TR EMERITUS

By Damon Yeo It was announced this week that the ownership of the iconic Raffles Hotel will change for the third time in seven years. The likely buyer was revealed to be Qatari Diar, the real estate arm of Qatar Investment Authority, equivalent of what Temasek Holdings / Government Investment Corp are to the Singapore government. Under the reported $275m deal, Qatari Diar is to become the majority shareholder of the Raffles Hotel’s parent group, the Fairmont Raffles Hotel International. The seller is Saudi Arabia’s Prince al-Waleed, one of the Gulf world’s richest men. Since its construction in 1887, the Raffles Hotel had been an important part of our pre- and post- colonial history. Today, it is one of the most popular hotels known to visiting tourists and has welcomed famous celebrity guests in the past few years. Our “national cocktail”, the Singapore Sling, was also invented in the bar of this very hotel. Pop icon Michael Jackson, 1920s silent movie star Charlie Chaplin and American R&B group Black Eyed Pea count amongst its very famous guest list. The hotel itself was founded by four rich Armenian Sarkies Brothers, who bought over a 10-room bungalow and converted into a hotel. A major renovation was carried out in 1899 and that was the time the current main building of Raffles Hotel was constructed. Interestingly, up to the 1930s, no Asian guests were permitted – somewhat summing up the institutional racism faced by Asians in Singapore at that point of time. Raffles Hotel under went much hardship during the Great Depression of the 1930s, but managed to have itself listed in 1933. During World War II, the Japanese forces occupied the hotel for their own use and when the Imperial Army surrendered in 1945, as many as 300 of troops committed suicide in the hotel as an act of honour. Raffles Hotel continued to play a key part of our post-independence history and in 1987, was declared as a National Monument by the government. Today, the hotel also houses the Raffles Hotel Museum, which showcases the rich history of hotel. This transaction is unlikely to cause the hype that followed the sale of Chartered Semiconductors to Abu Dhabi last year. While the hotel is integral to our history, the ownership of it has almost entirely been in foreign hands over time. From the architecture of the building to the décor of the interior, the hotel represents our British colonial past, not our post-independence present. It is imperative that such establishments had been preserved, but it will be hard for the current generation to feel anything strongly for the hotel itself. Also, this transaction is very unlikely to result in an overhaul of the management of the hotel. There is no merger and jobs are not unlikely to be lost as a result. Qatari Diar’s motive for investment is a financial decision and they will not be interested in the day-to-day running of the hotel. Likely the famous saying from the Godfather film, this transaction is nothing personal, just business. About the Author Damon is a proud graduate of Nanyang Technological University with a degree in Accountancy. He is currently working in the finance department of a UK Bank. Related Reads: Investment in UBS by GIC – a Chronicle of a Disaster in the Making GIC’s Investment in Stuyvesant Town – Unravelling the Mystery The Demise of Dubai – How the Mighty Have Fallen Sale of Chartered Semiconductor – An Anatomy  Read More →

From: The Australian George Megalogenis April 10, 2010 12:00AM The decision by the NSW Labor government to discourage migrants a decade ago has proved to be a sign of what would happen if the whole nation did likewise THE idea of slowing the nation's population growth is tempting for any politician. No opinion poll taken in the past 60 years has found a majority of voters want to step up the immigration program, yet more than seven million immigrants have arrived since 1945. At best, voters will say the present intake is about right. The impulse to close the door cuts across party and cultural lines, and draws on a gut call voters make that Australia can't carry too many more people without breaking. Local born and established immigrant think alike, as do Labor, Liberal and Green voters. Yet no government since World War II has allowed the political cycle to dictate policy. The number of people we receive each year has tended to rise and fall with the national economy. Imagine, then, if Australia could run a controlled experiment in low population growth to test the electorate's hunch that fewer is better, that slower population growth inevitably leads to higher living standards. NSW happens to be that case study. Since 2001, the state's population has grown on average by 1 per cent a year, compared with the national figure of 1.6 per cent a year. But that slower growth rate hasn't made Sydney any more liveable. On the contrary, the decay of the nation's largest city became a self-fulfilling prophesy. Sydney succumbed to gridlock, young families and professionals defected to Brisbane and Melbourne, and the communities that remained rioted in Redfern, Macquarie Fields and Cronulla. The Labor government that oversaw this mess became a laughing-stock. NSW demonstrates the link between population and economic growth. A society that chooses fewer people will not have the income to cope with the demand for public services that is already in the pipeline, from the bricks and mortar and the bitumen to keep the working-age population housed and mobile to the nursing home facilities for the frail aged. NSW slowed its population growth by design and default. It took in a smaller share of the immigration intake and it watched as its citizens migrated north and south to