PRESIDENT'S SPEECH Debate on the Address

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

Debate resumed.

Question again proposed.

5.36 p.m.

Mr Sia Khoon Seong (Moulmein): Mr Speaker, Sir, let me echo what has been so vigorously expressed currently both from within and from without this Chamber, that the years ahead for the people of Singapore as a result of the British withdrawal by 1971 are crucial in every aspect of life in the Republic. They are crucial for us in terms of national defence and security and in economic, political and social development. The sacred and trojan task before the Government in its present term of office is not only to win the support and co-operation of the people in a common effort to surmount the difficult defence and economic problems that will arise as a result of the pending British withdrawal, but also to lead the people of Singapore towards a national identity which is Singapore's own in form and content, and to move from a society of migrant people to a deep-rooted society, with a feeling of attachment to Singapore and a sense of national pride and purpose.

In the difficult years ahead, while our attention will be focused on the problems and our minds will be diverted towards finding solutions to the problems, we must never lose sight of our national perspective and, in our eager and aggressive approach to solve our problems, find temporary solutions that would create other problems for ourselves. While I would say that the policy of the Government as outlined in the President's Speech and the Addendum to it is positive and imaginative, and inspires confidence and sparks off a radiant ray of hope in our people in the crucial years ahead, I must, at the same time, point out that certain features of the policy as outlined require re-thinking and care in their implementation. I refer to those features pertaining to the introduction of comprehensive labour legislation and to the changes in the educational system.

On the Government's introduction of the Employment Bill, the fears of labour have been adequately expressed by my N.T.U.C, colleagues in this Chamber. Any mention of the fears of labour on my part would be mere repetition. However, I would like to add that I recognise that for Singapore to prosper it must encourage and generate greater economic activity to sustain and to improve our industrial growth. I also recognise that to do this capital must be encouraged to remain in and flow into Singapore. This is only possible if the investment climate in Singapore is more favourable than that in other countries. In other words, there must be political stability, a good communications system, hard-working and efficient labour, an export market for goods that can compete in terms of quality and price with goods of other countries, and a host of other factors.

Workers in Singapore will respond to the new challenges ahead by giving of their best, especially when they are made to feel that at the end of their efforts and sacrifices, the nation survives and prospers and they will be given a share of the prosperity, ownership of homes and the enjoyment of social facilities, such as free education, health and all the amenities of life. If it is for all these that workers in Singapore are expected to co-operate with the Government to ensure our survival and prosperity, then they will not be found wanting in their co-operation. But the Government must always bear in mind that the workers have legitimate fears that the proposed Employment Bill may have features that could lead to management abusing them. Government must ensure that this does not happen. It will be good for Singapore if a situation can arise where management and labour can co-operate for mutual benefit. Government must ensure that nothing that it will do, especially in new legislation affecting labour, will harm the long-term interest of labour. This is only possible if the N.T.U.C. is consulted on all matters affecting labour.

Coming to the changes in the education system in Singapore, I commend the Government for setting up a Cabinet Committee to supervise the planning and co-ordination of technical and vocational training on a national basis with the object of avoiding duplication of effort and ensuring that technical and vocational training would be keyed to manpower needs and employment opportunities. Not to set up this committee would be to miss the first essential step in the massive structural reorganisation of the educational structure. The Education Minister in his speech earlier has mentioned that machinery has been set up to swing into technical education. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education has also mentioned that a crash programme will be launched to train craft teachers. My question is, has care been taken before all this is launched? I hope that great care will be taken in the drawing up of the curriculum as well as the training of teachers. We must not produce, at the end of the technical and vocational training, human robots who will merely man our industries efficiently, but we must also produce citizens who are capable of feeling and understanding concepts and values like democracy and loyalty to Singapore and who are culturally equipped to be able to spend their leisure hours usefully. There must not be over-emphasis on the technical aspect of education without also the balance of the subjects on the humanities.

In the Addendum, under "Ministry of Education" section (b) , mention is made of a concerted effort to produce effectively bilingual school-leavers. This is laudable and goes to show that language teaching cannot be isolated by itself but must form an integral part of education.

