RDU – Policies

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Red Dot United GE2020 manifesto:
A Charter for the Future — Captains of Our Own Lives

“When the world moves towards powerful zero-carbon ocean liners, we cannot remain a Sampan 2.0. While a sampan needs just one man to operate it, ocean liners require many hands on deck to take it in a new direction.”

RDU GE2020 manifesto

These points have been extracted from the RDU GE2020 manifesto and Green Charter.
Read the manifesto in full here. Read the Green Charter in full here.

GST • CPF • Employment • Immigration • Housing • Healthcare • Education • Local business • Governance • Fertility rate • Arts and culture • Civil liberties • Green Charter

💸 On GST

  1. Freeze GST and other fees for the next five years.

💰 On CPF

  1. Allow CPF members to withdraw all their monies at retirement age.
  2. Allow members to borrow from their own CPF accounts.
  3. Study if more competition among professional fund managers can get better returns on CPF savings.
  4. Provide more options for CPF members. For example, by incentivising staggered withdrawal of CPF money after retirement age using differential interest rates.

💼 On employment

  1. Increase protections for gig-economy workers. Reviewing classification of workers as employees or contractors, and revising the Employment Act to prevent employers from exploiting this distinction to withhold employee benefits.
  2. Reevaluate the Fair Consideration Framework to ensure a “Singaporean First” policy regarding hiring.
  3. Introduce an awards scheme for HR managers that prioritise Singaporeans for jobs. Provide companies with incentives to hire such managers.
  4. Match PMETs with jobs before they undergo on-job training or part-time training, instead of the other way around.
  5. Reserve certain jobs in selected future growth sectors for Singaporeans, to enable capability transfer and grow local expertise.
  6. Change policy focus to growing the wages of Singaporeans.

✈️ On immigration

  1. Review agreements such as CECA.
  2. Assess if the Employment Pass system results in unfair competition for “good” jobs for Singaporeans.

🏠 On housing

  1. Make SERS mandatory, to ease concerns over lease decay and HDB value.
  2. Allow singles greater access to housing by progressively lowering the minimum age for flat purchase by singles to 30, and allowing singles to buy 3-room or smaller BTOs.
  3. Ensure greater transparency in the cost of building HDB flats. Breakdown the land costs and building costs.
  4. Price new flats according to multiples of the median income and a location factor.
  5. Ensure sufficient sale-of-balance flats.

🚑 On healthcare

  1. Provide heavily subsidised quarterly-to-annually doctor consults without means testing. Allow preventive health measures such as vaccinations and screenings to be administered during these consults.
  2. Improve MediFund to provide support for Singaporeans in need.
  3. Adopt a proactive approach to medical technology that can help provide reductions in health costs and increase operational efficiency.
  4. Expand the scope of use for MediSave to more outpatient areas.
  5. Improve transparency of the processes behind the Standard Drug List of subsidised drugs.
  6. Separate dispensing from medical treatment in the private healthcare sector.
  7. Study if converting restructured hospitals back into public hospitals would result in lower medical bills for Singaporeans.
  8. Establish a healthcare watchdog to keep track of healthcare costs and abuses of the system, or establish a national health insurance scheme.

📚 On education

  1. Build more flexibility in curriculum to allow students to pursue their interests. Include topics such as computational skills and soft skills. Also emphasise sports and other life-skills where students can interact across schools and economic divides.
  2. For students in alternate education programmes (e.g. Madrasah, home-schoolers), provide an equal quantum of funding pegged against government expenditure per student.
  3. Expand the Compulsory Education Act to cover all Singaporean children up to secondary school.
  4. Ensure andragogic and pedagogic educational qualifications have better international recognition.
  5. Expand the Anchor Operator Programme to include “diversity” in assessing preschool service providers. Diversity should be given higher weightage over criteria such as “ability to increase capacity”.
  6. Review the National Education framework to encourage research and discussion that builds a more understanding and cohesive society.
  7. Reduce class sizes in neighbourhood primary and secondary schools.
  8. Allow Singaporean children to study in international schools.

