COMMITTEE TO REVIEW MINISTERS' SALARIES/ALLOWANCES (Motion)

Mr Speaker: This motion is subject to signification of support by at least one Member. Does the motion have the support of any other hon. Member?

Mr Low Thia Khiang: Mr Speaker, it has my support.

Mr Jeyaretnam: Mr Speaker, Sir, I beg to move,

That this House resolves (i) that an independent committee, consisting of persons outside the Government, be appointed to review all salaries and allowances presently paid to Ministers and to make recommendations on the salaries and allowances that should be paid commensurate with the responsibilities and functions of the Ministers; and (ii) that the committee do have the power to invite representations and hear such evidence as it may think necessary to arrive at its recommendations.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I have no doubt that I shall be accused of indulging in politics of envy and being invidious and even of perhaps wasting the time of this House on matters which have already been decided upon by this House. The last time I moved a motion for the appointment of an All-Party Committee, the writer for the Lianhe Zaobao started off by whining that I had kept the House till past 8.00 pm, talking on something which was quite unnecessary. I expect I shall get no better treatment. But that will not deter me from doing what I think I should do in this House.

May I assure the Ministers particularly and this House that it is not politics of envy, rather it is the judicious use of our monies. It does not follow, Mr Speaker, Sir, that because we have huge surpluses, we have accumulated huge reserves, that we should pay Ministers a lot more than what the job as Ministers, as Prime Minister, demands. If we do have a lot of money, I can think of other ways in which that money can be used. There are crying needs in our community which have been neglected and the monies could perhaps be used for those needs in the community. So it is, may I assure the House, not politics of envy. But it is to try and draw attention again, if necessary, to what would appear to be a glaring anomaly in our country. I shall point out what the glaring anomaly is later.

When the present salaries were accepted or adopted, the Government presented a White Paper which was headed, "Competitive Salaries for Competent and Honest Government" justifying the salaries which it proposed for the Ministers, junior Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and other officers. But I must say, Mr Speaker, Sir, that I do not think the public found that very convincing. There was no attempt made to try and explain why we have to pay our Ministers the salaries that we are paying. I shall in the course of my speech point out what we are paying the Ministers, what the taxpayers are paying. But no attempt was made as to why. The market rule, as I understand it, is that you pay for the job, and for nothing else. So one would have thought that an attempt would have been made in that White Paper to try and define their responsibilities, their tasks, that lay upon Ministers and why it was necessary to pay them the salaries. On the contrary, the reasons that were advanced were that unless we paid the Ministers the salaries, we would be soon running short of Ministers in Singapore. I do not know whether that observation is justified at all. Secondly, another curious point was made that we have got to pay them so that they are not tempted while in office to try and secretly make any money. If that is the reason, it would ascribe to the people who are aspiring to be Ministers quite the wrong motives. And I do not think that is the right motive to hold out to people who attempt to go into politics.

What was not explained is why it was found necessary to peg Ministers' salaries to those in the private sector. May I say, Mr Speaker, Sir, it is a totally wrong analogy, wrong comparison, because it does not try and see what is involved or what goes with the jobs. It is totally wrong to try and compare and put on equal footing the Chief Executive Officer, the head of a multi-national company, with that of the Prime Minister of the country. I remember seeing sometime ago that somebody who was a former Minister in the UK government saying that he would rather be Prime Minister of England for a day than be the Chairman of the Bank of England. They are two different things. And so it is wrong to try and peg salaries to those in the private sector. For one, as I said, has anyone drawn up a balance sheet of the responsibilities of the Chief Executive Officer in a big multi-national company and that of a Minister? I am quite confident that if that balance sheet is drawn up, it will be found that the Chief Executive Officer of the MNC would have far greater responsibilities.

Secondly, it is wrong because of its lack of transparency. I assume that the decision was taken by Cabinet, but again we were not told by what route the Cabinet arrived at these salaries. May I say, Mr Speaker, Sir, with all respect to the Ministers, that it is not really seemly for the Ministers themselves to decide what they should be paid and what they are worth. The judgment should be made by the people or by people who are qualified to make that judgment. In other countries, they have Commissions on salaries for Ministers which decide what should be the proper pay for Ministers. Why don't we have one in Singapore? We have the National Wages Council, Mr Speaker Sir, which deliberates on what wage increases should be given to our workers year by year. Why do we not have a National Salaries Commission which will try and provide the guidelines for Ministers' salaries, and not only just Ministers' salaries but for salaries in the public service, in the statutory boards and in the Government? Why not? That would make everything more transparent and allow the taxpayers to see that somebody outside those affected by the salaries make the decision. It is not that Singaporeans are not prepared to pay the Ministers what they should be paid for their jobs. They are not being grudged that. But as in all things, we have got to keep a sense of proportion. That is important.

I have, Mr Speaker, Sir, sent to the Clerk two tables. I have not asked for them to be circulated to every Member in this House. I thought perhaps we should not waste so much paper, but they will be available for anyone to look at and they may help the Chief Reporter when it comes to reporting today's proceedings.

One table is the monthly wages in Singapore in 1996, Mr Speaker, Sir. And may I assure the House that I have not just plucked this out of my head, as was suggested last time when I said something, that I just come out with figures, and it was even reported in the press that "Mr Jeyaretnam claims". These figures are taken from the Ministry of Labour's Labour Force Survey for 1996. We have 136,321 employees in Singapore who earn below $400 a month. And we have 76,040 who earn between $400 and $599. We have 107,932 who earn between $600 and $799. And 140,792 who earn between $800 and $999. Then we have 361,572 employees who are only paid between $1,000 and $1,499 a month. And finally, for my purpose, we have 271,412 who are paid between $1,500 and $1,999. The total number of workforce in Singapore is 1,748,140. And if you add up those who are earning below $2,000 a month, you get 62.58% earning below $2,000 per month.

Set against that, which are the wages in Singapore, we have the Ministers' salaries, and this I have taken from the answer given in Parliament by the Minister for Finance in a Question for Written Answer, I think, tabled by the MP for Hougang. These figures are for 1995. And what do we find? The Prime Minister was paid a total of $1, 271,000. May I say straightaway that they are gross salaries, including allowances, not just basic. And the Senior Minister was paid an annual gross salary of $1,703,000. The Deputy Prime Ministers were paid $1,314,000. Ministers varied from $1,239,000 to $765,000. Senior Ministers of State, their salaries ranged from $765,000 to $549,000. And Ministers of State, their salaries ranged from $549,000 to $357,000. These are all annual salaries.

Set against the wages that our people are earning in Singapore, 62.5%, they tell a story, Mr Speaker, Sir and that is, there is gross disparity in Singapore that whilst our workers are only paid $1,000 to $2,000, the Ministers are paid huge sums, way and above what the employees are paid in Singapore. I do not want to labour this. But as I said, the average wage in Singapore would appear to be between $1,500 and $2,000 and that is for a month. And we have the Prime Minister and the Ministers being paid almost a hundred thousand dollars a month in all. There is a total yawning gap between these salaries. And I think we do all recognise, and the Ministers have often said so, that it is important that we keep wages as low as it is possible. I spoke on this during the Budget debate and also the last time I moved a motion, because we depend for our survival on being able to export whatever we manufacture or produce in Singapore at competitive prices so that they would find a ready market at the prices that we offer them. So we do recognise that need. But then the workers will be very justified, Mr Speaker, Sir, in asking, "Well and good, you ask us to keep our wages down. We are prepared to do that. But what are you doing, Ministers? What are you doing about your salaries?"

One of the things we have got to learn is that leaders must lead by example, not merely just preach. I think any leader would accept that when I say this. When the increase in water prices was made lately, the Workers' Party asked whether Ministers would give an example, instead of just raising the prices, by disrupting water supply to their homes for a few hours so that the lesson is brought home to our people. But I have never heard from the Ministers as to whether they were prepared to do that. I say, Sir, I repeat again, that set against the wages paid to our workers in Singapore, the salaries paid to the Ministers are hugely disproportionate. But that is not the only comparison I have made.

