguished professor from Indiana University, and author of the book "Motivation in Public Management: The Call of Public Service" calls the reasons to which people are attracted to public service "public service motivation". In examining the US system of governance, Perry argues that there are six key dimensions which people could be called or attracted to serve. These are:

(1) attraction to public policy making;

(2) commitment to the public interest;

(3) a sense of civic duty;

(4) social justice;

(5) compassion or a patriotism of benevolence; and

(6) self-sacrifice – the willingness to substitute service to others for tangible personal rewards.

These should be the reasons that we use to attract our potential future leaders. I believe that up to today, we have been able to attract talents who have joined the public service not because of pay. Examples include our current Minister for Foreign Affairs and Law, Mr K Shanmugam, our Minister for Defence Dr Ng Eng Hen, ESM Goh Chok Tong, then Minister for Finance, Dr Richard Hu, and the late Dr Balaji Sadasivan, who gave up their plump jobs in the private sector not for monetary rewards but in serving the nation. All of us are here in this Parliament not because of the financial and monetary rewards that are offered, but rather, inside all of us, regardless of party affiliation, we have this deep-rooted duty to serve.

I totally agree with hon Members Chen Show Mao and Josephine Teo that it is indeed a privilege to serve the public and to serve the nation. Neither money, power nor fame have motivated us to be here.

It is important that we pay our leaders fairly. In deciding what a fair remuneration is, we should also be aware of the sacrifices that one makes to become a Minister or a political office-bearer. Let us hypothetically explore several options. On one hand, we can peg pay to private sector salaries, which is what we are doing currently. On the other, we could offer all Ministers and leaders of our nation a nominal wage, say $1 a month. Well, I think there are problems to that. For one, we run the risk of possible corruption and I am not questioning the integrity of leaders though. But worse, I think we will only attract people who are "sufficiently comfortable" or who have attained a certain measure of success in their lives to come forth and serve the nation. And I am not saying that all who are rich and wealthy and who come forth, do not come with a deep-seated intent to serve the nation. Rather I am highlighting a scenario where only the money rich and wealthy elite, capable of setting aside their concerns with daily lives, would come forth and serve and govern Singapore.

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Even the suggestion to peg Ministerial salaries to a certain percentage of the lowest income earner is also flawed, for there is the counter argument that Ministers should be concerned about the well-being of all Singaporeans, rather than just the lower-income Singaporeans. They should be concerned about the well-being of all in the nation and should not just focus on growing the lives and wealth of the poor.

Sir, the review Committee also looked at comparisons with other politicians from other countries. However, we do not know how the other countries derived their formulae, and these countries do not face the same sort of socio-historical-political contexts and environment as we do. Moreover, the pay packets of politicians of many other countries are not that transparent, and often have other hidden components. What we want is a clean wage, with no hidden perks and entitlements, and the current recommendations offer just that.

In deriving a new formula for Ministerial salaries, it is important not to be too fixated with just the private sector benchmarks. While the private sector would serve as a significant competitor for talent in the civil service, coming into politics and serving the nation as a leader, as a Minister, is a unique set of circumstances that cannot be solely compared to in the private sector. Thus, the pay of a Minister can never be successfully pegged to and equated to that of the private sector alone, because the scope and responsibility are very different. The pay of a Minister must reflect the work he does. The job of a Minister, or any public servant for that matter, must be to serve the people.

The review Committee rightly introduced the National Bonus which draws a direct link between the salaries of political leaders and the socio-economic progress of Singaporeans. Besides GDP growth, real or inflation-adjusted median income growth, the real income growth of the poorest 20% in Singapore, and the unemployment rate, will be considered in computing the remuneration.

Like hon Ms Denise Phua has alluded to earlier, different people will have different perspectives – whether to peg directly to private sector pay or peg to senior executives in civil service which actually in turn is also benchmarked to private sector, with multiples to peg the responsibility of the political office-bearer. The fact is there is no really magic formula in determining the salaries of Ministers. This current recommendation is a right step forward and we need to regularly review its relevance moving forward. Having strong and committed leaders is critical in the survival and progress of Singapore. Our leaders' task must be to create a nation where all Singaporeans can enjoy the fruits of their labour and hard work. While pay should not be the key motivator for political service, it should also not be a deterrent. Let us pay our leaders a fair wage which reflects the work that they do in ensuring that all Singaporeans benefit from the growth of the country and in ensuring that the lives of Singaporeans are all being looked after.

