<&>Wellington Corpus of Spoken New Zealand English Version One <&>Copyright 1998 School of Linguistics & Applied Language Studies <&>Victoria University of Wellington <&>side two <&>0:24 so what HAPPENS if <.>you're if you're made redundant <,> through no fault of your own <.>they they have a labour shortage in fact <&>clears throat and laughs they're importing labour from both malaysia and indonesia there aren't any out of work singaporeans so successful is their economy just go back to that discipline are we talking traditional chinese family links that impose discipline or <{><[>a sense of value of education or something <[><.>ye er well both those things um lee has always been very concerned er not <.>to lee kuan yew <&>1:00 not to have a SOFT society he sees the west as decadent and soft and he does stress um the need for <,> er families to support each other so <,> <.>i in your old age either you've saved for it or your family looks after you er <.>th you certainly don't look to the state for handouts and you know that from day one you know that from day one yes <{><[><.>th <[>mm what about the emphasis on education do you also know that THAT is something whether you like it or not that has to be addressed as a young person yes it is one of the quite remarkable er achievements of independent singapore keep in mind they only got their independence from britain in fifty nine and from malaysia in sixty five and voc when the british left voc only twelve to fifteen per cent of the population was literate AT ALL now it would be totally literate population WITH great emphasis on the acquisition of skills and literacy and numeracy and so on <{><[>lee wanted to get away from a labour intensive <,> er economy to a brains intensive economy and he's done it <[>how do <.>you mm how do you turn those literacy figures around so fast <{><[>do you have to be quite tough minded and harsh <[><.>well i don't know that it's a very harsh society really the schools are perhaps <,> more disciplined and authoritarian than ours but singapore children don't seem wildly unhappy to the casual eye so it's something that they have there as well what can we learn from their success or is their success in a way irrelevant to OUR lifestyle and OUR attitudes no i think we can learn a great deal keep in mind that when i first went to singapore thirty years ago they had leprous beggars in the streets and most of the houses didn't have running water in old chinatown and so on and er voc there was wall to wall slums now <&>3:00 everybody's um housed properly they certainly have running water and so on er voc and <,> ONE of the reasons for that i think is er very CLEAR sighted government er and economic policy er WE debate the virtues or otherwise of intervention um the p a p government in singapore has certainly regarded one of their roles as being to direct the economy to encourage investment from outside to make er <,,> decisions about the TYPE of economy they want to encourage for instance er in the nineteen sixties they DOUBLED at a stroke the minimum wage because lee didn't want to persist with high um labour intensive <.>int industries he wanted to FORCE employers to move across to <.>cap capital intensive industries that sort of thing so it's an enormous social experiment that's worked or social laboratory if you want <&>4:00 well yes i mean there's some people would say <.>th that the cost has been too high some people would argue that there's been a <,> a death of the human spirit or an erosion of freedoms or whatever in singapore but keep in mind that lee kwan yew has NEVER got less than THREE quarters of the popular vote at ONE election after another and he's sometimes got up to eighty five percent of popular vote WE haven't had a government HERE elected by more than fifty per cent of the populace since nineteen fifty one so he must be doing SOMETHING right something of which his people approved what about the critics who say it's a police state can't drop a cigarette butt on the foot path without being LEAPT on and all that sort of thing well <.>certain certainly it has specialised in forms of discipline er social discipline with which we are unfamiliar er it might i think to a free spirit like yourself seem in the long run <.>a a place you didn't wish to live there are continuous government exhortations to you know SMILE at <&>5:00 tourists to FLUSH the loos in public places and things like that but keep in mind that it <.>WOULD it WAS dirty grimy um poverty stricken and now it is clean and green and efficient and perhaps er human beings just simply do need a bit more OVERT discipline than we are used to or than we find <.>c er we're comfortable living with could you impose those things on us <,> i mean they say here the courts can't even collect the fines that ARE imposed <,> could you actually START <,> riding the population really HARD TO FLUSH THE LAVATORY and be tidy? laughs i think we'd have to have a full scale restructuring of our <,,> our education system probably to start with i mean i think the glories of our education system are not to be <&>6:00 um scoffed at we DO produce <,> nice welladjusted er children we produce free spirits we produce a lot of creativity and drive er but we have in my lifetime anyway er stressed er <,> tut <.>the the virtues of free expression and so on have we not to perhaps the detriment of discipline with a capital d well it's certainly changed even since my day you know the way young people are and their rights <{><[>being paramount rather than the responsibilities <[>mm yes say some crusty middle aged people mm um keep in mind too that singapore did er get born in difficulty if you like <.>the lee er had a fight to the death in his view with the communists he was determined that communism WOULDN'T take over singapore that it would remain a free port and so on and so forth he does <,> um talk in terms of struggle to say that <&>7:00 he runs a police state is <.