I have prepared another table and that is to compare the salaries of our Ministers with those paid in selected countries. I have not chosen the still-to-be developed countries but fully developed countries. What do we find if we look at that table? May I say that the figures that I give - I give not from my head - have been obtained from the respective Embassies and High Commissions. In the United Kingdom, and this is the salary for 1996, in Singapore dollars, the Prime Minister's annual salary was only $146,978, about 1/6 or 1/7 of what the Prime Minister in Singapore gets. But may I say again immediately that I do not have what allowances are paid in addition to that. But I should not imagine that even with the allowances, it would come to anything near what the Prime Minister in Singapore is paid. And the Cabinet Ministers, these figures are all in Singapore dollars, are paid $110,417 annually. And again, of course, I have not got the figures for allowances. Junior Ministers are paid $78,123.

If we look at the salaries paid in the United States, what do we find? The President of the United States, and this is for 1964, I have not got the present figures, he was paid annually, and expressed in Singapore dollars, $320,004. Whether it was inclusive of all allowances, I know not. The Secretaries of State were paid $237,432. Junior Ministers were paid $213,756.

If we look at Australia, you will find that the Prime Minister was paid, and that was 1964 again, I have not got the figures for 1966, $204,060. Again, I know not whether he was paid any allowances over and above that. Cabinet Ministers were paid $133,380. I have not got any figures for the Junior Ministers.

New Zealand, I have the figures for 1996, and the Prime Minister there is only paid an annual salary of $183,645 but I have also got the allowances for him. He is also paid allowances totaling $29,205. And the Deputy Prime Minister gets $140,085 annually and he also gets allowances ranging from $12,870 to $9,000. Ministers get $124,740 and also the same rate of allowances. Junior Ministers are only paid $113,850 to $96,030. Sorry if I have taken up time to give you these figures. But they show, by comparison, that the salaries that we are paying the Ministers in Singapore are way, way above what other countries are paying and what the Commissions, or whoever has the responsibility in these countries to determine salaries, judge to be the proper salaries for the Ministers and President of the United States and others.

I have said about the wages in Singapore, Mr Speaker, Sir. If you also look at the household monthly income, and this comes from the Household Expenditure Survey for 1992 to 1993, you get that for 60% of our people, the average monthly household income is only $1,920. So, I hope, Mr Speaker, Sir, I have tried to show the great discrepancy that exists in our system and it is not perhaps just the Ministers' salaries but it is also the salaries for the top civil servants in Singapore and other public officers and the rest of the population.

Is it to be suggested, Mr Speaker, Sir, that the Prime Minister of Singapore has a more onerous task? He has greater responsibilities and duties than the President of the United States, and that he should be paid about three or four times more than the United States President should be paid?

Mr Speaker, Sir, I think we have a tendency to spend time gazing at our navel. We seem to be filled with our own importance of what we are worth. Singapore is, after all, and I am not stating anything that is new, a small city state with a population of three million or more at the moment. We do not have a rural problem, people scattered in remote parts where we may have problems from them. We are very much an urban community and there is no part of Singapore that cannot be reached within half an hour or even less. So it is, may I say, Mr Speaker, Sir, wrong to give ourselves too much importance and imagine that our problems are far, far greater than the problems encountered by the leaders in other countries.

The truth, Mr Speaker, Sir, if it were known - I do want to say it here - is that our Ministers have very few problems.

An hon. Member: You are one of them!

Mr Jeyaretnam: Yes, I am one of them. They will tell you that. I am sure I am one of their problems. But that is the trouble. I am glad the Member has highlighted this. We have the spectacle of a government and we saw this in the 1991 elections. We saw this in the 1997 elections. We have the spectacle of a government which appears to be frightened and afraid of having one or two opposition Members in Parliament. In 1991, the general election had to be brought forward by two and a half years for no apparent reason but ostensibly, as seen by the public, so that I would not be able to stand for Parliament in 1991. My disbarment was running out on 10th November and elections were held in September 1991.

As I said, Mr Speaker, a little while ago, we have very few problems. And it is not, may I say, to try and belittle what the Ministers have done for Singapore. The truth is that the PAP Government, ever since it came into power, has gone out of its way to see that no problems will arise, and they do this simply by the imposition of fear among our people. I heard over the BBC that the Senior Minister, in the launching of his book, had said something like that it is better to be feared than to be loved. Well, there you have it. The Government in Singapore has got rid of problems, by letting it be known among our electorate, our citizens, that any least sign of any disquiet, trouble or any clamour will be dealt with severely. And, of course, they have the machinery - the Internal Security Act.

As a result, what have we got in Singapore, Mr Speaker, Sir? We have a subservient press which is a national scandal who sees its role as simply to uphold the government in power. So nothing is brought up which may upset the Government or give it cause for any action to be taken against the press. So we have that. And the press has a very important role to play on behalf of the citizens. It is for the press to highlight and to take the Government to task for problems, for injustices, for grievances, but that does not happen in Singapore.

And we have a trade union movement which is again totally under the control of the Government. The workers have been told that either they behave themselves or they might find life made very hard and difficult for them. So you do not get any problems from the workers and trade unions. They just accept. As I said in my radio broadcast, there is a general feeling in Singapore of helplessness among our people. They are a hapless lot. And so the Government gets away with everything. No problems.

What about the desire for people to provide an opposition in Parliament? This is visited immediately with threats and intimidation and people are deterred from standing for Parliament so that we may have a respectable opposition in Parliament. And the Government with the absence of a proper opposition again is able to get away with a lot of things, that it would not in any other country where there was a respectable opposition.

Mr Speaker, Sir, I do say in all sincerity that our Ministers do not have the burdens and high responsibilities of office that Ministers in other countries have. And I think we should take note of this. I asked in the budget debate: may we know what the functions and duties of Ministers are? And I do not think I got a reply. We have a Minister without Portfolio whose task would appear to be to keep the trade unions in order and that is all, nothing else. And we have the Senior Minister, we do not really know what he is doing in the Government. We do know that he goes around, as I said, in the region preaching to all the countries in the region that democracy is not something for Asians.

Sir, it is my proposal in this motion that we now take steps to bring in some sense of proportion and to make the payment of salaries to the Ministers more transparent and this can only be done by appointing a committee. Let us have a commission on salaries, as I said, not only just for Ministers but to include even the civil servants, judges, everyone, just as we have the National Wages Council. What is the objection to such a commission or a committee, unless it be that the Ministers will feel it very difficult to justify their salaries? Is that the reason why we do not have a commission? I would urge the Ministers, as they have all been saying all the time, that there should be greater transparency particularly in the case of Ministers' salaries. They should be made the subject of public approbation. The public are the taxpayers. It is they who are paying the Ministers, and should they not account to them the justification for the salaries?

I do want to end, Mr Speaker, Sir, by asking that the matter be given serious consideration. I hope that in reply I am not going to be just laughed at but an attempt is made to deal with the matters that I have raised in my speech.

Mr Chng Hee Kok: Mr Speaker, Sir, the subject of Ministers' salaries raised by Mr Jeyaretnam was widely debated in this Chamber in 1993 when the Deputy Prime Minister announced the revision in salaries of civil servants, judges and Ministers. In that debate, 19 Members including three Opposition Members expressed their views. The salary revisions were substantial as the Government was concerned about the declining quality of the civil service as Singaporeans shunned jobs in the civil service for the private sector. With the rapid expansion of the economy, it was clear to all or almost all that the salaries in the civil service and the political leadership were lagging behind that of the private sector.

Sir, Mr J. B. Jeyaretnam mentioned about huge surpluses. I can assure him that when Government salaries are increased, it has nothing to do with the surplus. The surplus runs every year to billions of dollars. Last year, I believe we chalked up a surplus of $7 billion. And what are we talking about? The Cabinet is only paid $17 million. If they are paid on the basis of the surplus, I am quite sure that money is much more. Mr J. B. Jeyaretnam talked about the crying need of the population and that the Government has not met their needs. We have these surpluses. If Mr Jeyaretnam can identify the crying need, as he has mentioned, this would be looked into, but certainly Ministers' salaries have nothing to do with surpluses generated by the Government.

Sir, this revision of salaries in 1993 came in about four years after the previous revision exercise in 1989. The issue was again extensively debated in 1994. This time, the debate was on the White Paper on Competitive Salaries for Competent and Honest Government: Benchmarks for Ministers and Senior Public Officers, mentioned by Mr J. B. Jeyaretnam.

