“ The job of government and education is getting more difficult because change is happening more frequently, but it means that we should not vest everything in preparing people in the first 12 or 18 years of their lives for a lifetime of change – we have got to be able to invest in them throughout life so that they can cope with change. That is the nature of the new business of government: it is about helping people adjust to change, so that they can do well even as technology starts taking over old jobs. ”

“ The story that globalisation is behind what happened in Brexit or what is happening in domestic polarisation in a range of countries is vastly overstated. Our fundamental problem is that of domestic policy – people who have lost out because of technological change or trade have not been helped to get back into the game – that is a domestic policy issue, you cannot blame it on trade! ”

“ I think the way we have to think about it in politics and policy making is how we can be as resilient as possible when the unthinkable happens – how we can be robust to a range of outcomes. We have just got to prepare ourselves to be resilient in the nature of our society, so that if you get a terrorist incident, you do not get a divided society, you do not get people who are suspicious of each other, but you get a coalescing around what it means to be Singaporean. What we do now shapes what happens when the unthinkable happens. We are not powerless. ”