Caught the tail-end of Arts NMP Audrey Wong’s speech during the Budget Debate earlier today. If I remember correctly, it’s her first speech in Parliament. Now if only she spoke a wee bit louder. Either that or we just have a bad TV set at the office. But all in all, props to you, Audrey! So anyway, we got a copy of her speech and we’re posting it here. It’s more or less the same exact speech, a few detours here and there, but basically the gist of it remains the same. The arts-related stuff begins around paragraph eight. Heh. What’s next? The responses. Stay tuned. *** SPEECH -- BUDGET DEBATE 2011 BY AUDREY WONG, NMP Mr Speaker Sir, I rise in support of this Budget. Firstly, I would like to thank the government for sharing Singapore's surpluses with the people: measures such as the growth dividends, Workfare bonus, reduction in personal income tax, increase in public assistance, the Child Development Fund, to name a few, are certainly welcome. This is something few countries can afford today as they battle huge budget deficits. Singapore is fortunate that we are able to ride out the recession in a short period of time and without too much hardship. This is also thanks to our sound fiscal policies. However, from some public reactions reported in the press, and what I have heard ‘on the street’, it appears that many Singaporeans expected more from this Budget. There was also skepticism about this being a pre-election sweetener budget. Singaporeans expressed that their some of their concerns were not alleviated in this budget – among other things, the long-term rising costs of living. The MPs in this house have spoken about how the majority of their residents are happy with the Budget. The Reach portal’s respondents too were generally happy with the budget. On the other hand, when I was reading online media coverage of the Finance Minister’s Budget speech the night after it was delivered, I was taken aback to see a Straits Times online poll which attracted 1,740 respondents and quite a large proportion of them – 47% - indicated that the Budget “definitely did not” meet their expectations. One should of course, take into account that many who post comments online tend to be outspoken critics of government and will be critical no matter what, but we need to address the dissatisfaction of this proportion of our community. The dissatisfaction expressed merits a closer look. One of the questions that the dissatisfaction raises is, are Singaporeans' expectations too high? I have two observations in relation to this: firstly, that Singaporeans' aspirations are rising sky-high very quickly and that because the government has met our aspirations so well, our expectations keep escalating. Second, these escalating aspirations are taking place against a backdrop of rising costs and the perception that while Singapore is becoming a more vibrant city, it is ironically becoming more difficult to live here. This is indicated in the inflation figures: the inflation rate for the last month was at its highest level in two years. Among other issues, the concerns of the ‘sandwiched class’ are worth paying attention to. Middle-income earners are worried that they will not have enough for retirement, and young people worry that they will be priced out of the housing market. I hear very often from peers, and I agree with them, how much harder it is to save today than in the past. I understand very well the situation of the sandwiched class as I myself am part of it, and I have to stretch my income to support my household which includes my aging parents. It is therefore essential for the government to keep an eye on rising costs. These have implications for other aspects of Singaporeans’ lives. For instance, cost might be a factor in a married couple’s decision whether to have children, or to have one, or two, or three or more. It affects their capability to care for aged parents. And so on. We must also continue to alleviate the pressures on the lowest-income group in our society, and this involves more than Comcare, Workfare, and skills upgrading: it is also ensuring that they have access to affordable health care, child care, elderly care, transport, and daily necessities; thus, a low-priced extensive and efficient public transport system, low-priced hawker centres and markets in housing estates should be considered essential amenities for public benefit, and we should guard against handing over too many of these amenities to private hands, which while it might make business sense, often leads to higher rents for stallholders and thus higher prices for the consumer. Without doubt, the government has provided well – magnificently well - for the majority of Singaporeans. Take public housing as an example. As Singaporeans came to expect more from their HDB flats, the HDB provided more varied types of flats, better landscaping, townships with all kinds of amenities, and upgrading. Singaporeans however, are caught in a cycle of "keeping up with the Joneses" and this leads us to making more demands and having more expectations from the government. We should be careful that we  - both the people and government - do not end up inadvertently creating a social compact which is based on mere transactional relationships. This kind of relationship does not promote social cohesion or inclusive growth. Our society must be bound by values and an ethos that goes beyond materialism, a society where civic consciousness prevails and where there is pride in being Singaporean. Today, many Singaporeans are caught up in consumerist pursuit of the 5C’s – and having attained the 5Cs, looking for the ‘upgraded’ 5Cs: not just a condo, but a luxury home; not just a credit card, but a platinum card, and so on. This has implications for our mission of making Singapore "the best home for all". A home is not based on material things - we need think about ensouling Singapore, enhancing the intangible aspects of life that make it worth living. In this respect, the Finance Minister's announcement of an additional $360million for programme expenditure on arts and culture over the next 5 years is welcome news indeed. Arts and culture are our ‘intangible assets’.  For the past decade, artists and arts commentators have called on the government to turn its attention to arts and cultural ‘software’ development. Having built the buildings like the Esplanade, renovated the National Museum (beautifully, I might add), and now developing the National Art Gallery, the focus has to turn to the content – particularly, Singaporean content - that fills the buildings. This involves developing the talents who create the content and make them meaningful to the public, because ultimately, what makes a global city tick is its heartbeat – which is founded on the soul of its people. Yet, even among arts attenders, many approach art with a consumerist mentality: of acquisition, escapism, and temporary relief from the stress of daily pursuit of material well-being. If we are to be a global city with a soul, we should pay attention to intangible aspects of our lives: our identity, what roots us to this country, our heritage, our history, our literature, our values. Going further, it requires us to lose our apprehension of intellectual thinking and profundity, where ‘cheem’ in our local slang, is a negative word. Without