the boom states of Queensland and Victoria. What it got in return was a slower economic growth rate. Population growth of 1 per cent a year translated to an increase in gross state product of 1.7 per cent a year in NSW. Double both figures and you get the Queensland experience during the same period: a population growth rate of 2.5 per cent a year and an economic rate of 4.7 per cent a year. But to put NSW in its true context, look at Victoria. Here the population grew by 1.6 per cent a year, 0.6 percentage points more than in NSW. Victoria's GSP was almost double NSW's, 3.3 per cent a year against 1.7 per cent a year. (See tables.) Behind these numbers is a very simple economic fact. The states that grow faster have a higher demand for labour. With the national economy operating at near-full employment, the states that want to keep growing are those prepared to source new workers from overseas to complement their existing labour supply. At the top of the previous boom, before the global financial crisis hit, the nation had run out of local workers. In 2006, immigrants accounted for almost all the growth in the labour force. The sting in the NSW case study is that by turning its back on the boom, it allowed rival states to increase their skills base. This occurred two ways: through the skilled workers who left NSW, and the skilled immigrants who went to Victoria. When NSW was the nation's premier state in the 1990s, it took almost half the nation's total immigration intake. As recently as 2001-02, it accepted 40 per cent. Eight years on, in 2008-09, the figure had fallen to 30 per cent. During the same period, Victoria's share rose from 18 per cent to 27 per cent. The difference, essentially, is that Victoria became the more willing host for the most skilled immigrant wave in Australia's history, from China and India. NSW picked the worst point in the nation's growth phase to retreat. But doesn't a slower population growth rate lead to higher income a head, the electorate would reply? That is, would fewer people nibbling on the same sized cake mean everyone is better fed? Appealing though this notion may be, the data says otherwise. Studies by Australian National University demographer Peter McDonald have established a positive connection between population growth and gross domestic product per capita. "There is clearly a link between population growth and economic growth for states, and it is easily explained," he says. "High growth states have a high demand for labour and have to recruit their workers from outside the state, principally from off-shore. A bigger population has to be fed, housed and serviced, increasing economic growth. But does immigration increase GDP per capita? Yes." The final word should go to employment, the statistic that is the best measure of an economy's vibrancy. NSW has been the place to avoid if you are looking for work. In the eight years it chose to slow its population growth rate, the state economy increased total full-time male jobs by a miserable 5.4 per cent, or just 0.7 per cent a year. This was less than half the national rate of 13.4 per cent, or 1.7 per cent a year. One of the unintended ironies of Tony Abbott's push to make immigration an election issue is the insult he pays to his own side of politics in NSW. The state's glory decade, the 90s, was triggered by the reform program of Liberal premier Nick Greiner. At the heart of the Greiner model was a NSW that wasn't afraid of markets or people. NSW under Labor premier Bob Carr kept the market, but it didn't want the people, especially after the Tampa episode in 2001. The Carr approach was undoubtedly popular because his approval rating soared after he said Sydney was full. John Howard took the same electoral pulse that Carr did at the time. But Howard, like Greiner, wasn't afraid of more people. The public Howard and the policy Howard were at odds because, while the former prime minister said he had closed the borders to asylum-seekers, he was also ramping up the regular immigration intake and changing the focus from Europe to Asia. The Opposition Leader's challenge to the regular immigration intake this week is being read by some as a 2001 ploy to wedge Labor. But Abbott has confused rhetoric with national interest. The Howard model let the economic cycle, not the media cycle, dictate the number of immigrants that came here. Abbott is suggesting the intake be reduced for the very reason the public wants to close the door, because Australia can't carry anymore people. And he is citing misleading statistics to make his political case. "I note that in the last seven quarters of the Howard government the net overseas migration was just over 200,000 people a year," Abbott said this week. "Since the change of government, immigration has been running at more than 300,000 a year. "That's a 50 per cent increase and it's hard to see that we are building the sort of infrastructure that this country needs if we are going to sustain an annual increase in our population the size almost of the city of Canberra." McDonald says Abbott has undercooked the Coalition intake by including a number from a previous series. "The annual rate based on the last six quarters of the Howard government is 235,000," he says. And the spike under Labor was due to "an increase in temporary migration" in 2008. There was a time when our leaders were condemned by the tabloid media for getting the price of a litre of milk wrong. This week, Abbott's wobbly numbers were recited without scrutiny. Talkback hosts have harangued government ministers and their own listeners with the sharp jump in net overseas migration to 300,000. But that figure itself is misleading. It reflects a new