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We have often talked about comparing apples to apples in deciding Ministerial salaries. I would like to end off with an analogy; one that reflects the type of political leaders we hope to see in Singapore. The job of a Minister is like the guardian of an apple tree; in other words, he is the gardener. In tending to the apple tree, do we pay him low wages, that he is forced to take the apples from the tree and sell them? Or should we pay the gardener fair wages so that he is satisfied, such that he is not tempted to take from the tree but instead would freely share the fruits of his labour with others? Our Ministers are like gardeners. They take good care of the apple tree; they put in their time and effort; they sacrifice their lives, their times and other opportunities, to devote attention to this tree that is Singapore, sowing the fruits of their labour such that Singaporeans can share the growth and fruits of the tree. Let us pay them the right wage that is commensurate with the heavy responsibility they have been entrusted with. The political leaders sow the seeds today and we will reap the harvest for ourselves, for our children and for our future. Sir, on that note, I support the motion.

6.21 pm

Mr Inderjit Singh (Ang Mo Kio): Mr Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to contribute to the discussions on the Ministerial salaries – a topic many Singaporeans feel strongly about and one which has deeper implications on Singapore's political future than some may imagine.

Sir, in 2007, the last time Parliament had this debate on the revision of Ministerial salaries, I disagreed with the benchmark formula that the Government used at that time. I considered it unrealistic to peg Ministers' salaries to just the top 48 people of income earners who change from year to year, since this is too small a group and variations may not be reflective of changes of salaries of the first 48 people used in the benchmark. I also said in 2007 that the Prime Minister should do away with the benchmark and just use the base salary of $1.2 million which was set in 1994 to determine future salary increases. Just as a company which has a one-time exercise to determine a remuneration philosophy, I thought that after more than a decade of having the salary at that level, we had something that worked well for Singapore.

Sir, the 2007 adjustment was a difficult one to accept as salaries at that time jumped based on the unrealistic benchmark formula used. I am therefore happy that this has now been corrected to a more realistic level and which is more reflective of what it should be.

While I still feel that it is not wise to use the benchmark pegged against the private sector, I can understand the review Committee's rationale for doing so. The Committee, in fact, looked at different benchmark options, including what the Workers' Party is recommending of using salaries of Ministers in other countries before recommending the current formula. The Review Committee sought to correlate Ministers to talent in Singapore, and therefore recommended that Ministerial salaries be pegged at the top 1,000 income earners here. I feel that by expanding the pool to benchmark against the 1,000 income earners here, it is a lot more palatable than just the 48 income earners that we had been using in the past. At least at the 1,000th people level, we may statistically better capture the variance of salaries of Singapore's top talent from year to year.

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However, even this round, the Committee suggests a 40% discount to the median salary of the top 1,000 earners, reflecting the difficulty of finding the right benchmark formula as it was previously put at two-thirds of the benchmark. But I agree with many Singaporeans that it is not useful to talk about a discount as a measure of public service and sacrifice. Moreover, the discount figure of 40% is based on a perception that it reflects accurately the level of discount that should be given to public service. This is arbitrary and subjective. I understand though that the Review Committee suggested this approach in absence of any standard formula or convention that can be logically applied to this scenario of Ministers doing their job both as a national service as well as a career.

This is, therefore, a much better approach as compared to what the Workers' Party is suggesting. The Workers' Party suggested that we peg the salaries to the divisional director level which is about $10,000 per month, and which is the formula used in some of the 12 countries that they mentioned. I think we cannot give a partial solution because in most of these 12 countries that the Workers' Party is comparing against, there are also a whole bunch of perks and allowances that are used to determine the final salary of an MP which is then used to determine the final salary and allowance of a Minister. I looked at most of the countries that are suggested by the Workers' Party and guess what? None of them has a clean wage system. They have many allowances and perks, some hidden perks. For example, in Japan, where MPs and Ministers get to rent a house in the prime district at about one-fifth of the market value. And also in addition to that, all the rest of the allowances that we know about – medical allowance, housing allowance and a whole bunch of others. So, therefore, I think if the Workers' Party wanted a formula, they should have talked about everything and not just give us a partial solution to compare against.

