AFTER THE VOTE: What will the new Parliament inherit?
By Adilah Rafey

As Singapore’s 15th Parliament reconvenes, it enters with a mix of continuity and change. A record 32% of MPs are women, and new NCMPs will bring fresh perspectives. 

Meanwhile, vocal figures like Louis Ng and Leong Mun Wai exit the chamber, leaving behind a legacy of pushing boundaries on issues from caregiving to cost of living.

But beyond who’s in the room, the bigger question is: what will they do with the work left behind?

Before Parliament dissolved, the Committee of Supply debates set out the government’s policy priorities, from welfare and caregiving to online harms and workplace fairness. 

This article highlights the moments that matter most to AWARE, especially where gender, care, and inclusion are concerned. Because behind every policy tweak is a deeper question: who still gets left out, and why?

MSF

This year’s Budget provisions highlighted MSF’s continued emphasis on a family-centric approach in delivering welfare and social services, reinforcing the longstanding norm in Singapore’s policymaking.

Singapore’s model ties support to one’s position within a family unit, a framework that underpins key initiatives like ComCare and ComLink+. While these programmes aim to uplift vulnerable households, this approach risks excluding those who don’t fit the traditional nuclear family structure, potentially leaving gaps in the social safety net.  

The opacity of ComCare’s eligibility criteria and relatively low level of assistance remain points of concern, as highlighted in our previous Budget 2025 article.

Its inflexibility to accommodate those who might fall outside of the strict bounds of the nuclear family unit, such as single parents, estranged spouses, or low-income singles, means many vulnerable persons are left without support.

While enhancements to ComLink+ aim to provide more holistic support for families in rental flats, the broader question persists: Does the family-centric approach best serve societal stability? 

The budget cuts which piqued our interest most spoke about how the gaps in our welfare system revolve, primarily, around people who do not fit neatly within the nuclear family system.  

ex-MP Louis Ng spoke about the need for more cash assistance to be provided for single unwed parents.

He told the evocative story of Emma, a single mother who was staying in a shelter with her daughter, back when single unwed parents were not eligible to buy or rent flats from HDBs.

While this discriminatory policy has been changed, single unweds are still unable to access the cash component of the Baby Bonus, Parenthood Tax Rebate and Working Mother’s Child Relief. 

We echo his calls to allow single unweds access to these lifelines. Certainly, the shift in allowing single parents to access public housing has not caused any significant increase in the demographic.

MP Gerald Giam underscored the immense sacrifices made by unpaid family caregivers, who often jeopardise their careers, savings, and well-being to support loved ones, saving the state an estimated $1.28 billion annually in elderly care costs.

While welcoming the increased Home Caregiving Grant, he argued that the current approach treats caregiving as a private burden rather than a shared societal responsibility.

Calling for systemic change, MP Giam proposed a tiered caregiver wage for those reducing work hours, CPF contributions to secure their retirement, and a national certification framework to recognise caregiving as skilled labour, ensuring better re-entry into the workforce.

He urged a shift from piecemeal relief to fair compensation, emphasising that valuing caregivers is key to preparing for Singapore’s ageing population.

MP Giam’s call for a caregiver wage tied to living wage standards that has both a cash and a CPF component (without the need for self-contribution), with the amount linked to the salaries of those providing the kind of care work involved, aligns with AWARE’s similar recommendations.

Payment levels can also be linked to the number of Activities of Daily Living (ADL) which each caregiver assists with, to recognise that caregivers need to invest greater resources into caring for care recipients who need help with more ADLs.

MDDI and Ministry of Law

This year, MDDI has outlined its priorities to “strengthen online safety, cybersecurity and digital resilience”. As part of its legislative efforts to Protect Singaporeans online, the “Safer Internet, Safer You” lineup includes an upcoming Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Bill, and an upcoming Online Safety Commission.

This collaborative effort with the Ministry of Law sought public consultation, to which we submitted our recommendations, as expanded in this article. 

In short, the Online Safety Commission will be empowered to issue a direction notice to platforms to take down offensive content, including certain forms of technology-facilitated sexual violence (TFSV), hate speech and online harassment, and request platforms to provide information about perpetrators.

Using this information, victims of online harms can then sue perpetrators based on the new statutory torts to be created.

The budget cuts which piqued our interest included perspectives on online harms which applied a gender-informed and feminist lens in discussing online harms.

MP Nadia Ahmad Samdin spoke about the increasing seriousness and prevalence of online harms, but shifted the focus away from the accountability measures aimed at catching perpetrators, and spoke about the need for “timely assistance” to be provided to victims of online harms.

This echoes our calls for a survivor-centric lens to be applied. In tandem with the resources and effort being put towards building a dedicated agency and codifying statutory torts, we hope that even more will eventually be done to provide for victim-survivors of online harms such as Tech-Facilitated Sexual Violence.

AWARE recommends that the Online Safety Commission train its staff in trauma-informed responses to victim-survivors who may contact them, including a Code of Practice that sets out minimum standards of service and support to victim-survivors of sexual violence.

Beyond this, we hope to see a whole-of-government approach that expands subsidised victim support services to those who have encountered both technology-facilitated and non-tech-facilitated sexual violence. 

