Latest speeches by Workers’ Party
Members of Parliament in 14th Parliament
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Impact of Children and Young Persons Act Amendments 2019 – Sylvia Lim In 2019 the Ministry introduced four significant updates to the Children and Young Persons Act. First, changes were made to enhance the safeguarding of abused or neglected children. Second, the rehabilitation and reintegration of youth offenders was strengthened.... -
Challenges facing our aviation industry – Dennis Tan Lip Fong Aviation and Aerospace Industries Singapore's aviation industry has been one of the hardest hit industries in this pandemic, given the sector's complete dependence on international travel. With the resurgence of COVID-19 in many regions of the world, as well as the...
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Tackling Healthcare Inequality – Leon Perera Mr Speaker sir, from a recent reply to my Parliamentary question, we now know that residents aged 25 years old with below secondary education have a life expectancy 5.8 years lower than that of those with post-secondary education. I thank the Minister for Health...
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14thParliament, Chua Kheng Wee Louis, Committee of Supply 2021, Dennis Tan, Faisal Manap, gerald giam, Jamus Lim, Parliament2021HDB Blocks Façade Repair – Mr Muhamad Faisal Abdul Manap Sir, during a recent Parliament session, I proposed to the Ministry to roll-out a national programme of façade repair for ageing HDB blocks in view of recent spates of external wall seepage. The Ministry replied that there are currently no plans...
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14thParliament, Chua Kheng Wee Louis, Committee of Supply 2021, Dennis Tan, leader of the opposition, Leon Perera, Parliament2021, pritam singhPlastic and Styrofoam Materials – Dennis Tan Lip Fong Mr Chairman, with Singaporeans increasingly aware of the need to be environmentally conscious, we should bolster our fight against the use of plastics. In the Green Plan, one of the key pillars is Sustainable Living, where policies will be geared towards...
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14thParliament, Chua Kheng Wee Louis, Committee of Supply 2021, Jamus Lim, Leon Perera, Parliament2021Delivered in Parliament on 26 February 2021 The Case for an Independent Fiscal Council - Jamus Lim Chairman, I beg to move, “That the total sum to be allocated for the Ministry of Finance be increased by $20 million.” The role of independent fiscal councils Fiscal councils are agencies, staffed by professional civil...
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14thParliament, Committee of Supply 2021, Dennis Tan, leader of the opposition, Leon Perera, Parliament2021, pritam singh, sylvia limDelivered in Parliament on 26 February 2021 Corruption in Singapore - Pritam Singh Mr Chairman, A Straits Times article in December last year provided a snapshot into the state of corruption in Singapore today. One of its opening lines was and I quote, “many people are heedless of the corruption that exists...
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Delivered in Parliament on 25 February 2021 Mr Speaker, In line with the theme of the Budget Statement, I would like to examine four areas in which we can work together towards emerging in a stronger condition than we were in before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. Redirecting our competitive spirits First,...
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Delivered in Parliament on 25 February 2021 Mr Speaker sir, the times, they are-a-changing, so the old Bob Dylan old song goes. The Covid pandemic has thrown longer-term trends into sharp relief, increasing inequality between industries and workers, with some industries basking in the sun even as sunset falls on...
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Delivered in Parliament on 24 February 2021 Introduction Mr Speaker, as in recent years, Budget 2021 reflects not just the Government’s priorities for this financial year, but the Government’s medium-term direction as well. In my view, many schemes in the Budget are a continuation of a strategic agenda laid out in...
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Delivered in Parliament on 24 February 2021 Mr Speaker, I welcome the Budget Statement delivered by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister for Finance. I note that the theme for the budget is Emerging Stronger Together, and I believe all in this house share the Deputy Prime Minister’s hope...
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Delivered in Parliament on 24 February 2021 Overview Mr. Speaker. This past year has been a tumultuous and rather peculiar one. Even as parliament sits now, the recent Chinese New Year celebrations have been a rather quiet affair for many families and friends. While the ongoing vaccination program offers a sliver...
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Delivered in Parliament on 1 Feb 2021 The climate situation is a looming crisis that has been growing in urgency for some time. United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres highlighted the severity of the problem during the Climate Ambition Summit in December 2020: The world is 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than before...
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Delivered in Parliament on 1 February 2021 Mr Speaker sir, the climate change motion before us today raises one of the gravest challenges we face as a nation to the platform of Parliamentary debate. The number of speakers on this motion from all parties in the House attests to the...