Sir, this was a landmark event, in that salaries for Ministers and senior civil servants were to be benchmarked against salaries of six key professions in the private sector and were to be adjusted regularly. This was a politically vulnerable move and issue for the Government. Yet, we all knew that it was the right and necessary thing to do. I believe the Government did not flinch. Sir, in that debate, some 29 Members expressed their views including that of Mr Jeyaretnam's colleague, Mr Low Thia Khiang and four Members from the SDP. That debate saw the participation of five Opposition Members. After the general election, today we have only two opposition Members and an NCMP. That debate on the White Paper was spread over three days. The White Paper was adopted by the House and the principle of benchmarking salaries of Ministers against the private sector pay was established.

In both debates, Mr Jeyaretnam was not present in this Chamber. This is, in my view, the only compelling reason why Mr Jeyaretnam is raising this issue. He has spent half his time talking about political freedom and the other half about salaries, and that is because he has not been given a chance to have his say in those two debates.

Since re-joining this House, Mr Jeyaretnam has a very standard line in all issues and problems, ie, he is always calling for the setting up of Committees or Commissions. He has offered no positive suggestions on any other issue. I hope it has nothing to do with the haze. The debate in 1994 took place under very similar circumstances. The haze situation was bad but not as devastating as the current situation. If there is a positive correlation between the haze and Ministers' pay, I hope that the Minister for the Environment will make sure that the haze will not be a perennial affair.

After the 1994 debate, as can be expected, this issue was given another public airing, this time most widely and extensively at the hustings during the general elections held in January this year. At rally after rally held by the opposition parties and in their election materials and publications, the electorate was given no respite from this issue. The public was told in no uncertain terms that Ministers were overpaid. The message to the electorate was very clear and very simple: vote opposition for cheaper government.

Sir, with the adoption of the White Paper, ministerial pay is now pegged at two-thirds the average principal income of the top four earners in six professions: bankers, accountants, lawyers, engineers, local manufacturing and multi-national CEOs. Put into practice in 1995, we have in place an open and transparent method of setting the pay of Ministers without having to debate this issue each time Ministers' pay has to be adjusted. However, this does not mean that salary adjustments are carried out secretively. Once the pay is benchmarked, it is reviewed by the Salaries Benchmarks Committee whose members are from the private sector. Ministers' salary is gazetted. Moreover, this does not mean that this matter may not be raised in this Chamber, as Mr Jeyaretnam has done today.

What we have in place is an open and transparent system in which there is an established principle and salary adjustments are made to continually ensure that the political leadership and the civil service is competitive. This does not mean a continuous uptrend in salaries as some had thought. Benchmarking is an open system. It fixes relativities and it moves with the market. In 1996, ministerial pay was adjusted downwards, although marginally.

Sir, I do not intend to go into the details, except to say that we have in place a system of pay for Ministers which I am sure many countries would like to adopt. Pay for Ministers is always a very politically sensitive issue which those on the opposing bench is wont to exploit. It is an issue very few governments are able to discuss publicly, let alone implement. Mr Jeyaretnam has made comparisons of our Ministers' salaries with those in the United States and the UK, whereas it would be more appropriate for him to make comparisons as well with developing countries. I am sure our pay for Ministers is way above those of developing countries.

In the UK example he has quoted, I believe Tony Blair wants to move, but he is not able to do so. When Margaret Thatcher resigned as Prime Minister and was removed from the Party's leadership, she had very lucrative book contracts and speaking engagements. In the US, there is a price for public service. Secretaries of State or other Secretaries, ie, the Cabinet Ministers, do lobbying jobs after their stint in government. In fact, all Presidents have lucrative book contracts as well as speaking engagements. So there is a price to be paid for all this. But in Singapore, we are too small. There is no room for such activities. We do not lobby. Parliament is not a lobbying area for anybody. So this is what the system is all about in the UK and the US. If you look at the system of government in developing countries, the contrast is even more stark. Our Ministers get a pay which is perhaps a lifetime pay for a Minister in a developing country.

But the underlying message to any educated person is very clear. What are they paying for? Sir, ours is a very unique system and given time more Singaporeans must come to the conclusion that it is a system which works, just like the way the HDB has been created to provide housing for a great majority in a very fair and systematic basis; the way the CPF was created, and even in time, Sir, the COE, and everything which goes towards securing Singapore's future and our children's future.

I do not intend to go into the arguments which were well covered in the debates of 1993 and 1994. Mr Jeyaretnam has not advanced any new arguments today. But there are two issues which I thought I should address. He says that the CEOs of multi-national companies have greater responsibilities than that of our Ministers. I have been in the private sector. I have managed companies. I have seen how companies have performed under poor or even dishonest managements. When a private company goes under, there could be a possible rescue attempt. If there is no rescue attempt, Sir, at the end of the day, shareholders lose some of their savings and part of the money they invested in the company. Life goes on. They still have their jobs. They save up more money, and they invest in other companies. But applied to Singapore, where does this leave us? I shall cover this in the later part of my speech.

The second point was the scope of the job. He says that we do not have a large rural population where people are scattered widely. We are a very urbanised people. He said we are a small country. The message is very clear. He seems to imply that we are more easily manageable. Sir, this contradicts his whole argument. Countries with large rural populations and large land masses are the countries, if there are economic and political problems, which enable the people to go back to the land. They can still farm. The worker who loses his job in Bangkok can go back to his father's farm or go back to his farm in his village and continue life. But in Singapore, with no natural resources and an island with three million people, could Mr Jeyaretnam answer the question? Is it more easily manageable than a large country with a rural population?

In fact, recent events have reinforced the view that we must be on the right track. Whilst neighbouring countries suffer from the currency turmoil, we remain relatively unscathed. In the last three months, the Thai baht has lost nearly 30% of its value against the US dollar. The Malaysian ringgit depreciated by one-quarter. The Philippine peso fell by about a similar margin and the Indonesian ruppiah about 35%. We lost about 10% of our value against the US dollar because our economies are linked with those of our neighbours. But as the Minister for Finance has pointed out this morning, measured against the basket of currencies of our major trading partners, I think the Singapore currency stood up very well.

The stock markets also in those countries fell in tandem. Some consider us Singaporeans very lucky, Sir. In the rush to shop in Johor Baru, Singaporeans may not realise that the strong Singapore dollar is the result of years of healthy budget surpluses and prudent fiscal policies and large current account surpluses. The fact that we are spared the upheavals of our neighbours is not just good fortune. Money spent on infrastructure and development has always been done on the basis of sound policies. Despite our growing surpluses, even the investment on our MRT was done after about 10 years of study and only after the Government was convinced of its economic viability. Infrastructure expenditures are very big ticket items, and if we are to spend our money on large scale projects, unless under sound financial considerations, and no other consideration, then the Singapore dollar may not have been spared.

Singaporeans are seeing first-hand how poor and unsound policies can have a serious impact on the lives of those who are affected. In Thailand, it was reported that as a result of recent events, two million Thais may be unemployed soon. Just in the Business Times of 4th October, there was a story of how a high-flying former Managing Director of a securities company is now selling sandwiches in a make-shift stall just to eke out a living. There is another story of a former finance executive who is now driving a taxi. So much for Mr Jeyaretnam's sense of proportion. When a country is mismanaged, property values go down, the economy comes to a standstill, jobs are lost and everyone loses. But let us not forget that this finance executive who is now selling sandwiches has a much better chance of getting a job overseas if he is qualified for the job than a person who has lost his job in a factory. I believe the Thai economy will recover in a few years while the current problems are being sorted out. But in the meantime, there is gloom and uncertainty. In a recent business visit I made to Bangkok, I could actually make it to a few appointments in one day, which is quite unheard of, considering the Bangkok traffic. These are abject lessons and illustrate most vividly what unsound and poor policies, especially economic policies, can do to a country.

The lesson here obviously is leadership - political leadership. Ask any citizen of those countries who is affected by the currency turmoil, and I am quite certain that he will rather have a system in which political leaders are reasonably well paid for the job and persons responsible for policy decisions should stay out of business. In this way, hopefully, with competent persons in charge, policies will be implemented for the good of the country and its people, and not for personal or vested interests.

There is a strong nexus between political leadership, economic management and people's welfare. Time and time again, in several countries, poor and dishonest leadership has led to mismanagement of the economy. When this happens, you have read in the papers, some people pay with their lives, not just their jobs. Let us not leave this to chance. But at what price for such a political leadership? I have no more to add than to say that this issue has been settled in the debate and by the adoption of the White Paper in 1994. Therefore, I do not see any pressing need for a review at this time and I urge Members to reject this motion.