Under section (c) it is mentioned that there will be "increasing emphasis on quality at all levels of education to make up shortcomings in the past necessitated by the unprecedented rate of expansion in the school system to provide a place for every child. Now that this quantitative target has been achieved, attention will be turned to qualitative improvement in such fields as curriculum reform, textbooks and teaching aids, teaching techniques, teacher training and re-training, examinations, health education, physical education, art and music, and all forms of extramural activities." All these, Mr Speaker, Sir, sound pious hopes to me. In order to have curriculum reform, changes in textbooks, improvement in the quality of teaching and so forth, careful research and adequate personnel are required. I hope that we will have the experts. We will spend enough time on research before changes are made on these very important aspects of education.

The Member for Anson has said that teachers at present teaching adult education in night classes are depriving the unemployed of job opportunities. I want to state here that it is not easy to replace these teachers in night classes with those who are unemployed. The standard of adult education has got to be maintained. Therefore, if these teachers are to be replaced, then some care must be taken to ensure that those who are unemployed will be adequately trained to take over the night classes.

5.47 p.m.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Labour (Mr S. Rajaratnam): Mr Speaker, Sir, may I first say what subjects I am not going to talk about? As Minister for Foreign Affairs, I do not intend to say anything at all about foreign affairs because, judging by the debates in the House, practically every Member appears to be satisfied with the trend of our foreign policy. For those who are nevertheless interested in knowing what our foreign policy is, I suggest that they read the Addendum to the President's Speech. Nor do I, as Minister for Labour, intend to deal with the specific points raised by certain hon. Members in connection with the proposed labour legislation. I understand it was a bit unfair on the Members because they were discussing a Bill which they had not seen. But the Bill has been presented today for First Reading. When it comes up for Second Reading, there will be ample opportunities for hon. Members to discuss it at greater length and in greater detail. What I would like to do today is to indicate the wider context against which the Employment Bill and all other Governmental measures and national policies should be studied, because without these broader terms of reference, I think we will be in danger of looking at the trees and missing the wood.

Sir, we in Singapore are fortunate in that independence has come to us long after most of the countries in Asia and Africa had achieved theirs. We achieved our independence less than three years ago, though the decolonisation process has been going on for some two decades. The advantage we get of being latecomers to independence is that we can learn from the mistakes and achievements of our seniors - particularly their mistakes.

I am not decrying independence or sneering at the misfortunes of comparatively older nations, but it is a fact that independence, going by the experience of the last 20 years, has not ushered in the brave new world nationalists had hoped for and had promised to do when they fought for independence. In many newly-independent countries within the region and outside, hope has given way to despair. The sense of dedication and purpose which characterised nationalist leadership before independence has given way to venality and aimlessness. Tribal wars and racial and religious persecutions of their own people are marked features in the lives of many new nations. Riots and violence are endemic. And almost everywhere their economics are in process of disintegration.

Of course, the picture is not all one of unrelieved bleakness and failures. There have been a number of achievements in different fields, but the overall picture is one of disappointments and even disillusionment. I do not want to infer from this that the struggles for independence were a ghastly mistake. The new nations were right to fight for independence because no foreign ruler can really promote the welfare of the people. Nor do I think that the nationalist leaders who led their countries into freedom lacked patriotism, courage or even the will to succeed. If they did not have these qualities they could not have become successful and respected nationalist leaders or endured the ordeal and risks involved in the struggle for freedom.

If many of these countries have made a mess of independence, it is largely because, though they knew how to fight for freedom, they did not know how to consolidate it. This is one of the bitter lessons to be learned from the post-independent history of new nations. And we are among the newest of new nations.

Perhaps it would be helpful for us in Singapore if I listed out some of the major errors which are responsible for the dismal state many newly-independent nations find themselves in. This is not a very pleasant exercise but necessary if Singapore is not to find itself in the blind alley some countries have wandered into.

