Million-Dollar Ministers? Ask What Singapore Gets in Return.
Pay Ministers Well. Then Demand More From Them.
Singapore’s political salary debate should not be reduced to whether S$1 million sounds excessive. The better question is whether our system gives Singapore the best chance of recruiting capable leaders while preserving public service, accountability and trust.
Singaporeans are right to feel uncomfortable when politicians discuss million-dollar salaries.
They should.
Public money deserves scrutiny, and a seven-figure income is far removed from the economic reality of most Singaporeans.
But discomfort is not an argument.
The real question is not whether S$1 million sounds like a lot. It obviously does.
The question is whether Singapore’s compensation system helps us attract capable leaders while preserving accountability, public trust and the ethos of service.
My position is straightforward:
I support paying Singapore ministers well.
Not because wealthy people automatically make better leaders.
Not because money creates integrity.
Not because the highest-paid Singaporeans are necessarily the people best qualified to govern.
And certainly not because any salary becomes reasonable simply because the Government says it is necessary.
I support competitive political pay for a narrower reason.
Singapore should not make public service unnecessarily unattractive to capable people who have strong alternatives elsewhere.
But that comes with a bargain.
If Singapore chooses to pay its political leaders exceptionally well, Singaporeans are entitled to demand exceptional standards in return.
First, What Exactly Is MR4?
Before arguing about the numbers, we need to understand what they mean.
Much of the current discussion refers to something called MR4.
For readers who do not spend their lives studying government salary structures, MR4 is simply the entry ministerial grade. It is the lowest ministerial grade and serves as the main reference point for setting ministerial salaries.
It is not the Prime Minister’s salary grade.
More senior political officeholders are remunerated differently.
The 2026 review recommended increasing the annual MR4 reference salary from S$1.1 million to S$1.8 million. That immediately produced the impression in some discussions that ministers were about to receive a massive jump to S$1.8 million.
They are not.
The Government has capped the immediate one-off adjustment for serving political officeholders at up to 9 per cent, depending on individual circumstances, including performance and when the person’s salary was last adjusted.
So an MR4 minister currently at the S$1.1 million reference salary who receives the full adjustment would move to about S$1.2 million, not S$1.8 million.
There is no automatic march towards S$1.8 million either. Prime Minister Lawrence Wong has said that by the end of this term, most ministers who remain at MR4 are expected to be around the lower end of the new salary range, approximately S$1.35 million.
That distinction is fundamental:
Benchmark is not actual salary.
The S$1.8 million figure is a reference point used by the framework. It is not an entitlement automatically paid to every minister.
The reference package itself is also not entirely fixed salary. Roughly 65 per cent is fixed and 35 per cent variable. The variable portion includes components tied to individual performance and national outcomes.
Once those distinctions are understood, we can have the more important argument.
Public Service Should Be a Calling. That Does Not Mean It Should Be Financially Punitive.
One of the most attractive objections to high ministerial pay is simple:
People should enter politics because they want to serve, not because of money.
I agree.
Anyone entering politics mainly for the salary is probably entering for the wrong reason.
But something does not follow from that.
It does not follow that political salaries should therefore be deliberately low.
Ask who can most easily afford an enormous financial sacrifice.
The independently wealthy can.
People who have already accumulated substantial assets can.
Those supported by family wealth can.
People whose career alternatives pay considerably less may also face a smaller opportunity cost.
But someone in mid-career with children, a mortgage, ageing parents and a successful profession may make a different calculation.
Political office also carries costs beyond salary: loss of privacy, relentless scrutiny, electoral uncertainty, reputational exposure and potentially significant disruption to a career built over decades.
Money should not be the reason someone enters politics.
But money can certainly become a reason someone refuses.
That distinction matters.
We should want ministers who would not serve merely for the salary.
That does not mean we should design the salary so badly that capable people with alternatives conclude that serving Singapore is financially irrational.
But High Pay Does Not Automatically Buy Better Leaders
This is where supporters of Singapore’s system should be careful.
The argument cannot become:
Pay more, therefore get better ministers.
The evidence does not justify something so neat.
Research on political remuneration suggests that compensation can affect who is willing to seek political office, but findings on whether higher salaries reliably produce better politicians or better government are mixed.
More importantly, we need to ask what we mean by “the best”.
Highest earner?
Smartest?
Most experienced?
Best administrator?
Most ethical?
Best political judgement?
