Mr Speaker
This Budget comes at a time of extraordinary monetary wealth in our country. Singaporeans have seen much progress in the material aspects of their lives. Yet, some continue to face significant economic changes, from blue collar workers whose wages lag PMETs far more than in comparable countries, to young graduates who struggle to land first jobs due to offshoring and tightened MNC purses, and employees who also care for loved ones.
During the opening of Parliament, I spoke about the importance of “Us Together”, and the role I hope to see us take as we move forward beyond early nationhood. I would like to expand on this today.
Investing in societal health
Health is wealth. We must make Singapore a healthier society to live in, rather than simply a wealthier one. In previous budgets, I called for moving beyond GDP as our measure of success, through dashboards with social developmental indicators of our social and sustainability goals, to ensuring that we also measure our resources beyond economic data, which can take the form of how we quantify our resilience and societal well-being.
Today, I will focus on what I see as three pillars of a healthier Singapore society:
First, measuring our demographics.
Second, ensuring well-being in the time of the smartphone.
Third, supporting environmental well-being.
These are issues that underlie our day-to-day feelings of being in crowded trains and roads, as well as the happiness and flourishing of our children in a time of change. They are the lived reality of our fellow residents on this island, for whom the optimisation of their humanity will mean little, if it cannot lead to a healthier society.
Clarity for our population limits
要了解新加坡人口限度，其实很简单。只需要在巅峰时段，搭乘东北地铁线，感受一下列车上，人挤人的滋味。在被其他乘客夹在中间的时候，很容易联想到我们的地铁线，以及整个大众运输系统，当年在策划的时候，预计服务的人口，远低于今天眼前活生生的现实。这种情况下，不难理解为什么许多国人会问：国家是否即将超越人口极限？
一辆拥挤的列车，与一辆无可忍受的列车，不单是乘客人数，也是乘客是否相信列车有时刻表和通行计划。既然执政党以六百九十万作为人口计划参数，那就起码要给国人一个交代：人口计划中的限度到底是多少？全国各区的人口规划、以及缓解人口变化冲击的实际方案到底是什么？
大幅度的人口改变，不仅是抽象数据、总体经济效应、或文字游戏，它也会对一般人生活造成具体影响。
On any weekday on the Northeast line, the question about Singapore’s population limits answers itself. And it is only human for our people to ask: are we on the verge of crossing our population and demographic limits?
The government last month said in response to Aljunied MP Fadli Fawzi’s question, that while the oft quoted number of 6,9 million is still a relevant planning parameter for the 2030s, our population size, not limits, depend on demographic trends, and social and economic needs.
If 6.9 million is just a planning parameter, then the question Singaporeans living in the high-density communities like Sengkang need to see answered is this: at that parameter, what precisely does our infrastructure plan to provide, and at what point does this provision start to cause discomfort? The government has said many times that we do not have a population target. Yet when we say that we will be quote, “significantly below 6,9m by 2030”, it fails to assuage concerns that residents have, about what they can expect their daily lives would be like five, ten, or more years from now.
The instinct to avoid having conversations about our population limits may backfire. It is a visible uncertainty that may raise anxiety, and actively dampen positive emotions. It is thus fair for Singaporeans to ask for greater clarity. The difference between a crowded train and an intolerable one is not just the number of passengers on it, but whether the passengers believe that the train they are on has a timetable and a plan.
During January’s Singapore Perspectives conference, there was much talk about how immigration will keep our economy dynamic amidst persistently record low TFR. We must learn from the mistakes of the past, and be clear-eyed about the question of infrastructure sufficiency.
To relieve concerns, would the government consider releasing population projections for each region as part of its URA plans? Research on perceived control in high-density environments finds that stress responses are less affected by the actual density of the environment, but more on whether people believe that the crowding itself is being managed. By releasing granular projections, the government has an opportunity to show our efforts to tackle crowding. This matters deeply to how we as residents of Singapore experience our daily lives. This will provide a clear picture of whether our region’s infrastructure is or will be sufficient for comfort, and also help us advocate more meaningfully about urban-related well-being issues such as access to nature and blue spaces.
Addressing the humanity gap in our society
Next, population and demographics are intertwined with our rising dependency ratio megatrend and its implications for care work.
What care has always required – whether within families, between bosses and workers, and across communities – is presence, trust, and reciprocity. It is not merely a resource to be allocated, but a relationship to be sustained.