One of the principal errors was the belief, or rather the pathetic fallacy, that all the evils, miseries and frustrations we experienced under colonialism derived wholly from the fact of imperial rule. During the anti-colonial struggle the propaganda line was simple and straightforward. Why were we economically backward? The answer was because of colonialism. What was the cause of poverty, slums, disease and unemployment? The answer was colonialism. Why were there racial and religious conflicts? The answer was because of colonialism. Every frustration and every shortcoming, we believed, was attributable to colonialism. Even today, long after the colonialists have faded from the scene, nationalist leaders, if they cannot find the right answer or dare not give the right answer, invariably blame it on colonialism.

Now, there is an element of truth in the answer. In so far as a colonial power assumed responsibility or forced themselves on us for our welfare and progress, it had to be held accountable in so far as it failed to promote the welfare of the people. In this respect, there is some truth in the answer. But it is not the whole truth. Imperialism or colonialism was only one of the many causes responsible for our backwardness. Perhaps it was a good and necessary strategy during the anti-colonial phase of our struggle for nationalist leaders to concentrate only on the evils and shortcomings of colonialism. Because that was the only way we could mobilise the people to struggle against colonialism. Any strategist will tell you that in a fight you should concentrate on only one enemy - the principal enemy. At that time, it was the colonial power which was our principal enemy because it was the enemy we wanted to get rid of. That was the strategy.

But, unfortunately, after independence the nationalist leaders and many of their followers got caught in the coils of their own propaganda. They believed and persuaded their people to believe that now that colonialism was out of the way, all their problems would automatically vanish. Colonialism was responsible for their poverty, misery and frustration. Colonialism had now been eliminated. The real source of their troubles had been eliminated. Therefore, they argued, there should ipso facto be peace, prosperity and brotherhood all round. The people expected that they could now enjoy all the things that the richer colonial nations had enjoyed but which they had deliberately denied to us. So they really believed that colonialism was responsible for all our evils. And now everybody expected that it should be just the opposite.

For the first few years after independence - generally from my calculations it is about 10 years after independence - it looked as though this theory was right, that progress and prosperity could come about automatically. We appeared to be having, with little or no effort, all the things that the advanced nations have. We made democratic constitutions equal to and sometimes even better than any to be found in the advanced countries. We erected magnificent Parliaments which were even better and more expensive than any to be found in Europe or America. We put up magnificent administrative buildings and set up bureaucratic machines which were equal to any in the advanced countries, if not in performance, at least in numbers. We put up magnificent monuments to commemorate real, but very often imaginary, heroes.

We went still further and adopted the styles of living and consumption of the most affluent countries. True, this was made possible for only a tiny minority of peoples of the new rulers, but this was very often justified on the grounds that all great advances must have small beginnings.

We also adopted social welfare legislation, trade union laws and the more pleasant and expensive features of well-developed countries even though we lacked the highly developed economics and organisations that made these things possible in advanced countries.

This was the first phase - the first few years of independence - when it looked as if the theory, "Get rid of colonialism and we move to peace, prosperity and happiness," was right. But we know now, 20 years after, that within a few years, things turned sour. The system of parliamentary democracy was hastily dismantled in the vast majority of newly-independent nations on the ground that it did not suit the national genius. Instead we had one-man saviours and military dictators. Trade unions discovered that under conditions of growing poverty and economic disintegration, workers were prepared to work for a mere pittance, whatever workers' charters might prescribe. I would advise hon. Members to study closely what has happened to very powerful and very militant trade unions around the region. Recently, I had occasion to meet one respected and venerable trade union leader from a neighbouring country in the region. I asked him, "What has happened to your trade union?" He said, "No, I am in business now."

An hon. Member: Does he come from Formosa?

Mr Rajaratnam: He said, "There is nothing that we can offer our workers, because things are so bad that people are prepared to work for one meal a day." You can go on strike - some employers will be quite happy because they can close down the firm for a day and give no wages. In many of these countries, even the few factories that were erected fell into disuse and decay. The vast bureaucratic machines -symbols of modernisation - hampered rather than assisted the development of the country. A number of them eventually became machines for organised graft and petty oppression.

