8 November 2025: The Oxley Road heritage park

Hello from Adelaide! It's going to be a pretty full weekend: I'll be speaking on two panels at Weekend of Words at the OzAsia Festival.

But there’s still big news back home—I, along with six others, filed a constitutional challenge against the mandatory death penalty. I’m planning to write more about this in a future issue, but mentioning it here first!

(1)

38 Oxley Road, the residence of the late Lee Kuan Yew, will be gazetted as a national monument. The government says that, even though LKY had wanted privacy and expressed the wish for the house to be demolished, the site is of historic significance. 38 Oxley Road might even be turned into a heritage park. Isn't this exactly what LKY didn't want? Don't worry, the government says. "Regardless of the option taken, the government will respect Mr Lee Kuan Yew's wishes, and will remove all traces of Mr Lee's and his family's private living spaces from the buildings," the National Heritage Board and Singapore Land Authority said in a joint statement.

"The PAP Government has chosen to trample on Lee Kuan Yew’s unwavering wish to demolish his private house," Lee Hsien Yang posted on his Facebook page in response. "He regarded his whole house as private and wanted it demolished in its entirety. The order to gazette 38 Oxley Road as a national monument effectively rejects the demolition application."

I personally don't have super strong feelings about the house itself. What I don't like is the revisionism that kind of feels like gaslighting. It's quite widely known what LKY wanted done with his house after his death, and it's annoying now to feel like the mainstream narrative is shifting to try to convince us otherwise.

(2)

Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan travelled to Israel and Palestine this past week. As it turns out, the Singapore response to genocide is to speak nicely to the perpetrators and convey "differences of views... candidly, frankly, robustly, but still constructively". Interestingly, this doesn’t seem to be the approach the government takes with activists, who they have no qualms demonising, harassing, and prosecuting. What larks, living in a country where the leaders are friendlier with those committing genocide than those protesting against it.

"We discussed the prospects for lasting peace in the region, especially Gaza," Balakrishnan wrote on Facebook of his visit with Isaac Herzog, Israel’s president. He later told the media that Singapore can't "alter the course of history", but we can provide humanitarian assistance. This is unlikely to impress Singapore's pro-Palestine community, who have long pointed out that Singapore has close, substantial ties with Israel that includes military and defence partnerships. Weaponry co-developed with Singapore has been used on Palestinians. We might not be able to decide or determine outcomes, but there is much more we can do to address Singapore's complicity in genocide and apply pressure on Israel. But noooooo, we’re going to keep rubbing shoulders with Netanyahu and his guys while declaring that we care. 🤬🤬🤬

By the way, does anyone know what happened to the Facebook investigation into whoever 'liked' Calvin Cheng's post using Balakrishnan's account?

(3)

The Criminal Law (Miscellaneous Amendments) Bill has been passed in Parliament. This means that judicial corporal punishment (i.e. caning) will be introduced for scammers. For example, money mules who provide their Singpass credentials, SIM cards, or bank accounts to facilitate scams can face up to 12 strokes of the cane.

But that's not the only thing that's changing with the passage of that bill. The use of caning for other offences have also been revised; in some cases, mandatory caning is now going to be discretionary. In eight cases, caning is going to be removed completely. For example, caning has been removed in the case of "belonging to gang of thieves" (section 401 under the Penal Code).

The bill also increases the penalties for things like the circulating of obscene materials and sexual grooming. It also makes clear that it's a criminal offence to produce intimate images without consent—something particularly relevant since AI can be used to create deepfakes. These seem fairly uncontroversial.

Then there are the measures to protect public servants. This part of Sim Ann's parliamentary speech made my eyebrows shoot up (emphasis mine):

First, we will strengthen the protections for public servants and public service workers under section 6 of the Protection from Harassment Act (“POHA”). Today, this offence requires proof that the victim actually suffered harm, alarm or distress. Clause 68 of the Bill removes this requirement. All harassment of public servants or public service workers in the line of duty is unacceptable. For the purposes of securing a conviction, it should not matter whether or to what degree the victim experienced harassment, alarm or distress.

The extent of harm experienced by the victim should, of course, still be a factor for sentencing.

Second, clause 25 of the Bill introduces a new offence in the Miscellaneous Offences Act to criminalise the doxxing of a public servant, when accompanied by a falsehood about the public servant that the offender knows or has reason to believe is false. Such conduct is especially harmful because not only are the individual public servants adversely affected, but trust in our public institutions is undermined. Section 7 of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act today already criminalises the publishing of a falsehood if that specific falsehood diminishes public confidence, but this new offence will not have that requirement of needing to show diminution of public confidence.

To be clear, neither of these amendments prevents members of the public from expressing legitimate feedback or criticism, including publicly. Such feedback, expressed constructively and through the appropriate channels, can help us improve our service delivery and staff training. There will also not be any offence disclosed if the feedback is based on genuinely mistaken facts, since the offence requires that the person know or have reason to believe that a statement of fact is false.

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