Mr R. Ravindran (Bukit Timah): Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to speak against the motion.

Sir, as I was listening to the NCMP delivering his message when speaking on the motion, the first thing that struck me was his statement that he has no intention to indulge in any politics of envy. But as I saw him unravel his speech, it became clear to me that what he was indulging in was not anything but the politics of envy. He also highlighted that he wanted to ensure that there was judicious use of our public monies. Here, I would like to highlight that from what I look at the Government over the past years, I think our Government is one that makes judicious use of public monies. I would like to cite two examples.

The first example that I have noticed is that some Ministers carry two portfolios. The easiest option for the Prime Minister or the Government in power would be to allot each ministerial post to each individual so that everybody does not carry too much of a load, but by burdening a Minister with two portfolios, the Government is not wasting money but, in fact, is making judicious use of money.

The other thing that struck me while I read the previous Hansard reports was the Prime Minister's statement made in Parliament in 1994 when he disclosed that although he was in a position to pay up to two months' bonus to Cabinet Ministers, all he had paid was 0.9 month's bonus on the average. These two cases clearly highlight that the Government is very conscious of making judicious use of public money.

There were a few other arguments which I think were based on fallacy. Sir, first and foremost, Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam nearly got away by stating that the CEO in an MNC has got far more responsibilities than a Cabinet Minister. Sir, I beg to differ. The CEO of a company is only interested in money and profit. He is not interested in ensuring the lives of individuals. Our Cabinet Ministers, besides looking after the financial aspect of Singapore, are also responsible for the lives of Singaporeans. They decide our security, they decide our defence, and they make life-threatening decisions. So they are holding far more responsible position than a CEO would. In any event, Sir, I beg to differ that a CEO of an MNC holds much more responsibility than a Cabinet Minister.

He again highlighted and compared the salary of a worker who earns $2,000 to a Minister. Here again, the basis of comparison is totally incorrect. First and foremost, an apple should be compared with an apple, not with an orange. We are talking of people who are highly capable who are going to be at the apex of their career when they are called upon to serve in the Cabinet. If at all, they should be compared with the people who hold a similar position outside Government. So if we are talking about a Cabinet Minister, we should look at the person with the same capability, with the same ability, with the same talent, who is doing the same job in the private sector and see what he is earning. That is a fair basis of comparison. In that respect, I was sad to note that the hon. Non-Constituency Member was unable to cite any statistics or figures on compensation.

Lastly, Sir, I was even more startled when the hon. Member, Mr J. B. Jeyaretnam, was quibbling about the fact that the responsibilities of Ministers are unknown to him. This is even more startling to me because he being a lawyer in private practice must be very familiar with the Westminster model of government. He must be very familiar with the responsibilities of Ministers in the Westminster model and if at all, he needs assistance, then I would strongly recommend that he look at the Budget Statement very carefully because the Budget Statement for one, in the designation and responsibility of the Ministry, clearly outlines what are the responsibilities of the various Ministries and the Ministers. Similarly, the other book, like Singapore 1997, also goes on to enlighten the responsibilities of the various Ministries.

Sir, let me now move on to the motion that is before the House today. Before one looks at the motion itself, it is very important that we look at the existing system and see whether there is something wrong with the system that we need to reform the system, as suggested by the NCMP. First and foremost, the existing system envisages the PM as the leader of the Cabinet who makes decisions who to recruit and how much to compensate them. Sir, he is in a position to look both at the Cabinet Minister's or the political appointee's past records, his present performance and his future potential in deciding how much a person should be rewarded in his job. This job is something that involves a lot of decision-making. The Prime Minister in his position, Sir, is privy to a lot of decisions which may not come into the public sphere. It involves policy decisions, it involves in some cases even mistakes that could have been made by Ministers. These are things which will never surface in public and should never surface in public because they will affect the moral, dignity and standing of Members of Parliament.

Mr Low Thia Khiang: No. Transparency of Government.

Mr Ravindran: No. There is such a thing as Cabinet responsibility. Sir, the Prime Minister has a heavy burden. He looks at the team in picking up the Cabinet Members. In respect of the performance of Cabinet Members, I think their performance, besides being judged by the Prime Minister in his capacity as the leader of the Cabinet, is also judged by the public. Members of the Cabinet are seen in press conferences, in debates in Parliament and in various forums where their performances are gauged by the public. If at all, Sir, there is any complaint about any performance, the right forum for Members is both in this House and also as far as Singaporeans are concerned, is to exercise that right in the general election.

Todate, Sir, the hon. Member has not been able to cite any form of abuse by the Government in this area of remuneration of our Members of Parliament. If at all, the evidence seems to indicate that our Prime Minister has been very stringent in rewarding our Members of Parliament. Again, I would like to highlight the fact that in 1994 in the course of a debate in Parliament, it was mentioned that he was only paid 0.9% as an average for bonuses for the political appointees.

Mr Low Thia Khiang: 0.9 month.

Mr Ravindran: 0.9 month, correct. Thank you. Sir, if at all, the existing policy is able to attract the best for the best pay. I think the nature of the decision-making process is something that should be left to the Prime Minister in view of the sensitivity of the matters involved and also the fact that if these matters come out in public, it is something that will affect the dignity and standing of our Ministers in Singapore.

Sir, if there was fear that the formula was designed in such a way whereby it only goes up, I was one of those who was happy when the Government disclosed early this year that because the top income taxpayers bracket had gone down, as such the salaries for both the Government Ministers and the senior civil servants were downgraded because of the drop in income. So it is not a case where this formula is designed whereby it only moves upwards but it is also designed to ensure that when the top earners' income tax goes down, the Ministers' income and the top civil servants' income go down also.

Sir, in respect of the proposal that is before the House, one needs to look at it very carefully, although Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam did not take us through in great detail about the Committee that he intends to set up. The first question, Sir, where one has to ask is: who sits on this Committee, and who appoints them? It is not everybody in Singapore who understands the nature of a Cabinet Minister's job. Very few of us really are in a position to assess what a Cabinet Minister does in his job and whether he does it well and whether he does it poorly. So I think the best persons who will be able to decide will be the ex-Cabinet Ministers or individuals who have served in top positions. Here again, even if the Government sets up a Committee and the Committee is staffed by ex-Cabinet Ministers or top civil servants, the same accusation will come from the NCMP saying that the Committee that has been appointed is not one that is impartial but one that is subservient to the Government or one that is not totally independent. So we cannot run away from the fact that whatever that the Government does, the Government will be repeatedly accused that it is not setting up something that is independent.

The second point that I would like to highlight is that it is unclear as to what is the nature of the work of this Committee. Will the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Ministers be required to appear before this Committee to justify their salaries? Must what they have done in the past be disclosed to the Committee? Sir, all these things are very serious matters but the NCMP has decided to be silent on these points. And he is also unclear as to whether the proceedings of this Committee must be kept secret or whether it must be in public. Sir, if it is secret, the accusation will be that it is a hush-hush affair and that it is not something that is disclosed to the public. But, on the other hand, if it is made public, then matters that affect the integrity, the standing and moral of our Ministers will be up for public ridicule in certain instances. So I am not clear as to why Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam chose to keep quiet as to whether the proceedings of this proposed Committee should be open to the public or should it be secret.

In any event, Sir, in respect of the discharge of the duties by the Minister, as Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam, the NCMP, would be aware, Cabinet works on a collective basis. Decisions that are made are made ultimately on a collective basis. So even if the Prime Minister and his Ministers go before this Committee to justify their salaries, in passing judgment on one person, at the end of the day the Committee may end up passing judgment on the rest of the whole Cabinet, and I think that is not something that is favourable or suitable in the Singapore context or in any Westminster model.

Sir, it is also unclear from the NCMP's statements earlier as to whether this independent Committee's decisions will be final. If a particular Minister is unhappy with the decision of the Committee, can the particular Minister take the independent Committee to the court for a judicial review on the basis that its decision was not correct? And then will this judicial review be subject to a further appeal in the Court? Then there is no end to this whole process of establishing this independent Committee of being satisfied with one set of decisions.

