http://www.straitstimes.com/PrimeNew...ry_688405.html

Jul 8, 2011

Commentary

Khaw's blog: Just take it as a nudge

Savvy property developers will see his posts as fair warning

By Chua Mui Hoong, Review Editor


I AM obsessing over drying clothes.

I want to use less of my tumble dryer to save the earth and my pennies.

That means finding space to air-dry the laundry. In a Housing Board flat, that's not always the easiest of options.

I could thread clothes on bamboo poles and hang them out the window - but I might topple out, like those poor domestic workers wrestling with the heavily laden poles.

I could use overhead racks in the kitchen - but who wants their clothes smelling of yesterday's fried fish?

The HDB website touts its external laundry racks and says piously that it is better for the environment to air-dry clothes than to use a mechanical dryer. I agree. But those racks are installed only in newer HDB flats, not in older ones like my 20-year-old unit.

I would like to mount my own external rack outside my flat and dry my clothes along the ample corridor space - but the town council's website warns against unauthorised erecting of structures in common areas.

What is an HDB resident to do?

The challenge of drying laundry in HDB flats has attracted the attention of no less than Minister for National Development Khaw Boon Wan, who wrote a blog post on this recently and asked Minister of State Lee Yi Shyan to study the issue and seek practical solutions.

Mr Khaw's widely read and very influential blog highlighting clothes drying and other (more big-picture) issues has drawn both brickbats and bouquets.

Some ask if his musings are his own opinions, or if they represent his ministry's policy. Property developers grumble that his blog posts move markets, create uncertainty, and are unfair to them as they need to submit tenders based on concrete information. Political pundits wonder if his views are shared with his staff or 'cleared' by Cabinet in advance.

Since being sworn in as National Development Minister on May 18, Mr Khaw has announced several policy changes on his blog: suspending land sales for the Design, Build and Sell Scheme; moving from build-to-order for HDB flats to building-ahead-of-demand; and rethinking the reflexive culling of stray cats.

The questions and grumbles about Mr Khaw's blog stem from an instinct in Singaporeans that the Government must speak with one voice; that policy must be clear-cut; and that policy changes must be properly heralded and announced - via a press release, an important speech, or in Parliament. Not a blog.

These are valid views. But just as Singaporeans demand that the Government listen to them more and accept more diversity of views, so too must citizens accept diversity in government.

Rather than speak with one oracular voice as minister, Mr Khaw's musings allow people a peek into the internal trade-offs and dynamics of policy-making. When the minister calls for a rethink on the culling of cats, for example, only the naive should think it is his private opinion arrived at without consultation.

The smart citizen can safely assume that a statement of change comes from hours of consultation with domain experts and staff. No savvy minister will change a municipal issue like cat culling by fiat alone.

The smart citizen will conclude from reading Mr Khaw's blog that not every minister agrees with every policy under his portfolio - and infer that not every official agrees with every policy.

And that's okay, as long as the policy direction is coherent. The Government, after all, operates at different levels, and should be allowed to speak with differing voices, and even change its mind.

No policy is cast in stone; review is part of the policy process. Mr Khaw's blog brings some of these internal discussions into the public arena before the changes are set in stone.

Rather than lament the postings, savvy developers should consider them as advance warnings. Surely some notice of shifts in thinking is preferable to no-warning changes decreed in a press release issued after 5pm.

It was not too long ago that the property market was managed on the basis of sudden policy changes. In the mid-90s, the Government introduced a slew of Big Bang anti-speculation measures to cool the market. It nose-dived. Prices took a decade to recover.

Having learnt from that, the Government opted in the 2000s for incremental rather than Big Bang measures. These dampened some of the market's irrational exuberance without causing a collapse.

Some ask if there may be another round of cooling measures. The way I see it, the minister's blog posts are a form of cooling measure all by themselves.

A good minister not only makes policies (which usually take time to have effect); he uses every tool he has to influence the direction of desired change. The key word is influence. Or in the parlance of behavioural economics, he uses a 'nudge' - using words or other means to influence a decision, not telling people what to do.

When Mr Khaw writes that there are 53,000 housing units coming on stream in the next two years, he isn't saying anything new. But he puts together old information in a way that nudges buyers to consider hard if this is the right time to buy.

A reminder here, a warning there, with the release of timely, apposite data - these nudges can influence market behaviour in a more subtle but effective way in the near-term without resort to policy change. And if a series of nudges don't work, there is still the recourse to targeted or even sledgehammer measures.

As for his musings on the travails of drying clothes in HDB flats, town councils should take that as a nudge to consider solutions. Chong Pang was swift in taking up Mr Khaw's nudge against cat culling and said it would stop the practice.

Town councils should similarly respond to Mr Khaw's nudge on drying clothes, and review the current knee-jerk rule against mounted structures along the corridor if they pose no fire or safety hazards.

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Mr Khaw blogs at mndsingapore.wordpress.com