The discount proposed may not have been necessary as the principle of paying our Ministers and civil servants high salaries is not a flawed one. It is better to pay them a clean wage without any perks, as I mentioned before. In 2007, I agreed with this principle and I will say today again that I support it. Many quote examples of leaders from other countries who do not earn as high salaries as our leaders. However, what they miss is that leaders from other countries get everything else, the perks that I mentioned, cars, homes, servants and food items, paid in addition to their salaries. In fact, I learnt that in the UK, Ministers and MPs also get motorcycle and bicycle allowances in addition to mileage allowances for the transport that they use.

So our Ministers earn a clean wage, which means that every other expense is borne personally by them through these salaries. Nonetheless, intrigued by what the Workers' Party was recommending, I looked at some of the examples. I took Britain as an example where a Cabinet Minister has a salary entitlement of about £135,000 in addition to the allowance of an MP of about £65,000. And then there is a whole slew of other allowances – staffing expenditure, communications expenditure, admin and office expenditure, IT equipment, London calls allowance, London accommodation allowance, personal, additional accommodation allowance, constituency office allowance and these do not include things like chauffeured- driven cars in the range of Jaguars for many Cabinet Ministers and those who claimed mileage allowances and also the whole range of pension and medical benefits that they get. Just taking what could be accounted for, I added these to be £411,000 which is about S$815,000.

I do not think paying our Ministers what we pay is overly high. Sir, in France, in addition to a salary and a number of allowances like what the UK MPs and Ministers get, they also get free train and plane travel and also an unaudited expense allowance. The President of the French Senate commands an undisclosed, virtually uncontrolled expense budget which is about £2.2 million per year, much higher than what our Ministers get. On a Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) basis, India pays the most to their MPs while Japan, Italy and Singapore pay about the same level. In these countries that I mentioned, their unofficial income of MPs and Ministers is a lot higher than the official income. And if you want to have an internationally comparable standard, I think a good measure would be to look at the GDP per capita on a price PPP basis. This ratio is about 35 for US and for most Western Europe and Japan, it is about 10 times for an MP. In Singapore, at the PPP-GDP of about $59,000 and an MP allowance of $192,000, our ratio is 3.2 which is not overly generous in my opinion.

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Sir, I agree with the general view that salary should not be an incentive to lure or to attract talent into public service. However, it should also not be a disincentive. We want men and women to come forward to serve the country and not to be tempted by high salaries to join. But at the same time, we cannot deny that holding political office is a great responsibility which has deep impact on the daily lives of Singaporeans and the future of the country. With Singapore being a small and open economy, we are often vulnerable to a whole bunch of external factors that are beyond our control and it is not easy for the Ministers to steer Singapore. The salaries Ministers earn should reflect the responsibility and significance of their jobs.

Sir, even some of the CEOs of SMEs I know, these days earn more than what the Committee has recommended for our Ministers at the entry level, let alone the CEOs of large listed companies. I hope that Singaporeans appreciate that our Ministers should be getting paid at a level which would pay for a good person to do a top job regardless of whether it is in the private sector or the civil service or in Government.

Based on this principle, I feel that the current level proposed is not an overly generous one. And I am glad that the main Opposition party in this House, the Workers' Party, has agreed to this level of salary based on the computation that Mr Chen proposed: five times or nine times of an MP's pay. And this further supports my point that we should do away with the benchmark for the future - that we already have – all of us, the Government and the Opposition, have agreed that we have a good base to start from. The Prime Minister should, in the future, use this as a basis to determine future salaries and not be caught in a benchmarking exercise that can be quite emotional.

However, where I do advocate high salaries, I would also like to see more accountability for mistakes and problems created as a result of a Minister's poor performance. If we can peg our Ministers' salaries to the top income earners in Singapore, then likewise we also should have high standards of accountability of performance. I hope the Prime Minister will be quick to take to task a Minister who may perform poorly. And if a Minister consistently performs poorly and less than satisfactorily, the Prime Minister should be quick to replace him as is done in the private sector with CEOs. Here is where the new bonus structure recommended by the review Committee can play an important role as it could be used as a useful tool to reward good performers and, conversely, the Prime Minister may also use it to send a strong signal to a Minister if his performance is less than satisfactory.

In this regard, the National Bonus is a very good idea as it is more reflective of the impact of policies on the lives of Singaporeans than the previous GDP Bonus. The new structure is tilted towards the improvements of lives of a good cross-section of Singaporeans. I commend the review Committee for listening to feedback about how the GDP Bonus was too general and, therefore, not a good measure for a performance bonus.