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Delivered in Parliament on 1 February 2021 Overview Mr Speaker, the motion by member Louis Ng to accelerate and deepen efforts against climate change is an urgent one, as we make a decision on how we want to rebuild our economy, and what kind of an economy we envisage for Singapore...
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Delivered in Parliament on 1 February 2021 Mr. Speaker, Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. As a representative of a constituency with a comparatively younger demographic, many who are parents of young children—and as a father of a young daughter myself—I have a deep, enduring interest in...
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Delivered in Parliament on 1st February 2021 Mr Speaker Sir, for a low-lying island nation like ours, climate change is an existential threat. At the global scale, when the Paris Agreement was adopted in 2015, nations around the world came together with the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5oC...
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Delivered in Parliament on 2 February 2021 Mr Speaker, Sir, my speech is divided into three topics: First, I will talk about the Government’s error in not realising that section 20 of the Criminal Procedure Code applies to TraceTogether data. Second, I will speak on the carving out of the seven categories...
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Delivered in Parliament on 2 February 2021 I have some queries and concerns on the Bill as regards Part 3 on personal contact tracing data. First, it seems to me that the furore about the use of Trace Together data could have been avoided if the government had been clear from...
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Delivered in Parliament on 4 November 2020 I beg to move that this House affirms that fairness, access and independence are cornerstones of Singapore’s justice system, and calls on the government to recognise and remedy its shortcomings in order to enhance justice for all, regardless of means or social status,...
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Delivered in Parliament on 4 November 2020 Mr Speaker 议长先生， I am honoured to give my support to the motion raised by my colleague Ms Sylvia Lim. 我很荣幸能够在此支持我的同事林瑞莲女士所提呈的议案。 The topic of our motion today is ‘Justice for All’. Within the criminal justice context, we often take this to mean that the guilty must be...
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Delivered in Parliament on 4 November 2020 Mr Speaker, sir, before I start, I would like to declare that I am a lawyer in private practice. Bridging the justice gap Mr Speaker, sir, the Chief Justice in his speech at the Opening of the Legal Year in 2020, suggested three principles ought...
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Delivered in Parliament on 4 November 2020 Mr Speaker sir, fairness, access and independence should be affirmed as cornerstones of Singapore’s justice system. In pursuing these goals, we should address shortcomings and blind spots in our current institutional matrix of laws, regulations, policies and practices relating to justice. I shall focus my...
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Delivered in Parliament on 4 November 2020 Mr Speaker, Migrant workers face a unique set of challenges when navigating the justice system, due largely to the low socio-economic status in our society. Many of the problems they face will be in addition to those faced by low income Singaporeans, which my...
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Delivered in Parliament on 4 November 2020 Mr Speaker, my colleagues have discussed, at length, why the experience of many Singaporeans with respect to the justice system may differ from our aspirations for fair and equal access to justice as a society. I wish to take a step back, and...
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14thParliament, leader of the opposition, motion, Parliament2020, pritam singh, Singapore Justice SystemDelivered in Parliament on 4 November 2020 Mr Speaker, I rise in support of the Motion. Sir, Singaporeans pledge to build a democratic society based on justice and equality. I believe Ms Parti Liyani’s case has evoked such strong and widespread reactions because justice and equality are instinctive values that all...
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Delivered in Parliament on 3 November 2020 Mr Speaker, it has been said that in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes. And of all the forms of taxation in the market, the Goods and Services Tax or GST, being a broad-based consumption tax...
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Delivered in Parliament on 3 November 2020 Madam Deputy Speaker, I will speak about the proposed amendments to the COVID-19 (Temporary Measures) Act (the so-called Re-Align Framework) of 2020 and Insolvency, Restructuring, and Dissolution Act (IRDA) of 2018 in tandem. The underlying objective of both amendments—to offer streamlined procedures for...
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Delivered in Parliament on 3 November 2020 Mr Speaker, with monetary policy severely limited by near-zero interest rates worldwide, many governments have, appropriately, turned to fiscal policy as the primary mechanism of support for their economies. Singapore has been fortunate; we have been able to rely on our reserves to...
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Delivered in Parliament on 2 November 2020 Mr Speaker, the Personal Data Protection Amendment Bill is a much-welcomed update 8 years after the original bill was introduced in 2012. 8 years is a long time in the digital age. Technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, and such technological improvements have...