>a an OVERstatement in my view he <.>has it is true a handful of political prisoners but ONLY a handful he has it is true a lot of rules and regulations governing people's lives and whether they should sit in the streets er but he also as i say has a huge amount of popular support from the people and approval of what he's done and is doing tell us something about home mortgages is it true there aren't any mortgages someone wants to know i've never heard that <{><[><.>i i just don't see why not <[>no well that must <.>be <,> just an aside it is true that they have encouraged people to OWN their own flats and properties and one of the ways you can buy your housing corporation flat is by putting some of your compulsorily saved earnings er towards that flat they have <.>a a provident fund that all er wage and salary earners must contribute to for their old age <&>8:00 and er that has of course given the state a VAST <,> little kitty of capital er with which to develop the state over the past thirty years so would you advocate some reform of our education system that started to inculcate these disciplines <,> or the acceptance of discipline toward the greater good of the greatest number i think that <,> we ARE seeing from doctor lockwood smith just recently <.>a a recognition that students should be <,> compelled if you like to study mathematics and english and science for longer so that you don't have thirteen and fourteen year olds deciding that they've had enough of er <.>these so we are moving i think to <.>a to a recognition that there should be <.>a a CORE curriculum to which ALL children are subject <,> that if we DON'T have a literate and numerate society then we're <&>9:00 going to retreat into a peasant lifestyle very rapidly in my view and how often does the rattan get applied to the singaporean back i don't know but i can't imagine that it's very often um it's presumably er reserved for quote unquote serious crimes such as drugrunning and keep in mind that malaysia uses the rattan for like purposes as well right professor clark thank you for that background not at <{><[><.>all <[>lots to think about <{><[>bye bye <[>good see you <{><[>bye <[>bye <&>9:27 <&>adverts <&>9:37 two z b twenty seven past eleven's the time dave good morning <,> dave? oh ha <{><[>ha ha good morning <[>good morning er yes i'm ringing in regards to um these people who are sort of <,> um complaining about people <.>go going er duck shooting voc yes um <,> you know in <.>the <.>the these times we've got to try and um get some sort of food for <&>10:00 our families laughs um i'm just going back to er the depression period when er people had to try and get some <.>sport some form of food and they used to go either rabbit shooting duck shooting <,> um you know you don't think the animal rights activists have a point no about ducks? about any sort <.>of sort of wild animals that are introduced into the country would you eat more rabbit than duck well i don't eat either but i used to well rabbits are a nuisance aren't they ducks aren't well <.>the you got plenty of them plenty of <{><[>ducks <[><.>they they seem to know when to <.>go to go to the zoo anyway what the ducks the ducks when it's duck season <{><[>you know laughs <[>snorts <,> good for them <,> good for them well exhales i mean do people go out duck shooting for the VITAL VITAL supplies of protein that they need or do they go out for the sheer pleasure of <&>11:00 shooting the head off a feathered friend well <.>it's <.>it's better <.>the they shoot the duck than to er you know do it to somebody else <{><[>i suppose <[>yeah but some of them are messy they miss and the things are full of shot anyway <{1><[1>well you want to hear about the goose i bought <&>pronounced brought for christmas OH don't start me <{2><[2><,> it had been run over <[1>well <[2>yeah well see you go <.>out <.>you see you went out and sort of <{><[>bought <.>it laughs <[>I DIDN'T GO OUT i bought it in a plastic bag and <{><[>hopefully it had died of old age <[>yeah that's right <.>you you got someone else to do it <{><[>for you laughs <[>imagine my surprise when i discovered that i think it had been run over mm judging by the things that were sticking out through the SKIN anyway we won't dwell on that because i'm off <{1><[1>animal stories as you know i don't <.>actually twenty years of broadcasting refuse to talk about cruelty to animals because it upsets me too much but the duck thing is interesting because here inhales is an introduced thing <.>of animal <{2><[2>feathery feathery friend of which there are a great many on the other hand when i saw those people clutching the injured swan my heart broke i mean you see their point of view <{3><[3><.>and <[1>right okay <.>then <[2>mm <[3>laughs have you ever been attacked by a swan <{><[>laughs <&>12:00 <[>well oh for goodness sake you're a great big grown up boy so what if a swan comes <{><[>at you you're bigger than the swan <[>no no no <.>what <.>my my son was attacked <.>wh voc by <.>a er sort of <.>a you know <{><[>couple of <.>th <[>well you should have kept him away from the swan laughs well he was FEEDING them laughs well animals have rights too and swans are notoriously bad tempered like talkback people and you <{><[>know you just should be warned <[>yes right <{><[>okay <[>all right <,> all right now listen i think that animals have taken a savage beating in the last century and should be left alone to get on with their lives right okay now <{><[>another one <.>is <[>and not have david attenborough STICKING CAMERAS UP THEIR FURRY BACKSIDES well yes laughs well that's cruel because he's a wonderful man <{><[>but i just <,> i don't like that programme the trials of life i don't watch it the moment anything RED comes on the screen i leave the room don't you <[>yes well <{><[>yeah voc <.>i <[>voc let's get the monkeys ripping each other up voc why not right okay <&>12:47