Even then, many leaders in newly-independent countries refused to accept the fact that colonialism was not the only factor responsible for their backwardness. They dared not tell the people the unpleasant truth that the road to economic growth and modernisation is one of hard work, sacrifice and dedication, because during the anti-colonial struggle, they had said, "Independence means peace, prosperity and progress." Therefore, they dared not tell the people, "Now that you have got independence, only hard work, sacrifice and dedication can put you on the road to happiness." When things got more difficult and more desperate, some of the leaders tried to assuage the growing resentment of their people by claiming that though colonialism had been got rid of, the source of their troubles has now been traced to a new menace - neo-colonialism. And until very recently, even though the colonialists had retired to temperate climates and the countries concerned had been recognised as independent and free nations and given seats in the United Nations, the anti-colonial struggle was, nevertheless, persisted in for many years after that. Or some of them tried to shore up their crumbling economic edifice by making regular pilgrimages to European and American capitals in search of loans, grants or anything that might be going free.

It never occurred to them - though this thought is now fortunately dawning on the new breed of leaders emerging in Asia and Africa and who I think will be the future leaders of Asia and Africa - that the cause for their failures and disappointments might lie nearer home in the illusions and fallacies they bred during the anti-colonial phase of their struggle.

One of the unpleasant facts we in Singapore must face is that economic growth and industrial development cannot be achieved on the cheap. Industrial development requires at all times a sustained effort, a willingness to mobilise savings, a readiness to take risks, a propensity for innovation, a passionate vision of the future, a willingness to make the painful adjustments required by modernisation and, most important of all, a readiness on the part of the people as a whole to postpone immediate rewards for greater gains in the future. This is the premise on which we can build genuine economic and industrial development. If we do not accept this proposition as true, then I think we are wasting time; we are fooling the people when we talk of economic growth and industrial development. We must accept the fundamental belief that if we want economic growth and industrial development, we must be prepared to pay the difficult and heavy price that it demands.

If we are not prepared to pay this price, if we are not prepared to accept this as a basis of our future policy, then there will be little or no economic development. The present leaders, especially we in Parliament, can, if we like, fool the people, as some leaders in newly-independent countries have done, into believing that we can bring them prosperity without tears and effort. And if we did, then in five or ten years, we would go the way of many independent countries - into bankruptcy and despair. Only in Singapore, we have not got the escape hatch that many countries in South-east Asia have. We have not got vast scrub-lands and lush jungles to which the dispossessed and impoverished can flee to scratch some sort of living, either by hunting or growing bananas and tapioca. Economic collapse or stagnation for a densely populated, nonagricultural and highly commercialised island like Singapore means mass starvation. The Prime Minister has said repeatedly that in one square mile we sustain something like 7,000 people. If our commerce and industry come to a halt, the only way 7,000 people can survive is by eating one another! We cannot grow anything, we cannot plant vegetables, we cannot start agriculture. There are about 7,000 people in one square mile. So for us the price of collapse is total disaster. Our commercial and industrial economy is such that, like a cyclist, we have to keep moving in order not to fall off. We must always be on the move.

I think the time has now come for us - employers, workers and the people in general - to develop a new outlook. The old slogans, the old cries and the old attitudes of 20 years ago have become irrelevant to the times as they are today and we are going to face totally different problems in the future. Therefore, we have to develop a new outlook, a new philosophy to meet the challenge of the new times. For want of a better name, I will call it the philosophy of development as contrasted with the current outlook which can be described as the philosophy of consumption - the outlook of the ant which builds or the locust which consumes. It was perhaps inevitable that under colonialism we should have developed to a high degree a consumption mentality without realising that in a healthy economy the capacity to consume should be related to the capacity to produce, because when the colonials were in charge of Singapore they never talked about development, for their own interest and exploitation. Therefore, for us the concept of development has never occurred. The only thing we could think of to make life worth while was to ask -"What can we consume? How much can we consume?" And that became the purpose of life. So under colonial rule the efforts of workers and trade unionists were directed towards one objective - to redistribute wealth (for that is a way of consuming) by way of higher wages and better conditions of work.