Yet our response is often to optimise. To identify the gap, design a handy scheme, and roll out a niftily-named subsidy. Perhaps this works for transactional problems. But care is not transactional. When policy treats it as though it were, we risk ending up with technically correct solutions that quietly miss the point: we close every quantifiable gap in our care support initiatives, but still widen what I would call a “humanity gap”. And this gap shows up in the distance between what our schemes try to provide, and what the actual hole is that we feel as humans.
It shows up in the daughter whose disabled parent receives the Home Caregiving Grant, but still feels completely alone. It shows up in the parent who receives new LifeSG credits, but still feels burnt out trying to keep up with class WhatsApp chats and Parent Gateway notifications. It shows up in the employer who checks the flexible work arrangement box but judges the employee for using it.
Efficient policies may have unintended consequences on society. For instance, research published in the Journal of Development Economics in 2018 found that the Beijing vehicle license plate lottery system was associated with a 35% reduction in births in households of lottery participants, and a 6% reduction in births across the entire city. I cite this to draw attention to how a society can respond to a policy because people are more complex than we can simulate.
None of this takes away from the progress made on our caregiver support. The enhancement of parental leave last year was a meaningful step to recognise that caregiving is shared. But we still have work to do for an economy that supports employees who also do unpaid care work. The government must foster workplaces where workers do not feel like taking this leave would limit their careers, or make them feel like difficult workers with “scheduling problems”. We must see workers as whole persons with obligations that extend beyond work.
Hiring outside help for care
Given that many Singaporeans turn to hired live-in help to run our households and families, we must be responsible for their welfare. Not just because treating them better will pragmatically improve their ability to perform their jobs, but because it is the right thing to do.
In 2021, a rule was introduced requiring employers to provide domestic workers at least one rest day a month that cannot be compensated away. Has the government more recently assessed if it is enough? What are the other options available to us, particularly when in the long run, workers from our rapidly developing region may not be willing to leave their own loved ones behind to do care work in Singapore.
Secondly, while the Household Services Scheme has seen increasing participation, I hope that we make greater progress on having more non live-in, part-time domestic workers under the HSS. With basic child-minding services no longer being supported with manpower concessions under the HSS pilot from next month, is the government working with providers to raise awareness of more general HSS services under the scheme?
Optimisation vs policies that touch our humanity
By understanding the humanity behind the choices that we make in care work, we can open ourselves up to responding more creatively to the demographic challenges.
I spoke earlier of the Beijing vehicle lottery system as an example of how policies that are highly effective on one problem could be inadvertently shaping decisions like whether one should have children. The lesson from this is that we should be less fixated on optimisation and be more willing to accommodate the quirks of society.
For example, when Sengkang MP Jamus Lim called for a more needs-based COE system to support parents with multiple young children and with care needs, it drew criticism for being “subjective, divisive and [benefiting] too few”.
Surely there is room to take into account lived experiences, as those of us with multiple young children and loved ones with care needs will attest to. In fact, it appears that some government policies already take similar concerns into account, such as HDB’s free parking scheme on Sundays and Public Holidays which aims to promote social interaction and stronger family ties.
Interventions in the age of the smartphone
Next, societal health in the smartphone era.
This budget takes place in the context of widening scrutiny of social media platforms, online games, digital tools like AI. Many of us have raised concerns on digital safety. However, despite passing legislation that deal with discrete harms, we must also have interventions on the harms caused by digital environments themselves.
While we may not be interested in and can admirably resist all the myriad offerings big tech has for us, this does not mean that big tech ceases to be interested – and invested – in us. And the dangers of digital harms extends beyond our youth. A recent article in the Economist warned that older people too are seeing increases in smartphone addiction. Scientific evidence has emerged, and tells us that children’s brains, in particular, are not developed enough to handle these digital environments.
As social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues, unsupervised in-person (that is, offline) play, has seen a huge decline, replaced by near-limitless virtual social interaction. This is concerning, as in-person play develops critical social and coping skills. There has also increasing concern about the plateauing or even reversal of the Flynn Effect – which states that younger generations score higher on IQ tests. And while the jury is out, and there is criticism of Haidt’s argument that a digital childhood is an overwhelming cause for the youth mental illness epidemic, other jurisdictions are already proposing social media bans for children. Australia’s laws came into effect in December last year, with countries like Spain, India, Denmark, Norway, Malaysia and the UK announcing similar intentions.