reflection, a city has no soul. I quote the Victorian writer Matthew Arnold, arguing the cause of education for all: “Culture … is a study of perfection, and perfection which insists on becoming something rather than in having something, in an inward condition of the mind and spirit, not in an outward set of circumstances.” We should aspire to having culture as an inward quality: not simply to increase the number of arts & cultural activities, but to enable Singaporeans to understand more fully the places that they come from, the stories of their predecessors, their reasons for being. I would say we have already started on this path with a few projects such as the National Heritage Board’s Heritage Trails and Heritage Town initiatives. How can additional funding for the arts be applied to the work of rooting culture among our people? To be honest, the artists I have spoken to are approaching the news of additional funding with guarded optimism. Some are skeptical that things will improve, particularly for local artists, many of whom – including Cultural Medallion winners - are struggling to find affordable studio spaces and even housing, though they are already nearing retirement. There is a concern that the additional funding will go towards international events like the recently-concluded art fair, Art Stage, or attracting more foreign productions to our shores. I believe that one key strategy to invest in will be capacity-building: developing talents and giving them time and space to create artistic works, as well as ‘enabling the enablers’ – the production and administrative people behind-the-scenes. This means adequately resourcing existing arts organisations to enable them to run incubation and content development programmes over the medium- and long-term. In addition, the creation of quality work requires two essential elements which so far have not been adequately supported by funding: research and criticism.  Research in the arts is not only carried out by academics: artists perform research into materials, methodologies and other aspects of the craft. Thus, resourcing practitioners to do such research is important, as well as resourcing more academic research in arts and cultural issues, impact studies and so on. Supporting and nurturing platforms for discussion of arts and cultural practices and issues is also important. With online media being such an important feature of life today, even for the literary arts which traditionally depended on print, one should reasonably expect MICA to resource online publications and nurture the development of critical platforms for the discussion of arts and culture.  Next, we can take a closer look at arts-in-education and community arts programmes, if we are to root arts and culture as part of everyday life and have more Singaporeans participate in these activities.  These programmes should go beyond mere 'exposure' programmes to broader, cross-disciplinary approaches that enable students and the public to see arts and culture as part of a greater whole - this could mean equipping arts-in-education and community arts practitioners with the knowledge of best practices and skills, the development of more sophisticated education programmes, for instance, arts programmes that are combined with other subject domains like physics or chemistry or geography. Effective programmes require strong partnerships between the govt, people and private sectors. We need these partnerships, and I must commend the government for its efforts to develop private sponsorship – however, the rates of sponsorship are not increasing at the same pace as the development of the sector. The figures for arts sponsorship – solely arts sponsorship as reported through the National Arts Council, this does not include Heritage – do not make for encouraging reading. While arts activities quadrupled between 1997 and 2007, the amounts for arts sponsorship between 2000 to 2008 remained consistent at the $37m mark, while 2009 saw arts sponsorship falling drastically to $22m due to the recession. We cannot afford to leave arts & cultural funding to the government alone - the private sector can come in to provide other kinds of support, such as space for artistic creation, arts programmes in corporate offices, and so on. More and different kinds of corporate support will be welcome, and we can look at developing more innovative corporate sponsorship practices. Better dialogue among government, private and people sectors – that is, the practitioners and groups both at the community and professional level – is needed to develop the sector. Finally, wide-ranging support for the project of ensouling Singapore requires one very important partner: the media. It is widely acknowledged among the arts practitioners that the coverage of arts and culture in the local media is inadequate and does not do enough to provide the public with the means to develop a deeper appreciation of the arts. It is not simply about providing more coverage; it is about analysis and reflection, and a change in attitude towards arts and culture, going beyond seeing them as luxury items. Media discussion and coverage of local artists in a knowledgeable fashion would also foster recognition of Singapore’s own artists and their contributions – currently, few Singaporeans can name local artists, even those who are successful in the international arena. Going to the online portal of our main media, there is no section for 'arts and culture'. This is subsumed under 'lifestyle'. Such a placement entrenches a consumerist attitude towards culture. Secondly, the 'lifestyle' section is dominated by celebrity gossip, which encourages the public to associate 'lifestyle' with the frivolous and disposable. The online coverage of the Budget on the day of the Finance Minister’s speech by Channel News Asia and The Straits Times also subtly revealed the attitude of the media towards arts and culture: there was no discussion of the infusion of funding for arts and culture. Perhaps we can consider guidelines to increase local arts content in our media: for radio to play more local music, TV to produce more arts-related programmes, cinemas to show a proportion of locally-made films, and even our museums to include a percentage of local works and artists in their annual programmes. This might foster pride in our own cultural offerings. We might learn some lessons from the Koreatn experience: one of the commonly cited reasons for the rise of the Korean pop culture wave was the government’s committed support for made-in-Korea content. I look forward to the day when we will have a Singapore wave going out into the world. Sir, to conclude, the Singapore government has provided well for the people. The government's sound financial policies means that the majority of Singaporeans will benefit from the budget this year. There are certainly still areas for debate, and other members of the House have raised these in detail. The dissatisfaction expressed so far, is a question of our expectations and aspirations. We need to guard against creating a social compact that is merely transactional in nature. Rather, our project in the coming years should include that of 'ensouling' ourselves in order to realize the aspiration of the ‘best home for all’. With that, I support the Budget. Thank you.