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I also support the recommendation to remove pensions as this now normalises the pay structure of Ministers with most of other Singapore Government jobs. But we must recognise and appreciate that this is a huge loss of compensation to the Ministers, in addition to the salary cuts.

Sir, whatever formula we suggest, we will face similar questions. It is therefore best that we exercise the judgment of whether what the Committee has recommended as a compensation for our Ministers as fair, and fix our own Singapore base salary structure which will not require a benchmarking exercise in the future. I therefore disagree with the proposal for a review every five years, as five years is too short a time and it will not be a productive exercise. Each time, we will raise the same issues over and over again. Perhaps a new Prime Minister in each era may want to review the structure but I do not agree with a review every five years. What each Prime Minister can do, before he hands over to the next Prime Minister, is to decide on good bonuses in good years and for good performance, and temporary salary cuts in bad years and for poor performers. This is what we do in the private sector - not to review the philosophy of salary structures each time there is a need to adjust salaries.

Sir, in conclusion, while we should not talk about sacrifice and discounts, the recommendations by the Committee reflects huge reductions in compensation for our political office-holders. We will never find the perfect comparable benchmark to compare with – not the private sector, not with Ministers in other countries but we must believe that the extensive review exercise by the Committee has identified the appropriate level of compensation for our Ministers. This time, the Workers' Party, the main Opposition in this House, has agreed to the level proposed. In the past, in fact, they had disagreed. And this time, I am happy to note that they have agreed to this. So let us use this as our base for future determination of salaries.

With these changes, I hope we will continue to see good men and women attracted to public office to serve Singapore even with this new salary structure. I am sure we will be able to attract those who are already successful in their careers and who have been at the prime of their careers for some time, and with the will to do national service. However, we also recruit talent based on potential and I worry about our ability to attract such people with the potential to serve but who have not yet reached their prime and peak of their careers, especially in these times of much greater public scrutiny, as mentioned by Mr Sam Tan just now.

Sir, with this, I generally support the recommendations made by the Review Committee on Ministerial Salaries and I hope that all of us can accept this and move on and not re-open this from year to year.

6.35 pm

Mr Speaker: Mr Pritam Singh, you have a clarification?

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Mr Pritam Singh: Mr Speaker, just two points of clarification. The first point: the Workers' Party and the ruling party having the same base to work from, I think there is something very fundamentally different about the Workers' Party's proposals.

Mr Speaker: Mr Singh, are you asking a question or clariyfing the points?

Mr Pritam Singh: One point of clarification from what the Member has said and one question. So the point of clarification first: where we are starting from is really to say –

Mr Speaker: Mr Singh, I think you can save that for your speech. The point is this, if you have questions for the Member –

Mr Pritam Singh: Okay, fine. I will then move on to the question specifically. The Member spoke about a "clean wage". Under the Committee's proposals, the bonus that can be accrued by Ministers is up to 13.5 months. Does the Member think that a clean wage ought to include such a high amount of bonus? Because I am sure it is more than getting an allowance for riding a motorcycle or bicycle.

Mr Inderjit Singh: Sir, I support a level of bonus even higher than the 13.5 months if the Minister deserves it. In 2008-2009, when we faced a terrible financial crisis, I think Mr Tharmum Shanmugaratnam as the Finance Minister should have got a much higher bonus than what he may have got. In the private sector, I think contrary to the issue raised by Mr Giam, it is not two or three months of bonus. Even in a small company that I know of last year, a person at the middle level had about 10-11 months of bonus whereas the CEO had about 15 months of bonus. And in the financial sector, it is even higher than that. So the 13.5-month bonus is not an overly high number; it is something that is required to reward talent for the good job that they do.

Mr Speaker: Yes, Mr Singh?

Mr Pritam Singh: Sir, just to confirm the clarification. The Member is saying that a 13.5-month bonus or even more than that actually does not contradict the clean wage proposal put forward by the Committee. Am I right to say that?

Mr Inderjit Singh: It does not contradict because Ministers' salaries are reported every year in the Budget Book. I think there is also a recommendation for the Prime Minister to share with the House on a yearly basis what the Ministers have been paid. So it is declared. What is not "clean" is, if the 13.5-month was not declared and the formula for determining that is not declared. Now, there is a clear formula on how a Minister can achieve whatever bonus that he is entitled to, based on very clear perimeters. This is, in fact, an excellent way of measuring performance that is very objective, it is not subjective at all.