📈 On support for local businesses

  1. Prioritise local businesses in government procurement.
  2. Use sovereign wealth fund to acquire companies in select industries and reserve jobs in these companies for Singaporeans.
  3. Provide pathways for SMEs to partner government-linked companies or MNCs to venture overseas. Provide risk capital in the form of debt instruments, quasi equity, equity, and technical assistance.
  4. Study the development of greater synergies with land-abundant neighbouring regions.
  5. Identify and better support local industries of growth with higher value.
  6. Support the growth of local SMEs.
  7. Move towards a more progressive tax structure.

🏛 On governance

  1. Review public spending by public institutions.
  2. Review legislation such as the Presidential Elections Act. Study if such laws should allow for wider competition among qualified Singaporeans.
  3. Provide greater transparency in the KPIs of public organisation or formerly public organisations that have since been privatised.
  4. Ministerial salaries should be pegged to multiples of the Median Gross Monthly Income from Work.

🧸 On increasing total fertility rate

  1. Incentivise workplaces to develop family-friendly policies.
  2. Increase paid parental leave from 16+2 weeks to 6 months (26 weeks), of which at last 8 weeks need to be undertaken by either parent. Single parents can enjoy the full 6 months.
  3. Make contributions to the CPF accounts of parents that stay home to care for their children.
  4. All parents, not just working mothers, should receive the same subsidies for child/infantcare.

🎨 On arts and culture

  1. Focus on growing craftmanship.
  2. Provide more support for those that grow the arts and culture.

⚖️ On civil liberties

  1. Review POFMA and the Internal Security Act.
  2. Advocate for Freedom of Information.
  3. Review the Public Order Act.

🌏 On the RDU Green Charter and climate change

  1. Suggest a set of legal guidelines to determine what constitutes “green investment”.
  2. Invest in and incentivise the switch to clean energy. Explore the feasibility of installing solar panels and wind turbines in public places. Study the feasibility of renewable energy. There are concerns about the safety of nuclear energy, and solar should be more feasible.
  3. Examine the current tax incentives given to energy producers and study their effectiveness.
  4. Push the government for a proper breakdown on climate change spending.
  5. Encourage local SMEs to be involved in the effort to develop infrastructure and technologies to combat climate change.
  6. Stronger enforcement of the Transboundary Haze Pollution Act.
  7. Full commitment to the Zero Waste master plan. Push for a reduction of household and business waste. Introduce waste management schemes and neighbourhood recycling programmes.
  8. Proper recovery and reclamation or destruction of HFC refrigerants by 2030. Ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement that will help to reduce the production and consumption of HFCs.
  9. Further reduce food waste.
  10. Penalise the manufacture of goods that depend on single-use packaging. Incentivise companies that are willing to switch to sustainable packaging or reduce their net waste.
  11. Push for a car-lite society. A fundamental review of the way Singapore designs streets to make them more conducive for public and other means of transport. Support the move towards energy-efficient public transportation.
  12. Examine Singapore’s land reclamation strategy.
  13. Make Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) mandatory and impose penalties for breaches of these EIAs.
  14. Increase public education on the 3Rs of reducing, reusing, and recycling, while also moving deeper and further beyond them.
  15. Consider the broader effects of climate change on health and psychology, areas such as eco-anxiety and climate grief.
  16. Maintain the current Building Control Regulation.
  17. More incentives under the next Green Building Masterplan to encourage net-zero operational energy projects. Support buildings that reduce the need for air-conditioning in Singapore.
  18. Enhance the HDB Green Towns Programme to further reduce energy consumption by an additional 5%, and reduce waste by 25% by 2030.
  19. Scale back the rapid deforestation in Singapore. Increase the pace of tree re-planting programmes.
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