Q&A with Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean ahead of his retirement

CNA

21-05-2025

SINGAPORE: Senior Minister Teo Chee Hean announced last month that he is stepping down after 53 years in public service, including 33 years in politics.
In a wide-ranging interview with the media on Tuesday (May 20) ahead of his retirement, Mr Teo said finely tuned coordination across ministries remains key as the country deals with cross-cutting issues like climate change and national security.
The 70-year-old – who is also Coordinating Minister for National Security – reflected on his political career as well, including his time as Education Minister from 1997 to 2003.
Before he entered politics in 1992, he served in various roles in the Singapore Armed Forces and was appointed Chief of Navy in 1991.
Q. In your 33 years in politics, what was the toughest decision you had to make?
A. Decisions are never easy because they all have to balance many different factors. They impact the individual lives of people and their interests. So you have to understand that and take that into account. And for politics in Singapore, you are a member of parliament first before you are a minister, and so you cannot make policy and then go and hide in your ivory tower.
Some of the issues which we are able to tackle in Singapore, which many countries face difficulty in doing, are really the long-term issues … if you don't take action now or next year or in two years' time, you lose one year or two years or three years or four years or five years, and then by the time the issue you have to confront the issue already, you have lost four or five years, because it takes that amount of time for this kind of policy to actually come to fruition and for the gestation period. So education is really one of them, and I spent about six, seven years in education. And it was a very satisfying period.
The two things I'm happiest with from the Ministry of Education are, we completely revamped the teachers' career schemes. Salaries was one thing, but also the careers, to have the teaching track, the leadership track and the specialist track, so that we were able to develop teachers much more fully and holistically. And also in the course of that, I think we managed to raise the status of teachers in society, and I think that was very important for the teachers and our whole school system.
The other one I'm really very happy with is ITE (Institute of Technical Education). I mean, ITE was the idea of Dr Tay Eng Soon to change from VITB (Vocational and Industrial Training Board), which was really a secondary vocational school, to a post-secondary Institute for Technical Education. So that was a very important move that he made. But the structure of each of the individual centres was still like a secondary vocational school. It was about 1,500 students, and there were 10 to a dozen centres all over Singapore. So we decided that we could actually build ITE colleges and bring a different approach to ITE education to the students.
And so every time I go to ITE Central or East or West, I feel a great sense of joy, and to see the students actually have the type of facilities that they have, and it gives them a sense of hope for the future. And that's very important. Everybody has a chance.
Q. With your vast experience across the different ministries, how do you think that has shaped your perspective or your approach towards governance and leadership?
A. Some of it comes not just from the ministries, but from my own experience previously in the Navy. It was a very collegial type of organisation. And so, you know, people have this idea that (because) you come from the armed forces, you just tell people what to do and things get done.
It doesn't work that way in our armed forces, because we have a National Service armed forces, and an ORNS (operationally ready National Service) reservist armed forces. You can't just tell people what to do. You actually have to work with them, get them on board, and you actually do a lot of persuasion to get things done, especially with our reservists - they may be older than you are, so you actually have to work with them. And there's a lot of interpersonal skills and leadership team building involved.
So this is one of the characteristics of our armed forces, which is different from professional armed forces. And the reason it's important in the armed forces is you need to do this in order to continue to have strong armed forces and to continue to have people who committed Singaporeans to National Service and reservist, because if you mistreat people, then your support for National Service will collapse immediately. You can see that in some countries. So this is very important. And so, you know, when you see people come out (of the) armed forces (to) go to other fields, this is what they bring with them as well.
My approach is always to try and understand the situation, listen to people, what they have to say, and go right down to the end, the last person who's delivering a service, understand what he's doing, because if you're not helping him to deliver the service, it doesn't get done.
So when I was at MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs), for example, I took a great deal of interest in what kind of shoes the officers wear … These are very basic but important things, that they're comfortable because they spend a lot of time on their feet. Their communication sets, how heavy a load are they carrying, all kinds of things that they're carrying, you want them to carry, these body-worn cameras - is it going to overheat, cause them more heat stress? These kinds of things - it's important to the person on the ground because it helps him to get the job done better.
So you've got to understand some of the issues that he faces, and if you can help him to do the job better, he will do the job better. So these are some sort of issues I tried to understand a little bit more about. I did that in the SAF, I did that with the teachers too.
So, one of the things I'm happiest about, I gave the teachers proper staff rooms with their own workstations. Before, they were sharing desks (with) piles of stuff on their desk. You give them a proper working environment.
