As most or all of you would know, Prof Thio Li-Ann and Dr Loo Choon Yong filed a motion to ask Parliament to call on the Government to amend the Parliamentary Elections Act, to provide for by-elections in certain circumstances. This was a Member's motion, not an adjournment motion. I will explain the difference in greater detail, as well as talk about what happened in Parliament today, in a later post.



But for now, the videos of my speech are below (courtesy of TOC), with the prepared text of my speech which I have updated to reflect the actual delivered speech as closely as possible (although I know I made some other changes on the fly which are not reflected here) below them. Also, the results of the TOC street poll can be found here.



Part 1:







Part 2:

1[...]

Sitting Date: 26 Aug 2008



EASY ACCESS TO FOREIGN LABOUR IN SERVICE INDUSTRIES



Ms Sylvia Lim asked the Acting Minister for Manpower whether easy access to foreign labour in service industries is counterproductive to encouraging employers to upgrade the skills of Singaporeans and undermines Government retraining efforts in service industries.



The Acting Minister for Manpower (Mr Gan Kim Yong): Sir, Singapore has limited local manpower. Foreign manpower has helped to augment our local workforce and enabled our economy to grow beyond our own indigenous workforce alone can support. Nevertheless, access to foreign labour is regulated. This is done through the dependency ratio as well as through the foreign worker levy. In services, for example, the dependency ratio is 50% with the foreign worker levy up to $450 for unskilled workers.



The presence of foreign workers does not ham[...]

It has been raining since Sunday. Bambi seems to be getting a natural wash, but yeah I’ll have to bring her for a proper wash soon enough, when the rain stops. I’ve not been to yoga since the last 5pm class on Saturday, not wanting to be stuck in the rain with Bambi is a bad [...]

I refer to TODAY’s report ‘10000 to trial new ez-link card’ (27th August 2008). The initiative by the LTA to integrate non-cash transactions using contactless cards into one single card should be applauded. This is the way to go to facilitate convenience between public & private transportation.



LTA should take this opportunity to ensure that its vendor use ‘24-hour heat resistant’ materials during the manufacturing process of this new ez-link card.



The reason is because, the ‘blue butterfly’ series cash card series launched by Nets earlier this year had caused inconvenience to numerous motorists. For example, my recent purchase of a ‘blue butterfly’ series cash card in place of a faulty cash card of the same series, still resulted in two ERP summons this month despite having ensured that the newly topped up cash card is securely placed in my vehicle’s IU*.[...]