Sir, what happens also is unclear. If the independent Committee sets a low salary benchmark, does it mean that the Prime Minister will be unable to attract very talented people to the Cabinet? Will it mean that because he is unable to attract the best into the Cabinet, he comes back to this House and says, "Look. We need to set benchmarks. We need to change the composition of this independent Committee?" We will all be coming back to this House to decide how do we ensure that what we pay is market rate and will be able to attract the best into Cabinet. And, on the other hand, Sir, if the independent Committee recommends even higher salary, is the NCMP going to come back into this House and still claim that, "Look. Salaries are still too high. We need to do something about it, you know. We need to change this whole independent Committee and come out with another scheme?" So what he proposes is not something that I think is going to do much difference to the existing system. His proposal has got several holes through which many things can go through. If at all, the trend that has appeared in many bureaucracies all over the world is to shed layers of bureaucracies, not to add on levels of bureaucracy. What the NCMP's proposal envisages is adding another layer of bureaucracy. It goes against the trend in many bureaucracies all over the world.

Sir, our Ministers are constantly evaluated by Singaporeans. If at all, whether they are under-paid or over-paid or whether the salaries that are being paid to them are not justified, that decision should lie with the Prime Minister, and when he takes his team to the election, let the electorate decide. Similarly, the 1994 formula was something that was on the agenda of the Opposition. The people had made a choice. They were comfortable with this decision and they voted overwhelmingly for the Government's formula.

In the circumstances, Sir, I urge Members to reject this motion that has been put forward by the NCMP.

Mr Peh Chin Hua (Jalan Besar): ( In Mandarin): First of all, I would like to thank Mr Speaker for giving me this opportunity to join in the debate.

With regard to Mr J.B. Jeyaretnam's motion, I must say there is nothing new in his proposal. He is suggesting that a Committee be formed to review the Ministers' salaries. This is not practical at all. He should go back and study the Hansard and find out all that we had discussed concerning the Ministers' salaries.

I agree with my colleagues, Mr Chng Hee Kok and Mr Ravindran. The Ministers' salaries may look huge but they are actually very little compared to our GDP. It is only a small fraction of our national income.

I would like to tell you a story that was reported in the newspapers in the United States, an analogy to illustrate the importance of the Ministers' job. The entire system of a certain large computer company in the United States suddenly broke down. There was some malfunction in the computer system and all the experts in the company could not detect where the trouble was. Finally, the company had no choice but to hire a senior consultant from another state and fly him in to check the system. When the senior consultant came, he conducted an analysis which lasted just a few minutes, and then drew a line on the cover of the computer and said, "Well, you open up this part of the computer and you will find the faulty part." The entire system was restored in less than an hour, when the faulty part was replaced. It was as simple as that. The consultant then sent a bill for $10,000. The computer company protested, "What? You were here for just a few minutes. All you did was to draw a line, and you are asking for $10,000 for that!" The consultant replied, "Yes, no doubt, I have only drawn a line, and for that I would charge you just one dollar. But to know where to draw the line and advising you thereof is worth $9,999!"

The moral of this story is that a Minister's job is not as simple as what some people may perceive it to be. Everybody can draw a line. Anyone who can hold a pen can draw a line. But the question is where to draw the line. That is the deciding factor. It is never easy to find and recruit good talents. There is a Chinese saying: "Getting a thousand soldiers is easy, but to get one good General is extremely difficult." If you want the horse to run well, you must feed it well. You cannot ask the horse to run well and do not feed it well. So if we want a team of good people to take charge of the various ministries and to look after all the billions in our coffers, we must be prepared to pay them salaries commensurate with their responsibilities. 5.00 pm

The Deputy Prime Minister (BG Lee Hsien Loong): Mr Speaker, Sir, the issue of Ministers' salaries has been discussed many times in this House.

In December 1993, I announced here civil service salary revisions (including Ministers). We established the principle that salaries would be set against private sector benchmarks, which means comparable jobs, comparable qualifications, for two reasons. Firstly, because that is the alternative which is open to the civil servants and Ministers whom we are targeting. If he does not come into the civil service, if he does not become a political appointment holder, what does he become - banker, lawyer, accountant. That alternative path is what we must compare against. Secondly, that is the group which we are targeting. Those are the men and women we want in the Government and as political leaders.

Mr Jeyaretnam compared the PM's salary with the average monthly wage. It is not relevant. He did not compare the lawyers' salaries with the average monthly wage. Why? He has a practice. Why do lawyers earn many times the average monthly wage? Because of the contribution which they make, the value added of their work makes it worthwhile for their clients, whether it is companies or individuals, to pay them and they earn their pay honestly. Why is our Prime Minister different? Not everyone who earns $2,000 a month, which was Mr Jeyaretnam's benchmark, is qualified to be a Prime Minister. For that matter, not every lawyer is qualified to be a High Court Judge, or the Attorney-General, or the Minister for Law. We are looking for special people for special jobs. And the basis of comparison must be what is the job worth and what is the man worth.

What is the job worth means how important is the job, how much contribution can you make as a Minister, what is at stake when you make decisions, between the right decision and the wrong decision. Is it just a damaged printed circuit board or a bad housing project? Or is it the security of the country, the stability and prosperity of the economy and the livelihood of three million Singaporeans? Mr Jeyaretnam said only three million. I do not think we are so few or so unimportant.

Secondly, what is the man worth? How much can he earn? How much would he be worth in a different job in the private sector? We want that man. How do we make it not too much of a sacrifice for him to do our job?

Following the salary revisions in December 1993, the following year in October 1994, the Government published the White Paper - Competitive Salaries for Competent and Honest Government. The White Paper formalised two salary benchmarks for comparing the public sector with the private sector.

Firstly, at the top, Staff Grade I in the civil service which is the senior Permanent Secretary pegged to 60% of the average of the top four people in six professions - bankers, accountants, engineers, lawyers, local manufacturers, MNCs. And in the long term, we said we would go to two-thirds rather than 60% of what these 24 people earned.

Secondly, we have the benchmark for the middle level officers because this is a group which is pursuing their careers and very anxious about making sure that they are not left behind by any of their peers and contemporaries. So we pegged Superscale G, which is where a promising young officer should reach by the age of 32, to the 15th highest earner of that age cohort in those six professions.

We fixed the civil service top and middle points, and we pegged the Ministers to Staff Grade I. And the rationale is the importance of the Minister's job, because the Permanent Secretary runs the Ministry, and the Minister supervises the Permanent Secretary, he does not just preside. And his responsibilities and functions are at least as demanding as that of a senior Permanent Secretary.

In Singapore, the Minister does not just preside. He runs his Ministry and masters his portfolio. At the same time, he has to carry his political duties, present policies to the public, carry the ground, help the Prime Minister to lead the country. There is no mystery about what Ministers do. In fact, it was in the White Paper on page 8, if I read the paragraph:

"Persons fit to be Ministers and senior civil servants should be of a calibre who would rise to the top in the private sector. A Staff Grade I Administrative Officer occupies a key post. He may be the Permanent Secretary in a large Ministry like Defence, Finance or National Development. He will often in addition be responsible for a statutory board, a major government-linked company, or other demanding projects. He carries a far heavier responsibility than a typical top private sector professional. A Minister has an even heavier responsibility than a Staff Grade I Permanent Secretary. Setting Ministers' salaries starting at Staff Grade I, with a range of grades above this to cater for the range of Ministerial jobs, is conservative."

So we pegged the Permanent Secretaries, we put the Ministers on par with them and we set the Prime Minister's salary at about twice Staff Grade I. And in between, there were the DPMs, the Senior Minister and the Chief Justice.

Mr Jeyaretnam says it is wrong to compare the Prime Minster's job or a Minister's job with a multi-national CEO, and even if you compare, the CEO will be greater than the Minister. I ask Mr Jeyaretnam, take the Chairman of a bank and take the Minister for Finance. Does he seriously argue that the man running a bank is more important than the man running the whole finances for the whole country and the entire monetary system and financial system? If you mess up a bank, your shareholders lose their equity, your depositors lose their savings. If you mess up the country's finances, three million people lose their houses, their CPF deposits, their livelihoods and maybe their homes. So there is no comparison.

We published the White Paper, we debated it here for four days - 31st October to 3rd November 1994. And after the debate, the House endorsed the White Paper as the basis for setting salaries of Ministers and senior officers. Mr Jeyaretnam says he wants to know what every Minister is worth, call a commission. The Prime Minister, in his speech moving this motion, debating the White Paper specifically addressed the issue of whether every Minister was worth exactly the amount he was paid in the public sector, and I quote him [Hansard, Vol. 63, No. 7, Col. 660]:

"Ministers vary in their ability, and in their private sector earning power. But I have no doubt that more than half of my Cabinet would have been among the top 100 salary earners, had they opted for a private sector career.