Q. Was this the same approach that you took as well when you were tasked to handle sensitive issues over the years, whether it was Oxley Road or even the most recent incident of the disclosure of NRIC numbers by BizFile?
A. Well, that's a totally different set of issues. You're talking about how you lead an organisation versus how you deal with certain of these other issues.
Well, the other types of issues, from time to time, the PM (Prime Minister) had asked me - PM Hsien Loong - and then PM Lawrence (Wong) asked me to deal with some of these issues, because he felt that I would bring a certain objective eye to it, and I would deal with it firmly but fairly … So I try and do my best, and that's important, because this is part of transparency in an organisation.
One of the most important things in government is integrity and trust that the government is doing the correct thing. And so, if something goes wrong, you must deal with it. And you know, as parliamentarians as well - when we all get elected to parliament, the most important thing is that we're honest with each other. If we want to have a debate, it must be based on truth and honesty. That's important, because otherwise, what's the basis for debate? And that's why truth, honesty, integrity in parliament when we say something to each other, (it's) so important.
Q. From your own experience as Coordinating Minister for National Security, what do you think is the relevance of this coordinating minister role moving forward? And do you think the 4G team is equipped to take on a role like this?
A. I think the answer to both is yes. There's always coordination required across the ministries, and in some cases, more so than others, because there are no issues which are just a single issue which is dealt with by a single ministry. They're always quite cross-cutting.
Even housing, you say that's MND and HDB's (Ministry of National Development and Housing and Development Board) issue, but actually there's family break-up, therefore the different halves of the families require housing. It's a social issue. It's not just a housing issue. And if parents and children live together, and then they can't agree with each other, and they break up and they want separate housing, that also is a social issue. It's not just a pure housing issue. So there are no issues which are so pure, they are single ministry, single agency issues, and in many of them, you have to work together.
So one of the things I always advocated for was a stronger, a better coordinating function in the Prime Minister's Office (PMO). And so we have the PMO Strategy Group, and that brings together some of the key cross-cutting issues that we have to deal with, like climate, population - these to name a few.
But then we also have national security. So we have a national security secretariat, and they work on these issues in a more holistic way and try to help the individual ministries and agencies do their job better. You do need this function. How it is to be carried out - it can take on different forms at different times, depending on the urgency of each of these issues and also depending on the people that you have.
Q. As you step down after five decades in public service, what is one key lesson that you've taken away for yourself and that you will share with this new team of leaders?
A. Unity is one of the key things - working together, that's key. And this is one of the characteristics that we have in Singapore, working together as a Cabinet, working together as a parliamentary team, working together as a civil service, working together as a country. And this is a key and core strength that we have. It is an advantage of being small, and it's a core and key strength that we have which allows us to face the world with confidence. I mean, if we were quarrelling and fighting with each other all the time, where do we have energy to actually improve the lives of people? And how do we face the world?
Well, COVID-19 was a very interesting example. We actually drew on what I would describe as three sets of reserves.
We think of our financial reserves. You know, we had five budgets. DPM (Deputy Prime Minister) Heng (Swee Keat), Minister for Finance, put together five budgets within a year or so, and we were able to support Singaporeans, companies, small businesses, gig workers (to) get through this very, very critical period. And we did so without going into debt. It's quite remarkable. Many countries did so, but they became much, much more in debt after that. And you can see many countries are in that predicament right now. So we have one set of reserves, which are financial reserves. It's always very easy to spend them, and you can get into a bidding war on how who will be more generous in spending the reserves. But that's a very dangerous thing to do, and that's why this government put into place certain checks, self-checks, on how you can use those reserves, because it's very tempting. And of course, even if you have two keys, you can still unlock it, but It's just a bit more difficult. So that's one set of reserves.
The other set of reserves that we have actually lies in our organisational capacity. So when we had to deal with COVID, we drew on companies, we drew on civil society, we drew on the public service. We drew particularly on the People's Association and their networks in the community. And we drew on what we consider our reserves - SAF and the Home Team, and we were able to work very, very strongly together.
But the other set of reserves that we drew on was really our social reserves, our sense of community, so people look after each other. And these were things which, as I said, the People's Association helped to build up. It was a very powerful network, and it helped people. We distributed masks, we organized mass vaccination. We brought food to people who are quarantined at home, alone at home, old folks, and we supported each other.
So when we think about reserves, these are the reserves that we've built up over the years, and these are things which we should continue to strengthen and not rubbish them or diminish them. They are very, very important for us, and it showed how we could come through COVID together.