The objective of employers was to extract the maximum of profits in the shortest possible time and use these profits to consume more and make more profits. This was the basis of our economic activity. Consume - whether as workers, whether as employers, whether as professional men, whether as civil servants. We earned more to buy more, built bigger houses, bought bigger cars. We observed standards of life which were set by the expatriates who came here on the basis that they were in exile, that they should make as much money as they normally would in half the time if they were in Europe, and go back. So once the expatriates retired or were Malayanised, the new elite stepped in, not only into the office but also into the standard of life and style of life that the departing expatriates had set for them - the same pay, the same size of house, the same size of limousine - not knowing that that kind of life was not related to our own economy. It was not related to what we could produce what we could maintain. It was set by expatriates who felt that they had come to this country as a punishment and, therefore, they needed extra for their effort. But we nevertheless continue to get this compensatory pay that was reserved for exiled expatriates.

But now that we are independent and are on our own, this kind of approach, the consumption psychology, is a sure and certain road to disaster. At least in the crucial years ahead the major objective to which all other issues should be subordinated is this: it is not redistribution of wealth but the creation of wealth that should be our major and relentless concern. This is a concept which has never occurred to us and which has never entered either into the minds of workers or employers. Anything that hampers and retards the creation of wealth must be checked, however unpopular and however painful this may be. But the hard facts of economic life leave us with no other choice. You cannot evade these hard facts. The cost of evading them, as many countries have discovered, is certain disaster. This is obvious, if you keep on distributing and redistributing the same amount of wealth among more and more people - because in Singapore the population is increasing at a rapid rate - what you get is not a more prosperous people but more and more poor people.

The problem of redistribution becomes real and meaningful only after you have created sufficient wealth, additional wealth. Then redistribution makes for a genuine increase in living standards. Raising wages and maintaining welfare standards unrelated to the level of economic development results in spurious prosperity. When wages go up in a poor country, as it has often been done, prices go up and the worker is precisely where he was before. It is no use trying to ward this off by price controls. Experience has shown that attempts at price controls under these circumstances in developing countries have merely paved the way for more corruption and rampant speculation.

The only practical way of raising living standards and bringing about genuine prosperity is by creating more and more wealth. This means producing more and consuming less than we produce. We must save enough to invest in more factories, more enterprises to produce more wealth.

All the affluent and advanced countries of today, whether Communist or non-Communist, had to go through a long period of heart-breaking toil, discipline and sacrifice - and very often unimaginable horrors associated with the industrial revolution in Europe - before they made the grade. Sometimes we forget that every country which is advanced, every country which is prosperous today, paid a heavy price. It was accompanied by exploitation, injustice, child labour, long hours of work. I would advise hon. Members to read the history of modernisation and industrialisation in Europe, in the Soviet Union, in America and in Japan. They would then begin to realise what a heavy price, an almost intolerable price, people have had to pay for modernisation and advance.

These countries which are now judged as affluent, as advanced, were lucky in that they embarked on modernisation and industrialisation when there were no trade unions and no Parliament. Modernisation in most of these countries was pushed through by dictators, autocratic monarchs or elites who were not dependent on popular vote. So they could extract the price for modernisation, sometimes an inhuman price for modernisation, knowing full well that there were no trade unions or Parliament to call them to account. In the Soviet Union, if you were to read its history in the early days of industrialisation, two million were deliberately left to starve to death. That was the price that even a workers' country demanded, that workers must pay for modernisation. In China more recently, there was a case where three and a half million people were deliberately allowed to starve to death because there was no choice. That was the only way that China could make the advance that she had made so quickly, especially in the fields of industrialisation and modernisation of agriculture.