6.38 pm

Mr Alvin Yeo (Chua Chu Kang): Mr Speaker, Sir, thank you for allowing me to join in the debate at this late hour. It is certainly fashionable now to lay into this whole topic of Ministers' pay, to attack perceived "fat cat" salaries and decry the loss of the spirit of public service that was the hallmark of our pioneer leaders. But amidst the cacophony of sound, it is essential that we maintain a level-headed perspective about this debate: to temper idealism with realism, to remember that nothing exists in a vacuum, least of all, our country; to strike a balance between the ethos of public service and the need to attract and retain talent in our leadership.

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One of the sub-plots that has drawn considerable comment is the benchmark adopted by the Committee: the median income of the top 1,000 citizen earners, less 40%. It is criticised by some to be elitist; there is no relation to the lot of the common Singaporean and likens public office with the profit-driven occupations of commercial enterprise. Far better, it is said, to peg salaries to the median income of all Singaporeans or of the lowest 20% – and now with the latest proposal by the Workers' Party – to that of senior civil servants and then apply a suitable multiple to that figure.

I feel that much of this criticism overlooks what the Committee was trying to achieve. The Committee was not seeking to monetise the value of public service or to treat the Cabinet as an extension of the private sector as the hon Member for Aljunied, Mr Chen Show Mao has alleged. Rather, the Committee was looking at the talent pool among Singaporeans from whom the Government would seek to draw its future leaders. It is true that income-earning capacity, just like academic credentials or lofty positions in corporations, is not a conclusive determinant of the qualities to be a leader. That is where the ethos of public service comes in and what the 40% discount was meant to address. But make no mistake – our citizens demand top performance from our Ministers who, in turn, are drawn for what is considered to be the likely pool of top performers.

Purely by way of illustration, there was considerable excitement in political circles when Mr Chen Show Mao himself threw his hat into the political ring. This was not because Mr Chen was considered to be a "median-income" sort of guy or somehow an emblem of the lowest income quartile of society. But rather, with his sterling qualifications and his position then as a partner in an international law firm, he was proof that Opposition parties could also attract the sort of top talent that, one day, perhaps may form the Government.

Sir, what about this other suggested benchmark of median income which is then multiplied by a reasonable number? The first issue is how you derive this multiple. Is it five times, 10 times or 20 times? Whichever multiple you use will be seen as arbitrary and appear to be an exercise in backward rationalisation. You work out the salary figure you want and then you derive the multiple to get there. The second issue is how does this method better justify the salary as identification with the men-in-the-street? Once you apply a multiple, any multiple – five times, 10 times, 20 times – you lose that identification with the median income and you can be equally accused of being elitist.

To me, the most significant matrix that appears in the Committee Report was Mercer's figure of $2.29 million for the average pay for CEO of a similar public-listed company. That was considered by Mercer as the closest approximation to a Minister's job. That may be so, but in my view, it is still not that close. The budget of a Ministry runs into the billions of dollars, more than that of the typical public company. The number of employees of a Ministry can be in the tens of thousands, bigger than most public companies. The impact of a Minister's decisions and policies affect a far wider group than any public company.

When there is breakdown of the MRT trains, the Transport Minister is called to account. When a portion of Orchard Road floods, the Minister for Environment and Water Resources has to answer questions on "ponding" and pumps. No one is complaining about this – that is the nature of public office. But if the closest approximation of a Minister's job, which is still less onerous than that of a Minister, pays $2.29 million, and the Committee's recommendation would mean that a Minister earns less than 50% of that, is that not a reasonable balance to strike? Is that not an appropriate financial sacrifice to make for public office?

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There are those who think that is not enough, that public office should not be linked with competitive salaries even with the 40%-50% discount. I respect their view but would caution that idealism must be tempered by pragmatism, by a sense of the world we live in. We would all like our leaders to be not only honest, clever, hardworking, probably good looking as well, but so public-spirited that they would take office regardless of the pay, regardless of whether they could provide sufficiently for their family or for their own retirement. Ms Denise Phua dubbed them "superhero politicians". There are such people around but are there enough for one to form a government, generation after generation?

The bulk of the population would like to earn a good living and to earn more if they could. Does it mean that a potential leader is not public-spirited if he or she is willing to take a pay cut but still wants to ensure a certain standard of living for their family? Or are we confining our choice of leaders to those who not only are extremely capable but also have the disposition of a religious leader or social worker when it comes to something as mundane as a salary? Is it wise for us to confine our pool of potential leaders to such a restrictive category?