Most capable communicator?
These are not the same qualities.
A brilliant investment banker does not automatically make a good minister.
Neither does a surgeon, lawyer, entrepreneur or corporate chief executive.
Politics is not simply CEO work performed in Parliament.
A corporate leader primarily answers to a board, shareholders and markets. A political leader must balance efficiency with equity, national security with liberty, majority preferences with minority interests, immediate pressures with long-term consequences, and technocratic solutions with democratic legitimacy.
Private-sector success can demonstrate ability.
It cannot substitute for political judgement.
That is why I would describe Singapore’s top-earner benchmark this way:
It may help estimate opportunity cost. It does not define who the best minister is.
The Top 1,000 Benchmark Is Useful. It Is Not Sacred.
Under the framework, the MR4 reference is derived from the median income of the top 1,000 Singaporean earners, drawn from a range of professions and management roles, after applying a 40 per cent discount to reflect the ethos and sacrifice of political service.
There is logic to that.
If Singapore is recruiting people capable of carrying enormous national responsibilities, it makes sense to consider what highly capable people elsewhere in society can earn.
But there is also a legitimate question:
Why this particular benchmark?
Why the top 1,000?
Why a 40 per cent discount?
Why not 30 per cent?
Why not 50?
There is no scientific law that produces the perfect ministerial salary.
These are policy judgements.
The Workers’ Party accepts the immediate increase of up to 9 per cent but continues to disagree with the longer-term formula. Its preferred approach links ministerial pay differently, using MP allowances and a senior public-sector reference rather than the top-1,000-earners benchmark. Pritam Singh has also questioned whether salary is really the principal reason high-earning Singaporeans decline political service.
NMPs raised other serious questions. Azhar Othman, for example, challenged the logic of anchoring national leadership compensation to the apex of private-sector earnings and proposed making a greater share of remuneration variable.
These are legitimate disagreements about design.
They should not be dismissed as hostility towards paying ministers properly.
The Government does not have to prove that its formula is mathematically perfect.
It cannot.
It needs to demonstrate that the framework remains reasonable, sustainable and credible to Singaporeans.
The Clean Wage Principle Is Singapore’s Strongest Argument
Where I find Singapore’s model easier to defend is its clean-wage philosophy.
The idea is simple:
Pay political leaders openly.
Do not pretend politicians are cheap while compensating them through opaque arrangements elsewhere.
The Government describes the framework as one without hidden perks or pensions, with remuneration incorporated transparently into the salary structure.
That makes the headline number politically uncomfortable.
Good.
At least we can see it.
This also matters when Singaporean ministerial salaries are compared casually with those of presidents and prime ministers overseas.
A salary figure by itself is a poor international comparison.
Different systems provide different pensions, residences, allowances, transport arrangements, post-office benefits and other support. Some are legitimate costs of office, particularly security, and should not be misrepresented as personal luxuries.
But total compensation matters.
Comparing one headline salary with another while ignoring everything around it tells us surprisingly little.
Singapore’s model chooses visibility.
I prefer that discomfort to opacity.
If taxpayers are paying political leaders, I would rather the cost be sitting openly on the table where everyone can argue about it.
High Pay Does Not Buy Integrity
Another argument should be treated carefully.
Singapore is not relatively free of corruption simply because its ministers are well paid.
Integrity cannot be purchased.
A dishonest person can be corrupt on S$100,000.
He can also be corrupt on S$1 million.
Singapore’s anti-corruption environment depends on institutions, enforcement, investigation, prosecution, audit, political norms and the CPIB.
Competitive salaries may still contribute to that ecosystem. They increase the legitimate income an officeholder risks losing through misconduct and reduce the financial gulf between senior public responsibility and lucrative alternatives.
But that is supporting architecture.
It is not morality for sale.
High salaries do not create honest people.
Character matters.
Institutions matter.
Enforcement matters.
And this is precisely why high remuneration must never become a defence against scrutiny.
Do Not Turn Ministers Into Sales Executives
Another part of the 2026 debate concerns variable pay.
The current framework is approximately 65 per cent fixed and 35 per cent variable. The variable components include the Annual Variable Component, individual Performance Bonus and a National Bonus linked to national outcomes such as unemployment, real income growth at the median and lower end, and GDP growth.
Several NMPs suggested increasing the variable share or incorporating longer-term measures.
The instinct is understandable.