MOM

MOM’s key areas of focus in 2025 include “Fostering fair, inclusive and safe workplaces” through the enhancement of the Workfare Income Supplement by increasing the qualifying monthly income cap from $2,500 to $3,000 per year, as well as a 17% boost to WIS payments for various age ranges. 

Beyond this, resources are being channelled towards upskilling efforts and increasing employers’ compliance with existing policies through financial support to firms.

AWARE is highly encouraged by the Jobseeker Support Scheme (JSS), which will provide newly-retrenched workers with financial support of up to $6,000 over 6 months while undergoing training or searching for jobs.

We await reviews of and enhancements to the JSS, to see how effective the scheme has been in alleviating the challenges of those who have been retrenched. We also reiterate our calls for Singapore to adopt a living wage standard which allows workers to live with dignity.

Singapore has sufficient resources to meet minimum wage standards, as opposed to relying fully on PWM, which does not address the continued existence of a reliable pool of low-salary foreign workers that companies continue to have access to.

The budget cuts which caught our attention reflected the MOM’s goal of fostering “fair, inclusive and safe workplaces”: they talked about the need for labour rights to accommodate workers across the board, embracing diversity and recognising those who have been sidelined for too long.

ex-MP Louis Ng pushed for the TAFEP website to explicitly state that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is covered under the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices (TGFEP).

This is because Minister Tan See Leng confirmed in Parliament that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity is covered under TGFEP, and the “position is now reflected in Hansard on the Parliament website but strangely, not on the Tripartite Alliance for Fair and Progressive Employment Practices (TAFEP) website.”

We support ex-MP Ng’s call but also call for sexual orientation and gender identity (of all forms) to be recognised as protected characteristics under the Workplace Fairness Act. LGBTQ+ workers deserve to be as equally protected under the law as their cisgender and heterosexual colleagues.

It should be illegal for them to be discriminated against and harassed at the workplace due to their sexuality and gender identity. 

MP Rachel Ong highlighted the growing strain on caregivers, particularly single adults supporting elderly parents and parents of children with severe disabilities, as companies enforce return-to-office mandates.

For them, flexible work is not a perk but a critical necessity to sustain both employment and caregiving duties, with many forced to sacrifice career growth or exit the workforce entirely.

While progress has been made, such as the Tripartite guidelines on flexible work arrangements , these measures lack legal enforceability, leaving caregivers vulnerable to employer discretion.

MP Ong pressed the Government to strengthen safeguards, ensuring caregivers aren’t pushed out of jobs due to rigid workplace policies, and called for concrete steps to protect their workforce participation amid shifting work norms.

We echo MP Ong’s calls and repeat our call for Flexible Work Arrangements, as well as Reasonable Accommodations, to be enshrined as labour rights for similar reasons. 

Other noteworthy budget cuts

While this article can’t cover every ministry’s COS debate, we have noted some additional laudable budget cuts raised by MPs:

MP He Ting Ru emphasised a critical gap in our healthcare system: gender-informed medical research and treatment.

As noted in Parliament, men and women experience illnesses differently, from symptom presentation to drug response, yet many studies still default to male-centric data. Conditions like autoimmune disorders and mental health (e.g., PTSD) disproportionately affect women but remain under-researched.

While Singapore’s precision medicine strategy promises early detection and personalised care, it must actively address these disparities to ensure treatments are truly effective for all. This aligns with AWARE’s calls for gender-disaggregated data to support better health outcomes for women.

ex-MP Louis Ng called for an end to housing policies that discriminate against single unwed parents, questioning why they remain excluded from the Parenthood Provisional Housing Scheme (PPHS) while divorced or widowed single parents qualify. He stressed that forcing unwed parents to rely on costly and restrictive private rentals—where many landlords reject tenants with young children—adds unnecessary hardship.

Arguing that Singapore’s policies should support, not penalise, vulnerable families, Ng urged the government to remove the case-by-case approval system and grant single unwed parents equal access to PPHS, emphasising that inclusivity is long overdue in 2025. We cannot agree more with ex-MP Ng.

MP Sylvia Lim raised concerns over the stark disparity in delivery costs faced by foreign mothers married to Singaporean fathers, despite their children being Singaporean by birth, as compared to Singaporean mothers. At KK Hospital, non-resident mothers pay over $8,000 for normal deliveries—with $5,300 payable in cash—compared to Singaporeans who pay nothing out-of-pocket, and PRs who pay intermediate costs.

The gap widens for emergency C-sections, burdening lower-income citizen-foreign families even further and sending a discouraging signal amid Singapore’s 0.97 total fertility rate. MP Lim also highlighted the lack of a clear PR pathway for many foreign spouses, with 17% still on LTVPs after years of marriage.

She urged MOH to reassess these cost differentials, arguing they undermine efforts to support family formation and inclusivity. We strongly support this call.

NMP Razwana Begum emphasised the importance of tailored rehabilitation and reintegration programmes for former drug users, particularly women transitioning from custody, whose needs often differ from male offenders.

AWARE is pleased to note her call for the Ministry to outline specific measures to address female drug users’ unique challenges, strengthen community partnerships to reduce recidivism, and explore how social services and the public can support innovative halfway house initiatives to ensure smoother reintegration into society.