I cannot truthfully say that all Ministers will get what they are being paid if they were in the private sector. But in politics, I need a balanced team, to reflect the political realities in Singapore. Though a Minister may not earn the same amount in the private sector, I must be satisfied that his responsibilities and performance as a Minister, in particular, his political contribution, justify his being made a Minister. ." And the proof of that was seen in the last general election where the Opposition candidates very carefully avoided the constituencies which they thought were held by strong Ministers and targeted constituencies which they thought were held by weak Ministers and still lost. So the Ministers earned their pay. If Mr Jeyaretnam seriously did not know what the Senior Minister was doing in Cabinet, then he should have gone to Tanjong Pagar and told the voters there that the Senior Minister was not earning his pay and they should vote for him, and he would do better, or he should go to Marine Parade, as he tried to do in 1991, but chickened out in 1992 and did not go again in 1997.

So that is the test of what the Ministers are worth. Can they carry the ground? Can they carry their policies? Can they supervise and lead their Ministries? At the end of the debate, the Prime Minister announced that he would submit his own pay, the benchmark for the Prime Minister, to be reviewed by an independent panel, which is what Mr Jeyaretnam has asked for.

So we set up a panel. It comprised Michael Fam as Chairman, Fock Siew Wah, Michael Lim Choo San of Price Waterhouse, Lim Ho Kee of UBS, Sat Pal Khattar, a prominent lawyer. The panel sat and reported in January 1995. And it said in its report, I quote:

"The Committee is therefore of the opinion that it is appropriate for the senior-most Minister (ie, the Prime Minister) to be paid twice the junior-most (ie, Staff Grade I) Minister.

The Committee would even venture that using Ave 24 (1992) as representing the full market related salary of a Minister Staff Grade I, it would be entirely reasonable to pay the Prime Minister twice that, ie, approximately $2.4 million a year." This was in January 1995.

The Government accepted the report. But the Prime Minister decided and announced that he would personally forgo any salary increase for himself, arising from the recommendations of the White Paper, for a period of five years.

The following year, 1996 was a general election year. Everybody knew it. We knew that the Opposition would make Ministers' salaries an issue in the election. But we did not avoid the subject. We debated it openly, well before the election to make sure that it was fully discussed and everybody understood, and all arguments could be canvassed. In July last year, the NTUC invited the Senior Minister to talk to unionists. He gave a full exposition on this issue, answered questions, provided additional data, fully televised. All arguments were canvassed.

Come the elections, we defused the issue. But we did not submerge it. Because, as expected, the opposition and especially the Workers' Party made the Minister's salaries an issue again. Mr Jeyaretnam himself raised it at least six times in 12 election rallies and in his final Party political broadcast on the eve of the election, he raised it again. He said, "Vote for us. We will raise this in Parliament." But except for one, all of the Workers' Party candidates lost, including Mr Jeyaretnam.

So as Mr Chng Hee Kok said, the Government's policy on Ministers' salaries has been fully and democratically debated and decided. In Mr Jeyaretnam's words, it is judgement by the people. It is settled. The Government has a full mandate to implement it. And the system has now operated for three years. The first two years, the benchmarks went up in 1995, it went up 15%. In 1996, it went up another 10% because that was the way the private sector was moving. This year, 1997, they went down, 18%, as the market moved. But based on preliminary IRAS data for Year of Assessment 1997, which means for next year's adjustment, the benchmark will probably rise again next year. In terms of percentage of the benchmark, we have reached 60% of the Average 24 this year, and we have announced that we will continue and aim to reach two-thirds of the average over the next four years.

The White Paper stated that we would review the benchmarks after five years, which means in 1999. This was the first time we were setting benchmarks and we were not sure how it would work out in practice.

So far, it has worked well. Because we have a proper system all the way up to the top, paying according to the market. Therefore, we have been able to reward all public officers properly, not just a small number of Administrative Officers, but also teachers, clerks, technicians, SAF officers, and also police officers whose salaries are now being reviewed. These are the problems which we have not been able to solve for years, because the whole structure was wrong and frozen, except for the SAF which was on its own and had its own block vote, and its own freedom to operate. But since we have now fixed the top, the whole structure falls into place and the

revisions we have made for the teachers, for the clerks. Without the revisions, we would not have a proper teaching service in Singapore.

If we fail to pay Ministers properly because we are embarrassed about it politically, coy or unable to defend what we have done publicly here and outside, then the whole public service system is put out of joint, and the quality of the administration and of government must decline.

Mr Jeyaretnam cited Britain. He did not cite the recent problems Mr Tony Blair has had in implementing an overdue pay rise for himself and his colleagues. Mr Blair said, "No, I will forgo it again." Because he wants pay restraint across the board and he feels embarrassed to take it, even though by any standards he is grossly underpaid. As a result, the whole British civil service is held down. Judges, etc, become underpaid, and it becomes difficult to recruit good men to maintain standards. Maybe with the British tradition of service, of landed gentry being able to do public service for free, it can continue for some time, but even they are finding difficulty operating that, and there is no Labour Party landed gentry.

So the comparison with other countries which Mr Jeyaretnam gave is not really relevant. He said he compared only with developed countries. Why not include more? Some of the lowest paid Prime Ministers and Presidents in the world are also the wealthiest. Mr Marcos was one of them. Why not include him in your list?

On developed countries, their Prime Ministers privately tell us that they envy us, our ability to be honest and open, and not be trapped in a political hypocrisy which they are locked into, with politicians looked down upon, unable to attract better quality, therefore, unable to raise their standing and justify a pay rise, a vicious circle.

Mr Jeyaretnam quoted the US President, saying about his allowances he knows not. Let me ask Mr Jeyaretnam whether he knows of the White House and the Lincoln Bedroom, Air Force One, Camp David, the best medical care in the world, and all the perquisites of being the most powerful man on earth. When Ronald Reagan retired as President, he went to Japan on a promotion trip for one company. Before he went, he was given an advance fee of US$5 million. Do you want that system in Singapore?

It is a revolving door, not just the President, but everybody below him. Mr Reagan had a public affairs consultant, Mike Deaver. He left before Reagan's term expired, because his currency would expire when Reagan's term expired. And he wanted to make sure he cashed in and made his money out of his contacts and his connections before the election and his friends were out of place.

We considered hiring him because we wanted to lobby on some issue, and they told me he was the hottest property in Washington - $200,000. I said, "No, no, why not you tell him, if he succeeds, I'll pay him half a million. If he doesn't, zero." They said, "No, no, you can't bargain, because he is such a hot property. You either take it or leave it?" I said, "Leave it." But many other people took him. The Canadians employed him, the Koreans employed him, and he made a good living in the time before the next Presidential election. Do we want that system?

The Australians, again, Mr Jeyaretnam says allowances he knows not. Has he heard of Australian travel allowances? There is a scandal. Three Ministers have resigned because they fiddled with their travel allowances which are tax free. One opposition frontbench attempted suicide with a servile apology for letting down the people. He had claimed $300 a night. He was supposed to be out station. He went home to sleep in his mother's house.

Is corruption not a problem? Sleaze is a problem with every society where this issue is not honestly confronted and openly acknowledged. Is that system better than ours?

Since we instituted the benchmark, there have been no signs of public sector pay outstripping the private sector. The benchmark compares with only six professions. But in the private sector, there are many other professions. So we really need to look not just at these six but also at how people in other professions are earning. It is not strictly comparable but not completely irrelevant.

When we wrote the White Paper, we envisaged that the Staff Grade I (60% of Staff Grade I) would rank 134 among the private sector. And we argued that any Minister worth his salt should rank higher than 134. But based on the latest figures we have, which is last year's, Staff Grade I at 60% ranks only 280. In other words, among these six professions, we have maintained our position, but there are many other professions moving ahead in much larger numbers, and relative to them, we are losing some ground. This is the relevant comparison - a potential Staff Grade I Permanent Secretary or Minister cannot become the President of the US, but he can easily be one of these 280 people earning more than him. And if he cannot, then he should not be a Permanent Secretary or a Minister.