method used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to count students who take up permanent residency. This series can't be compared with the official figures published before July 1, 2006. It's why the Coalition's claims of a 50 per cent increase under Labor are also misleading: Abbott reached back to the previous series to reduce the Coalition average. The Prime Minister senses the public unease. Last week, under the cover of Easter holidays, Rudd appointed Tony Burke, from the NSW Labor Right, to the new post of Population Minister. He also asked Treasury to prepare a report. Rudd and Abbott continue to be frightened of the electorate. It has been painful to watch, first as they competed to outspend eachother, and now to talk down population growth. In a timely intervention in this newspaper on Thursday, Howard's former chief of staff Arthur Sinodinos reminded both sides that their respective heroes, John Curtin for Labor and Robert Menzies for the Liberals, "did not need a Treasury paper to tell them what to think about population and immigration". Actually, they didn't need opinion polls either. A Gallup poll taken in 1951, before Sinodinos's mother migrated to Australia, asked voters "whether or not Australia should get immigrants" from a list of seven countries. The Netherlands (80.6 per cent), Sweden (76.8 per cent) and France (59.4 per cent) recorded strong yes votes. At the other end of the scale, the public said "not wanted" to people from Greece (only 42.7 per cent of voters wanted them), Yugoslavia (33.5 per cent) and Italy (27.3 per cent). The reason for the discrepancy can be seen in the response to Germany. Unlike the Greeks, who were our allies in World War II, the Germans had the advantage of white skin. The German approval rating was 55.4 per cent. If the Menzies government had taken heed of these sorts of polls, then people such as Sinodinos would not have been born. Australia has always felt like it was one intake away from having too many people chasing too few jobs, properties, seats on public transport and car parking spots in the city. But before either side consults its next poll, perhaps it should look again at NSW. The state stalled when it decided it didn't need any more people. Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/what-if-we-raise-the-plank/story-e6frg6z6-1225851691388  Read More →

Written by Our Correspondent Just when the Reform Party is making waves in Singapore with its frequent walkabouts and appearances in the media, the Straits Times found fit to dredge up a minor spat within the party to cast doubts on the opposition's credibility again. After spending one entire month instigating a war of words between SDP's Chee Soon Juan and SPP's Chiam See Tong, the state media now turns its attention on the fledging Reform Party founded by the late opposition leader Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam in 2008. One of its co-founders is Mr Ng Teck Siong, who resigned from the party last year after a vote of no-confidence against him. Mr Kenneth Jeyaretnam, the elder son of J.B. Jeyaretnam was then elected secretary-general. The Sunday Times carried an article today about Mr Ng slamming Mr Jeyaretnam for remarks made in the press earlier. Mr Ng said that  it was 'utter rubbish' that the late Mr Jeyaretnam hoped either of his sons would enter politics. "He would not even talk about it... He even extracted an understanding from me that I would not approach them if he is not around," he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Times. He also disputed Mr Jeyaretnam's claims that the party was in a bad shape under his leadership and insisted that the meetings for December and January were cancelled because members were on holiday. With due respect to Mr Ng, it matters little now if he was indeed "misunderstood" by Mr Jeyaretnam or the media. It is strange that the Sunday Times bothered to give publicity to such a trivial incident instead of focusing on the policy recommendations put forth by the Reform Party. For example, the Reform Party has published a detailed counter-proposal to Budget 2010 last month which included privatizing Temasek Holdings and GIC. The state media did not report on it. Neither did the Straits Times publish Reform Party member Ms Hazel Poa's rebuttal of National Development Minister Mah Bow Tan's use of fudgy statistics on growth of HDB flat prices and median income to mislead Singaporeans. Personal conflicts are inevitable in any organizations let alone a political party. The PAP leaders have their fair share of disagreements and conflicts too, but they were never reported in the media. It is unlikely that the PAP leaders will see eye to eye with one another all the time unless they are dummies, but then again, it may be true after all as there are no real leaders within the PAP now. To borrow a quote from PAP’s de facto leader and strongman Lee Kuan Yew:   “To be the prime minister, you don’t have to know every instrument, but you got to recognise, ah, he’s a good violinist, he’ll be the first violinist, he’ll be the double bass. He will play the viola, he will have the trumpet, he will do the drums. Then you coordinate them and then you have great music. And if you already have a great orchestra, you can put a dummy there and you still got great music.”   [Source: Channel News Asia, 5 March 2008]   No wonder the Straits Times has never reported any news on political in-fighting within the PAP itself. What do you expect from a group of dummies with no minds of their own?   EDITORS’ NOTE: Please join our Facebook page here and invite your friends to do so to create awareness of the current affairs affecting Singaporeans.    Read More →