But we in Singapore have to proceed with our modernisation and industrialisation at a time when we have well-developed trade unions and a democratically elected Parliament. We must, therefore, undertake the difficult task of bringing about industrialisation and modernisation with popular support. This is our problem. For a small island we have to force the pace not under conditions where we have not got to bother about trade unions or Parliament, but where we have to bother about both. And maybe this is a good thing because then we may be able to avoid some of the unnecessary injustices, hardships and brutalities that accompanied industrialisation and modernisation in some of the now advanced countries. But we cannot do this if political leaders, trade union leaders and entrepreneurs are not themselves inspired by the philosophy of development. They must be passion ately convinced of the need for development. Belief in this must permeate their being and their thinking. It must become a part of their being, part of their way of life. The need for economic growth or development must become an insatiable hunger -if you like, a religion. If you read the history of industrialisation in Europe, for example, in Britain, especially during the Puritan and Victorian era, work became a religion. To save was to glorify God. That was the Protestant ethic. To live frugally, to practise thrift, to work hard - that was the belief that inspired the industrialisation, the entrepreneurs, the capitalists in Europe and most of Western Europe. If we want to develop a meaningful philosophy of development, then we must bring to this task the same measure of courage, dedication and discipline that we brought to the anti-colonial struggle.

Whatever the other fears and doubts that the trade union leaders might have in regard to the proposed Employment Bill, I would urge them to consider seriously what it is that they want in terms of priority. Do they want economic development and economic growth, whatever the cost? If you read the Bill, however, it does not put up the cost so high as to make it intolerable. But do you say, "Whatever the cost, we want economic growth."? In a way, Sir, trade unionism and parliamentary democracy for us have been a distortion of history. As I have said earlier, in Europe industrialisation came first and out of the struggle parliamentary democracy and trade unionism grew naturally. So, as the economy developed, trade unions also developed and became more mature and more powerful. But here the history is just the reverse. We get Parliament and trade unions first. And then we start on economic development and industrialisation. There has been a reversal, a distortion of history, not necessarily a bad thing provided trade unionists, employers and political leaders understand that there has been a distortion which we must correct. And therefore they must come to the problem of industrial and economic development with a sense of understanding and responsibility of what it is that is happening.

As I have said, since we have to do this in a democratic way with the consent and support of trade unions and employers, we must develop this almost religious fervour for development. They do it in the Communist countries. They make work a religion. Stakonovite - a people's worker. They glorify work. If you are in China, or in Russia in the early days, any worker who said, "Why should I work 52 hours? Why not 50 hours?", would be considered a heretic. If you want to make the grade, if you show that only by working 52 hours you can catch up with the West, the Germans, the imperialists, then you work 52 hours. So you get a Stakonovite coming and proving that a man can work 55 hours, and he becomes a hero.

It is only when leaders develop this philosophy and fervour that they can transmit some of their fervour to the people and make them work-minded and development-minded. Only then, when the leaders show this, will the people willingly put up with the difficulties and hardships necessary to complete the task of modernisation and economic development. But if the leaders are weak, if they have no faith in the necessity of economic development in the imperative need for economic development, if they are cowardly, if they choose the easy way out, then Singapore goes the way of many other new nations. But if they are courageous and determined, then I think that ten to twenty years from now, those who come after us will say, "Thank God, in the hour of need Singapore did not lack real leaders. Because of them, because they did not flinch before the challenge, we have survived and prospered."

So this is the choice in so far as we want to assume leadership. And I assume that those of us who come to this Chamber have put forward ourselves as leaders, not leaders for tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, not leaders of their constituencies, but leaders who in five to ten years will be regarded as an asset, as leaders and patriots, because they did not flinch from the challenge.

I am confident that Singapore will not go the way of other new nations. I am confident we can make the grade. A well-known Swedish economist recently classified nations into two categories: hard nations and soft nations. I think that Singapore is not a soft nation. Now we have to prove to ourselves and the world that we are a hard nation.

An hon. Member: Hear, hear!

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the following Address in reply to the speech of the President be agreed to : -

"We, the Parliament of the Republic of Singapore, express our thanks to the President for the speech which he delivered on behalf of the Government at the opening of the First Session of this Parliament."