Focus on Sports with New Ministry for Culture, Community and Youth

Mr Speaker, Sir, my Ministry aims to create an environment where Singaporeans can pursue their aspirations to lead fulfilling lives; build a society based on mutual respect, understanding and care; and foster a deeper sense of national pride and belonging to the nation.

Sports can contribute to each of the areas. The recent Sports Vision 2030 report has set out recommendations on how Singaporeans can live better through sports. In implementing Vision 2030, my Ministry will provide more opportunities for individuals, including youths and students, to participate in sports.

The Singapore National Games and the Community Games are examples of how sports contribute to building community ties by allowing the community to come together to help organise the games, to play, support and cheer each other on.

Through SportCares, another initiative under Vision 2030, we encourage individuals and organisations to reach out to the less fortunate members of our society, including under-privileged youths, through sports.

Our efforts in encouraging community involvement in sports will not dilute the focus on high-performance sports. On the contrary, the broader the base of sports participation, the better our chances of developing talented youth athletes. At the same time, the achievements of Team Singapore athletes will inspire other young people to pursue their passion for sports, whether at the recreational or competitive level.

Sports participation and sports excellence are both integral to the aims of my Ministry. They are complementary and mutually reinforcing. MCCY will continue to strongly support development in both areas.

Mr Speaker, I thank the Acting Minister for the reply. I have one supplementary question. I appreciate the fact that the high performance and high participation aspects of sports can be complementary. Given limited amount of resources, to create committees, for example, the Sports Pathway Committees, which seem to share both those aims – national team development as well as community building – I cannot help but wonder what would be the impact in terms of the division of resources if the amount of resources is not going to be increased. How will these twin aims then be developed? Would it not be better if organisations, such as People's Association (PA), took a more active role in terms of the community aspects of sports development?

I understand where the Member is coming from in terms of the concerns about the allocation of resources. First of all, we would like to have more resources put into sports, overall. Secondly, we have to look at the balance of resources and at which agency does what. For community sports, a lot of the involvement is already done through PA, with PA resources and organisation helping to mobilise the community and the grassroots.

As I mentioned earlier, we will continue to put in more resources to building sports performance and to high performance sports. The Sports Pathway Committee which SSC recently announced is one example. We are also seeking to strengthen our high performance sports training system and framework through the Singapore Sports Institute. That is something that was also recommended in the Vision 2030 Report. It is an idea which we are looking at to see how we can take it forward and strengthen the whole system of high performance sports training. When we look at the whole system, in both participation and excellence, I do not think we want to put an artificial divide between the two.

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Overall, we have to build a stronger system. More sports participation can help to build sports excellence. We will have to look at the resources that we have – ideally, have more resources going into sports, but within the resources that we have, look at how best to allocate those resources so that we can build up the entire system.

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