It is time for Singapore to take clearer, scientifically-informed interventions to address these concerns. This should include setting up a select committee to study whether a ban is appropriate, in parallel to the government’s ongoing study and engagement with counterparts. While I will raise this issue in more detail in my MDDI COS cut, I believe this development has to be studied with public participation and visibility through select committee hearings – like we did with fake news.
The impact of Generative AI on our humanity
Next, the impact of Generative AI. This budget has seen the government announce wide-ranging support. However, while many Singaporeans see it as a way to replace mundane tasks, others worry about the generative AI that risks taking away our culture – and yes, work! – and what it means to be human. And not because AI is seen to be better than the human hand, but because it is cheaper, faster, and often ruled by models and scripts that we have no access to, and thus have no say in.
Many also worry about the impact of AI on our society’s valuation of human creativity and consciousness. 43% of respondents to a Milieu Insight survey from last year were concerned that the extensive use of AI in their daily lives might result in a loss of “human touch”.
The government has a clear responsibility in technology regulation, financial backing and its own adoption of such tools. And I raise two suggestions on how to mediate the societal impact of AI.
First, at the top level, the new National AI Council must include representatives from the societal sectors that are at high risk of adverse effects from AI, rather than only boosting adoption via industrial AI missions.
What seems to be absent is the input of social scientists and psychologists. Also representatives from MCCY, given AI’s shaping of the arts and influence on culture, as well as MOE, as AI rapidly changes the way that students learn and develop – or not. Even as we harness AI for industrial transformation and economic progress, we should take a leaf from the UK’s AI Council from 2019 to 2023. That council included members from industry, public sector and academia, and focused on diverse areas from developing public confidence to developing frameworks to deploy safe, fair, legal and ethical data-sharing.
For our own AI council, ensuring formalised input from ministries dealing with diverse groups also means that the conversation will also include the important factors of what our shared humanity means, in the true spirit of Us Together.
Second, our education system must be constantly incorporate the latest findings on the impact of AI on learning. While various MOE frameworks are in place, a study last year by MIT Media Lab found that overreliance on AI may reduce functional brain connectivity and memory recall. This will be even more marked in the developing child’s brain, characterised by higher neuroplasticity and its still-undeveloped prefrontal cortex. The skills degradation argument was also cited in the “Safe and Responsible Use of AI in Classrooms manual” recently introduced in the UAE, which includes provisions for Gen-AI use only in settings where direct teacher oversight is available.
Our obligations to environmental well-being
Sir, my final area today is the need for us to be committed to environmental wellbeing. It is commendable that we have set an ambitious goal of ensuring that all households are within a 10-minute walk from a park by 2030. But as a small city-state with an ever-growing population and few places to go, we should be also extending this goal to ensure greater access to blue spaces such as seas and lakes. Aside from widely-accepted benefits of being in contact with nature (in the form of greenery), numerous studies have also found that living near blue spaces positively influence mental restoration among adults and is something which we should work on.
We must increase the quality of engagement with nature conservation groups. While such groups are now sometimes consulted ahead of development work, feedback is that this engagement can seem a one-way information process, rather than a deep consultation or even a negotiation where concessions are made. As called for in the 2024 Singapore Terrestrial Conservation Plan, the government should establish clear legal boundaries for protected nature areas and protect the few remaining habitats that we have, which are absolutely key for both planetary and societal health.
To conclude, as we move on in our society’s continued evolution, we have to be more willing to relook our previous reflexes which cite costs or economic reasons as trade-offs that we cannot accept, when the alternative is a deterioration in the health of our society.
And we must confront not just fiscal costs, but also human costs. They are the costs borne by the caregiver with no one to relieve her, the costs for the child plagued by intrusive thoughts and heart palpitations because the digital world does not switch off, the costs borne by the resident who haplessly watches as the last wild space in their neighbourhood disappears. These are real costs, but they simply do not appear on any balance sheet nor measure of GDP.
Mr Speaker, I thus hope that as we chart our path as Us Together, we continue to work to make Singapore a healthier society, a healthier home, and not simply a wealthier one. Wealth without health, is a house that is not a home. The choices we make are ultimately a clear indication of what we as a society value, and I believe that we are ready to make them.
Thank you.