Most important of all is the quality of men in Government, and the quality of the government as a whole. Nobody enters politics in Singapore for the pay, because even with the market-based salaries, we are still at a discount to the private sector. But the financial sacrifice cannot be too great. Otherwise, many able men and women will be deterred from entering politics.

Competitive salaries have helped us to attract and retain good men and women into the civil service and Government, and to govern Singapore well. Sure, we can pay much less and we will still have MPs and Ministers. At every price, some people will queue up for the job. But will they be the same quality? Will they be the people we really want to become MPs and Ministers?

Even the opposition finds it difficult to get able, honourable men to stand. You take Mr Chiam, formerly of the SDP, and his problems with Dr Chee Soon Juan. You take the WP which in the 1970s twice fielded Mr Wu Kher, who was a bicycle thief, and in 1991, fielded Mr Zeng Guoyuan, a Chinese physician and acupuncturist, who was subsequently convicted for molesting a woman patient. And even in 1997, it had a candidate with a criminal record. How can such people, or such political parties, raise the standard of politics in Singapore?

Even with honourable men, if they are well-intentioned but not up to the rigorous demands of running the country, we will quickly run into problems, never mind dishonourable men. If we want good people in Government, then we have to pay them properly.

Mr Jeyaretnam talks about sense of proportion. What is the proportion? $15-$20 million for the pay of all the political appointment holders versus $130,000,000 for the GDP this year, 0.01% of the GDP for the top management? Is that out of proportion?

Every unionist knows that when his members look for a job, he does not look for the company with the cheapest CEO. He looks for the company which is the best run, which is most successful and profitable, so that it can pay him good wages and offer him a rewarding job. That depends on having a strong CEO and a good management team, properly paid what they are worth. And I think running a country is the same. You do not volunteer to be a citizen of a country with the cheapest Prime Minister or President, not even Mr Jeyaretnam.

Mr Jeyaretnam said our Ministers face very few problems. The worth of the Government is measured not just by the achievements which you can see, but also by the disasters which are silently avoided. Because I am now doing the financial sector review, I have been meeting bankers. One American I met recently, an expert on futures, congratulated me on how we had kept BCCI out of Singapore. He was in Chicago, where the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT) had admitted BCCI into the Chicago futures market. But after a year, they found that BCCI was making suspiciously large trades, putting on big contracts one day billions of dollars, taking it off the next, and they could not figure out why and they could not figure out where the money came from. So they withdrew BCCI's licence. Lucky for them. This banker was in Hong Kong when BCCI collapsed. For three days, there were riots, as depositors who had lost their life savings scrambled to recover their funds. It never occurred to him that in Singapore there was no problem at all, because Singapore had gone one better than Chicago, and never let the scoundrels in.

It is not that BCCI did not try to get into Singapore. They lobbied repeatedly, at the highest levels through the most powerful channels. The American banker said that whoever resisted the pressure to admit BCCI deserved a commendation. And this was MAS, which means Koh Beng Seng who stood firm, and the Ministers who backed MAS. What is it worth for us to have the right people in charge of our monetary system, so that we avoid one BCCI? Is it worth? You can get a committee to study this.

We cannot solve this sort of problems by having MAS say no to every application. Mr Jeyaretnam says climate of fear. You do not generate growth in the financial sector by fear. We have to know which banks to let in and which to keep out, what financial activities to promote, what to discourage, which ones to prohibit. Had we not done this, the financial sector would not have grown by 10% per year for 20 years. The question now is, of course: how do we continue to grow the financial sector vigorously for the next phase, and develop new activities and adjust to a new environment, without letting in any BCCI? That is the question we are now studying and I put it to all the Members that that is the question worthy of the best brains we can find and pay for.

Let me take another example, which is the recent currency instability in the region. The problem started in Thailand. It spread to Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines. Thailand now faces severe economic austerity for at least two years - slower growth, company closures, retrenchments, higher inflation, because they had to up their sales tax, depreciated currency, devalued assets. This is the price the morning after for having borrowed excessively abroad to spend on unproductive investments, especially on a property bubble, and for the government and central bank not intervening earlier, when signs of trouble were already visible and when they had been warned by the World Bank to stop a property bubble and unsound lending by banks and financial companies.

We have been relatively unaffected in Singapore. We have maintained our budget surpluses, we have built up our reserves and we have kept the currency strong. So speculators have not tried to attack the Singapore dollar. Against the US dollar, we have gone down 8%, but on a trade-weighted basis, which means that if you take all the countries which we do business with, exports, imports, its value has been stable. So when the newspapers asked why have things not become a lot cheaper because our neighbours' currencies have moved down, this is the reason. It is because our currency has remained stable overall. There is so little bad news about us to report that if you read articles on Southeast Asia's sick economies, you will come to the conclusion that there is no country in Southeast Asia called Singapore, because the charts, the paragraphs, the descriptions, the cartoons, Singapore never appears. We are mentally off the map. But it is better to be off the map than in trouble.

We have been fortunate to avoid the problems on our balance of payments, our property bubbles, our unproductive investments, currency depreciation, loss of confidence and withdrawal of foreign capital. Last year in May, when the property bubble started to form, we pricked it and nipped the problem in the bud. We acted even though it was an election year, and there was a risk that if we overdid the correction, the property market might crash and we would go into the elections with everybody feeling very sour. But we had to take the risk because if we had allowed the bubble to continue for another year, and the property prices had gone up another 30% this year, in the year since then, this year when the region was hit by the tom yam effect, we would have been in for a severe tummy ache.

You just take a very quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. Just HDB properties alone, 800,000 HDB properties worth, let us say, $200,000 each. That is $160 billion worth of assets, not counting your CPF, not counting your private property, not counting everything else we have. If our currency had gone down 30%, or if our property market had gone down 30%, that would have been 30% of $160 billion, which would have been $48 billion. How much have we paid in premiums to avoid that disaster?

Without competent, honest Government, both Ministers as well as civil servants, who can set sound long term policies and resist populist pressures, we could easily have gone the way of the other economies. Every Singaporean would have been severely affected. The value of HDB homes, CPF savings, purchasing power of your salaries would have gone down, you would not be going off to Johor Baru for midnight shopping, and the confidence of both investors and citizens of Singapore in our future would have been shaken.

But because we have had an able, determined Government, supported by a competent and professional civil service, who anticipated problems and dealt with them early, so we have stayed away from trouble. This will not be the last time that we run into a potential problem. And we may not be as lucky the next time. It makes no sense to quibble over Ministers' salaries, and to make it harder to build the best team for Singapore, by not paying the team what they are worth. Any committee of entrepreneurs, manufacturers, bankers, businessmen, or trade unionists will know that Ministers' salaries are a very small premium to pay for avoiding such catastrophes. [Applause.]

Mr Jeyaretnam: Mr Speaker, Sir, I will try and deal with every speaker in turn. May I say, first of all, that what has been said in reply to me has been said before. We have not heard anything new. I see that they have avoided some of the nagging questions that I have tried to raise.

[Mr Deputy Speaker in the Chair]

5.39 pm

Mr Jeyaretnam: First of all, let me try and deal with this assumption that Singapore is what it is today because of what its Ministers have done. I do not want to belittle the efforts of Ministers. But I think to take all the credit for what Singapore today is is to do an injustice to our people who have contributed in no small way to what Singapore is today. The Finance Minister in his Budget speech acknowledged the contribution made by the workers in Singapore. So to say that Singapore would have been downhill, down in the drain, if not for the Ministers would be, as I say, to deny that the people of Singapore have had a part in the progress that Singapore has made all these years. And to suggest that it is the Ministers who have to find a solution and who come up with solutions is to gloss over the fact that Ministers are here, and in any Government, to make political decisions. That is all. For the solutions and how to go about it, they rely on people outside the Government.

Just as in the 1985 recession, they appointed a Committee from outside in the business sector to advise them, and they came up with the advice which then the Government considered and implemented or rejected. I see that even this year they have a Committee. So let us not pretend that all decisions are just taken by Ministers and they have to do all the homework for themselves without any help from our people.

There was, I think in the last debate on Ministers' salaries, the example of the Minister for Home Affairs having to take a decision when a plane was hijacked at the Singapore Airport, and what a great responsibility he had to decide on what to do, what step to take, how to proceed, and that was a very heavy responsibility. I met a police officer who now has left the Police Force and he said that all, every step in the plan, was worked out by police officers. There was a Committee or a body of officers appointed to work out what should be done if there was a hijack in Singapore. He told me that they outlined step by step and that, of course, was submitted to the Government which, I understand, was finally approved. So that was left to experts who know how to deal with that situation. Similarly, with anything else, the Government looks to experts, to people who know their jobs, to suggest the solutions or to come up with proposals.