Quite apart from that, a symbolic salary or one that is not linked to the potential income that the leader could make if he chooses a different path, brings with it other dangers. It is difficult to speak about this diplomatically but it is well recognised. There are many political leaders in other countries, who draw an official salary which appears low but are rich beyond imagination because they use their power for illicit gain. There is a list circulating around the Internet about the top 20 or 30 highest paid political leaders in the world and all of them are from the Singapore Government, presumably, to make the point against high Ministerial salaries. But if the list was expanded to include the top 20 or 30 richest political leaders, I believe there would not be a single Singaporean Minister among them. Clearly, a low or symbolic salary would not put off such persons who see public office as a route to greater riches but through indirect means. The complete opposite to the clean wage Mr Inderjit Singh was talking about. But are these the sort of persons we want to find for leadership?

Still another side effect of having salaries which are not pegged to competitive benchmarks, even with the hefty discount, is that it tends to limit those coming forward to serve to those who have inherited wealth or who have already made their fortune. The United States and the United Kingdom are two countries which are acknowledged as leading democracies with first-world political systems, if not always parliaments. It has been pointed out many times that their leaders get paid less than our Ministers despite ruling over larger countries. What is sometimes overlooked is the background and composition of their leaders.

Quoting from This is Money.co.uk , an article called "The Cabinet Rich List" by Glen Owen talking about United Kingdom: "It is the £60 million Cabinet. David Cameron's coalition government has adopted fairness as one of its defining slogans, but his team of Ministers has been drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of financial elite – leading to accusations that politics is once again becoming the preserve of the wealthy". On number three of "The Cabinet Rich List" is George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer, with a net worth, that means assets less liabilities, of £4.6 million. The description is "the youngest Chancellor for more than a century holds a £2 million stake in his father's luxury wallpaper company, and lives in a £2 million family home in London's Notting Hill. Its constituency property adds another £600,000". And number five on "The Cabinet Rich List" is the Prime Minister David Cameron. The Prime Minister has a net worth of £4 million. The Prime Minister and his wife both come from wealthy backgrounds and enjoy substantial property assets of their own. Their London home has been valued at £2.7 million and their constituency house is £1 million. Both are in line to inherit fortunes from their parents. The combined wealth of the Camerons' parents has been put as high as £30 million. Then at number 12 on the list is the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg with a more modest net worth of £1.9 million. This is what the description of his state of wealth: "Like his coalition partner Cameron, Clegg's father made millions in the City. While Clegg senior has an impressive international property portfolio worth several million pounds, the Lib Dem leader's own wealth comes from a £1.5 million property in Putney and a constituency house in Sheffield".

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Turning to the United States, citing figures from the OpenSecrets.org which is published by the Center for Responsive Politics, of the estimated net worth, assets less liabilities, of members of the executive: "In 2008, the Republican government contained figures such as Henry Paulson, the Secretary of the Treasury with an estimated net worth of US$125 million and Dick Cheney, the Vice President with a net worth of over US$30 million. Even the President George Bush, was worth about US$9.5 million. In 2010, the Democratic government contained figures like Hilary Clinton, the Secretary of State, with an estimated net worth of US$31 million, and William Daley of over US$28 million. Even President Barrack Obama, perhaps thanks to good book sales, was worth US$7.3 million".

I do not seek to criticise these countries or their political systems. But it reinforces the view that every country must choose its own system based on its own economic conditions, social modes and particular limitations. What works for the UK and the US may not be right for Singapore. We are a small country. True. But that is precisely the challenge – how to make this "little red dot" with no natural resources, small population, tiny domestic market relevant against our giant neighbours and in this ever changing world. All while trying to maintain our multi-ethnic, multi-religious identity. To institute a system of remuneration that tends to draw our leaders from the saintly, the power-hungry, and the already-rich is not a course we should take. We need the best government we could find regardless of race, religion or background, provided they have the public interest at heart. We need a system of remuneration not to attract candidates to public office with the promise of riches but not to deter them either, by imposing over large sacrifices of a financial and personal nature.

The Committee sets out a fair and reasonable balance between competing demands. We should support it and move on with the challenging task of coming out with the best policies to improve the lives of all Singaporeans.

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