Speech in Parliament by Chiam See Tong on Ministers' Salary Hikes

9 April 2007

A Minister in Singapore gets an annual salary of $1.2 million. Our Prime Minister gets an annual salary of $1.9 million and our Minister Mentor gets $2.7 million a year as reported in our local press. Compared to our office bearers, the President of the United States of America gets only about an annual salary of nearly SGD $1 million. The Prime Minister of Canada gets paid annually about SGD $400,000. The Australian Prime Minister receives only an annual salary of about SGD $300,000. And the United Kingdom Prime Minister gets about SGD half a million dollars and Hong Kong Head of Government receives around SGD $600,000 annually.

The salaries of these heads of Governments that I cited are amongst the highest paid in the world. And the salaries of our Ministers easily surpassed them. It can be said that our Ministers received the highest salaries in the world. This can be entered in the Guiness Book of Records as a world record. This is another first that Singapore can boast of.

Singapore is a small country described only as a dot on the world map. The United States of America has a land mass of over 9 million sq Km and 240 million people. America’s land area is about over 15,000 times that of Singapore and over 60 million times more people than us. But, our Prime Minister earns more than that of President Bush.

Yet our Prime Minister and other Ministers are still dissatisfied : They want more. The question is, If the heads of Government of other bigger and more industrialised countries than us can live on salaries less than less than a million Singapore dollars a year, why our Prime Minister and Ministers cannot do the same.

Do they really need the money? If our Prime Minister and Ministers have other special needs for extra money, they should let Singaporeans know. I am certain that if they can justify why they should get more, I am certain Singaporeans will agree to the hike of Ministerial salaries. It does not mean that when the country is able to pay its Ministers more than they can automatically ask for more. Why has Mr Durai been ostracised for receiving more when NKF can well afford to pay him more? The reason is that NKF is a charity, and its funds all come from donations of Singaporeans who themselves are not rich. Poor people are also supporters of NKF and the money they donate should mostly be used for the benefit of patients and not to line the pockets of its employees.

A charity must run for the benefit of the purpose of the charity. Although the government is not a charity - it has many similarities with charities, since it is run with honesty and integrity. A government should be run entirely for the benefit of the citizens of Singapore. When Ministers are paid exorbitant salaries, then Singaporeans perceive that the Government is not doing everything it can for the poor people of Singapore. It is more interested in making its own Ministers well-off.

I would like to cite a debate that took place in this House. Only recently, Members of Parliament have been trying unsuccessfully to get the Minister to increase the public assistance allowance from $250 to $300 per month. How will the people react if they found out that the Government is asking for a hike in Ministers’ salaries when they are paid more than $100,000 a month.

The people in the bottom 5 per cent are still paid only around $1,000 a month. What are the Ministers going to say to these people when there is such a great disparity in income between their income and the lower wage earners? As far as I'm concerned, they would have lost all their moral authority vis a vis the low income earners. The gap of their incomes are too great, 100 times. The poor worker has to work 100 months to earn the amount of salary a Minister earns in one month.

The duties of a political leader are different from those of a leader in the commercial world. In the commercial world, the CEO or the manager has only to think of the bottom line. But a political leader, at all times must maintain his integrity, moral authority, to inspire and to rally the people. Once the moral authority is lost, the whole credibility is also lost.

A Minister receiving a salary of more than SGD$1.2 million will certainly undermine his moral authority. As the late US President John F. Kennedy said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Question is, how do we determine the salaries of Ministers? The Government chooses to fix the benchmark of Ministers’ salaries by pegging to that of the highest earners in the private sector. I think this is unfair to the taxpayers who are footing the bill because the high performing managers and CEOs are paid all kinds of extra incentives and perks, such as bonuses, stock options and bonus shares. In other words, their salaries are inflated.

A fairer way is to peg our Ministers’ salaries to that of the Ministers of other First World countries. Hong Kong is a good country to follow. It is an Asian country about the size of Singapore. They are paying their Head of Government SGD $600,000 per year or about $50,000 per month. This is a fair salary.

At the last debate in this House, on the revision of Ministers’ salaries, I suggested that at that time, we pay our Ministers SGD $50,000 a month. This time round, I suggest that we pay our Ministers SGD$70,000 per month or $840,000 a year.

If we pay our Ministers overall less by SGD $20 million, that amount saved can easily up the PA allowances to SGD $300 per month, benefiting another 66,000 cases.

What exactly are the jobs of Ministers? Are they paid to grow the economy, take care of their own Ministries or lead the nation?

The Minister Mentor said last Wednesday that Singapore should not save on $20 million or Singapore’s $210 billion economy will be jeopardised. But the Shin Corp fiasco showed that the Minister’s judgement and decision does not really justify a salary hike for them.

Please explain whether Ministers have a decisive role when the state makes an important investment. If so, why were Ministers kept out of the decision making process in the Shin Corp deal?

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Speech in Parliament by Chiam See Tong on Ministers' Salary Hikes