00:00After COVID, there was a political window to defer raising GST and give Singaporeans some breathing space.
00:16But when the Workers' Party questioned the PAP in Parliament during the budget debate this year,
00:23the Prime Minister responded to my speech asking, how did the PAP turbocharge inflation?
00:33Doesn't he know?
00:35The Monetary Authority of Singapore, which is under the Prime Minister's office, told Parliament in 2024
00:43that a GST hike could increase inflation by up to 40%.
00:49Isn't that turbocharging?
00:53The real tragedy is the PAP had enough fiscal room to avoid making things worse for Singaporeans.
01:02For this past parliamentary term, we know that the government had a surplus of more than $14 billion.
01:09With such a surplus, will the PAP now have the courage to admit that the decision to raise the GST in 2023 and 2024 was poorly timed?
01:23I said in Parliament that only the PAP can answer to Singaporeans why it raised the GST when it did.
01:35We are still waiting for a sensible answer because all the surpluses for this term, as per our constitution, have been locked up in the reserves and cannot be used for current spending.
01:50After the PM questioned where the turbocharging on inflation was, one of his ministers said,
02:00that we can debate about the best time to have a GST hike.
02:05But my fellow Singaporeans, we do not need to debate this.
02:10A political party which claims it has the back of Singaporeans should not worsen cost of living pain by increasing GST when inflation is already raging.
02:20The political pressure that it faces from elected workers' party MPs is not enough for now.
02:33So you might reasonably ask, if workers' party MPs were not able to stop the GST increases, why elect us?
02:42Let me give you two reasons.
02:43One reason is this.
02:47The PAP cares deeply about its percentage of votes and the number of seats it wins.
02:54Vote share and seats are how PAP politicians judge each other.
02:59These are the PAP's KPIs.
03:02You as the voter can tell the PAP what you want by voting for the Workers' Party.
03:07When the PAP loses votes and seats to the Workers' Party, it has to take corrective action.
03:18It will think twice or even three times before further raising the GST or implementing other policies that people object to.
03:28Or at the very least, the PAP will consider the timing of their policies much more carefully.
03:34The Workers' Party is not naive, nor are we populists.
03:39We are a party that does its homework.
03:42We know that Singapore will have rising expenditures in healthcare and increased HDB subsidies to finance HDB's deficit.
03:51But who should determine how future spending should be funded?
03:55Not the PAP on its own.
03:58It should be Singaporeans.
04:04ŃŃŠ²Š¾ prohibition.
04:12ļæ½
04:17You
04:22Harris
04:23How do I do it?
04:24How do you pay me for discounts?
04:25How do I do it?
04:26Not the PAP?
04:27How do you pay me for it?
04:29Well, as I want to enter the PAP's and most of you, that we I use it.
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