Lee Hsien Loong, National Day Rally, 10 August 2010

“Let us welcome them (foreigners) with an open heart, help them to fit in and encourage those who will become citizens to strike roots here. If we do this well, by the next generation, their children will be native Singaporeans.”

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s exchange with Dr Lily Neo in parliament, 25 April 2007

Dr Lily Neo:

Sir, I want to check with the Minister again on the strict criteria on the entitlement for PA recipients. May I ask him what is his definition of “subsistence living”? Am I correct to say that, out of $260 per month for PA recipients, $100 goes to rental, power supply and S&C, and leaving them with only $5 a day to live on? Am I correct to say that any basic meal in any hawker centre is already $2.50 to $3.00 per meal? Therefore, is it too much to ask for just three meals a day as an entitlement for the PA recipients?

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan:

How much do you want? Do you want three meals in a hawker centre, food court or restaurant?

Read the full exchange here.

Lee Kuan Yew, in an interview with National Geographic magazine, December 2009

“Over time, Singaporeans have become “less hard-driving and hard-striving.” This is why it is a good thing, that the nation has welcomed so many Chinese immigrants (from mainland China)…..If native Singaporeans are falling behind because “the spurs are not stuck into the hide,” that is their problem.”