If ministers are highly paid, tie more money to results.
I agree up to a point.
But politics is not a sales department.
Make political pay excessively dependent on measurable targets and we risk creating another problem: governing for the KPI.
Not everything that matters can be measured neatly.
A government may need to pursue an unpopular policy whose benefits appear only years later.
A minister may inherit problems created by predecessors.
Housing affordability, fertility, social mobility, public trust and economic growth are affected by forces extending far beyond any individual minister.
Add enough indicators and eventually the performance system becomes a spreadsheet pretending to be accountability.
Variable pay has a place.
But Singapore should not confuse measurement with judgement.
The Strongest Objection Is Distance
The strongest public concern about ministerial pay may not actually be the formula.
It may be distance.
Most Singaporeans will never earn anything approaching seven figures.
That creates a legitimate democratic question:
Can leaders earning these salaries remain connected to citizens worrying about groceries, mortgages, childcare, retrenchment and retirement?
No compensation formula can answer that.
Behaviour can.
Do ministers listen?
Do policies reflect realities outside elite professional circles?
Do leaders explain difficult decisions?
Do they acknowledge mistakes?
Do they correct policies that fail?
Can someone looking at a spreadsheet understand what the same policy feels like at a hawker stall, inside a rental flat, or to a worker wondering whether his job will still exist next year?
High salaries inevitably create a perception problem.
The Government cannot solve it merely by explaining the formula more loudly.
It must overcome that distance through performance, conduct and trust.
Transparency would help too.
Pritam Singh has called for more disclosure of ministers’ actual remuneration, including variable payouts. Prime Minister Wong said the Government would consider providing additional information, potentially through broad ranges.
I think it should.
If clean wage is part of the justification for the framework, reasonable transparency should be part of the bargain.
High Pay Raises the Price of Failure
This is ultimately where I stand.
I do not want cheap ministers.
I do not automatically want expensive ones either.
I want Singapore to have the widest realistic pool of capable, honest and public-spirited people from which to choose its leaders.
Singapore is a small state.
Bad decisions in housing, trade, finance, defence, transport, healthcare, education or foreign policy can have consequences far beyond one ministry.
Leadership quality matters enormously.
It therefore makes little sense to create an arbitrary financial barrier to political service merely because low political salaries sound virtuous.
But the argument works in both directions.
If critics want substantially lower ministerial salaries, they should explain the alternative.
What benchmark?
What level?
What trade-offs?
How do we avoid making political office easier for the independently wealthy than for capable middle-aged professionals with substantial obligations?
Make the case.
And if Government wants Singaporeans to accept political salaries at levels most citizens will never see in their lifetimes, then Government must accept the other side of the bargain.
Singaporeans should demand competence.
Integrity.
Judgement.
Transparency.
Responsibility.
And accountability when things go wrong.
A high salary is not a shield from criticism. It raises the price of failure.
That is why I broadly support paying Singapore ministers well while remaining open to changing the benchmark, improving transparency and refining how performance is assessed.
The Government should not say:
We need good leaders, therefore trust us on the number.
Critics should not say:
The number is enormous, therefore it must be wrong.
Both are shortcuts.
Pay should be high enough that money does not become an unnecessary barrier to service.
It should never become an entitlement.
And the higher Singapore chooses to pay its political leaders, the stronger our expectations should become.
A clean wage should come with clean responsibility.
The real question is not whether Singapore’s ministers are expensive.
It is:
What system gives Singapore the best chance of having capable, honest and accountable leaders, and what should citizens demand in return?
That is the debate worth having.
CONCISE SOURCE / REFERENCE NOTE
Principal references include the Singapore Government’s 2026 Political Salaries Review and ministerial statements by Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Coordinating Minister for Public Services Chan Chun Sing; CNA’s coverage of the September 2026 parliamentary debate; Workers’ Party secretary-general Pritam Singh’s position on the benchmark and remuneration transparency; and NMP proposals concerning variable pay and alternative benchmarks. Official material confirms that MR4 is the lowest ministerial grade, that its reference annual salary is being updated from S$1.1 million to S$1.8 million, and that this benchmark is not an automatic S$1.8 million salary for every minister. Serving political officeholders will initially receive adjustments of up to 9 per cent; most ministers remaining at MR4 are expected to be around the lower end of the new range, about S$1.35 million, by the end of the term. The reference package is approximately 65 per cent fixed and 35 per cent variable.