The suggestion is that they have not put a foot wrong in Singapore. I do not know whether the electorate in Singapore will accept that. They see a number of things on which they think the Government has gone wrong or not done enough. For example, the people have not been told about all our investments overseas and whether any losses have been suffered. But from time to time, we do get information and we find that the investments have suffered heavy losses, running into millions of dollars. So who was responsible for those losses in the investments overseas?

Then there is the recent invitation to our citizens to come up with ideas to improve the civil service and told they would be rewarded for that. What are the Ministers doing that they have to depend on people outside and reward them for feeding them with ideas to improve the efficiency or the running of the civil service in the public sector? So let us not, as I said, fill ourselves with importance of ourselves. The Ministers have, as in every country, the civil service to back them. The civil service will come up with whatever is necessary to be done and all that the Ministers have to do is to take a political decision.

Now if I may try and deal with the various speakers on what they have said. The first speaker says that I have not tried to identify what the crying needs of the country are to which monies could have been put to use. I was surprised. I thought the crying needs of the country have been proclaimed, shouted out or brought out sometimes in the papers, sometimes by the people themselves, and that is the problem faced by our citizens with low income, with low wages, in making a life in Singapore. The crying needs are the higher hospital charges, the crying needs are the charges for outpatient treatment. The Government's answer to everything that would appear to be any problem, it is to raise the cost. And so we have announced recently the increase in fees for those seeking treatment at the Accident and Emergency departments. Is that the only solution that the Government can come up with? Is there no other solution? There must be a demand for this treatment. Is it not possible, as has been said, to make available other centres where people can go for their treatment without having to crowd into the Accident & Emergency departments?

Some years ago, someone - I think he was a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) - made a comparison about how Singapore and Hong Kong had managed the economy. And his conclusion was that Hong Kong had done much better to manage the economy than Singapore. And he said that Singapore's solution appeared to be to dig deeper and deeper into the people's pockets, to take the money from the people, that there was not enough entreprenuership in Singapore as was in Hong Kong.

The second speaker, as I expected, starts off by suggesting that the whole motive of my speech was the politics of envy. I expected that and, of course, got it. But no attempt is made to understand that there is this glaring disparity and whether it does us proud when other people in other countries see this glaring disparity. And then he talks about Ministers carrying two portfolios. Well, the answer is simple - because there is not really very much in that one portfolio and so the Minister can easily look after two portfolios, not because of any attempt to save money. Really, take the Ministries of Health and the Environment, they go together - health measures. And to say that is giving very heavy responsibilities to the Minister discloses an inability to understand what the problems are.

Then he talks about bonus payments. He says, "Oh, only 0.9 month's bonus was paid." But if he had seen what the Finance Minister said in his answer in Parliament in reply to the Question raised by the Member for Hougang in 1996, he will see that the norm was four months' bonus payments. Ministers are paid anything from one to six months' bonus. I do not know how many other countries, in addition to paying salaries, give bonus payments. Why is that necessary? No attempt is made to answer that. And then he asks, "Should Ministers disclose their responsibilities?" Why not? What is so secretive? If they have such heavy responsibilities, let us know. Maybe we can try and help them do their jobs if they tell us what their problems are, instead of keeping it to themselves.

And he asks whether it is my intention that any Commission should sit in public. I say, yes. The whole idea of a democracy is that the people are well informed and have an opportunity to judge for themselves. That is democracy - open, transparent accountability, and we do not have that in Singapore.

The third speaker said I was not coming up with any practical solution. I am surprised because my solution that I was putting forward in this House was that we have a Commission to look into these salaries, so that the taxpayers will know exactly the duties and responsibilities of Ministers and they can make a judgment on how much they should be paid. He says I have no practical solution.

The Deputy Prime Minister in his reply makes a number of points. But I am glad that he decided to have a go at the Opposition. That gives me an opportunity to reply more adequately. He said in his speech that the Opposition themselves find it difficult to get good men. Has the Deputy Prime Minister given any thought as to why the Opposition cannot get candidates to field for election to Parliament? I thought I have tried to make that very clear. I said that in the last 1997 elections we had at least two who we considered of very good calibre as candidates, both graduates and who had been involved in public work. And they were quite anxious to offer themselves as our Party's candidates for the election to Parliament. But they were set upon by their families, by their relatives, and all because of the fear that if they got into Parliament, their families would suffer, their relatives would suffer. This is what I have said, the absence of a respectable Opposition in Parliament is largely due to the fear that is felt in Singapore quite often. And the electorate sees it. I am asked very often: how is it that you still carry on in spite of all that is being done to you? They see what has happened to other politicians, other people who have tried to offer themselves as Opposition candidates. That is why we are unable to get people, not for anything else.

He says we had in 1970 a bicycle thief. I see that the bicycle thief is being resurrected. That was in 1972 only, not two elections. And that poor man, he was impaled just because at the age of 13 he was accused of being with another boy who had made some attempts to take a bicycle just parked somewhere. And he was not himself involved. [Laughter.] You laugh. His friend was just looking at it, testing it, and the Police thought he was trying to steal it, and this boy, at the age of 13, was also charged in the juvenile court and he was just, I think, given a very slight fine and discharge. So that, according to the PAP, completely put him out, suggesting that there are no skeletons in the cupboard when it comes to the PAP. Have we not had some skeletons in the cupboard?

I do not know who he was referring to in the 1997 elections with a criminal record. I take it that the Deputy Prime Minister was referring to me. Yes, I have convictions recorded in the Singapore Courts but which the Privy Council, Singapore's highest Court of Appeal, said were all wrongly passed. The convictions should never have been made. So much for the statement that the Workers' Party had a candidate with a criminal record in the 1997 elections.

But this is what I said in my speech. They make sure that there will be no problems for them, shut out the opposition, stop anyone raising any difficult questions and then it will all be plain sailing. Everyone will see that Singapore has got no problems, Singapore is wonderful.

He mentioned in the same vein that the Opposition did not challenge Ministers in their constituencies. The answer again is that we were hard put to get enough people. This is something that the Government should seriously consider whether we should go on frightening people, intimidating people against offering themselves as candidates for the elections. If we encourage that, then there will be no shortage of talent in Singapore. We will have the talent if only the Government ceases to be so frightened of the people and encourages open debate, open discussions and encourages them to come forward and offer themselves.

Then he mentions about the US President getting a lot of perks. Is it suggested that the Prime Minister gets no perks at all, that the Prime Minister of Singapore has to pay all his medical bills in Singapore, whereas the US President might get it all given to him free?

I was not suggesting that the worker who is paid $2,000 is good enough to be a Minister of the Government. I am not running him down, but you have to have someone with enough education and qualification to be a Minister. But the question that has to be answered is: should there be this great disparity between the $2,000 worker and the Prime Minister and the other Ministers? And the Minister also takes me to task on why I did not compare Ministers' salaries with lawyers' salaries. Well, I do know that some lawyers earn a great deal. But that is not the lot of all lawyers. Even then, I like to know which lawyer in Singapore, perhaps if he wishes to name, earns the amounts that the Ministers are paid.

Implicit in all the speeches is the suggestion that the Ministers would have received much higher pay if they had gone into the private sector. As I said, you really cannot make a comparison between the private sector and the public sector. But we had one Minister, I think it is Dr Yeo Ning Hong, who resigned two years ago, and I thought it was said he was going because he wanted to go into the private sector. But I never saw it reported that he had gone into the private sector. Why? Is it because he was unable to get a job at the salary that he had as a Minister? He is now I see the Chairman of the Port of Singapore Authority, or whatever board that has succeeded that. That is again a public body, and appointments are made by the Government.

Mr Deputy Speaker, Sir, I have tried to deal with the various points brought up by the speakers but let me say again what I have said is that there is an inability in all the speakers that I have heard this afternoon to grasp the issues that I have raised. One of the issues of course is why is it that our Ministers must be paid several times more than the Ministers in the developed countries. Why? That has not been touched upon. Instead of that, we heard that without having good men, Singapore will go to the dogs.

Question put, and negatived.

Motion accordingly negatived.