Mr Pearson if the remarks attributed to you in this article are indeed true. All that can be said, considering you represent the most underprivileged members of our society,you do need to go back to the drawing board with your social service thoughts.

If Mr Pearson represents "the most underprivileged members of our society" can anyone tell me when and where he was elected to this representative role.

I have to question why Noel Pearson is seen as a spokesperson for Indigenous Australians.

Another thing about Singapore is that there is no support for disabled children in the education system. For an Australian with a disabled child temporarily living there, the only option is home-schooling with Australian educational supports. For the locals, there is nothing: locals with deaf or blind children employ Filipina staff to "look after" disabled children, while the parents go to work: a friend observed such staff shouting at a deaf child (presumably in the hope that the child might suddenly start to hear). In Singapore a deaf child is further disabled by the lack of support: the child might be a genius but no-one will ever know, because there is no-one to teach them sign language or to educate them appropriately. Parents of such children in Singapore live in a state of despair. No, Australia should definitely not look to Singapore, despite its clean streets.

A valuable addition to the debate on "welfare".

Which is code for "how much should the state be required to look after the interests of every member of society?".

At one end of the spectrum we have the "whatever it takes" brigade, who are fully prepared to allocate other people's money for those they deem "less fortunate". And at the other, the "let 'em eat cake" faction, that believes that everyone should stand on their own feet, dammit, and just get on with it.

Before we start looking for "welfare models" to retrofit into our system, perhaps we should determine exactly where we, as a country, sit along that line. The problem of copying is, of course, that each society is different.

The line that caught my eye in this piece was:

"Singapore's welfare policy is driven by strong cultural assumptions based on traditional Confucian ideas and values such as individual and family self-reliance"

There is a great deal of history in this approach, one that we, along with most of Europe and America, have largely abandoned since the middle of last century. With post-war affluence, it would appear, came a separation from the family-based system where the duty of parents was to their kids, and the duty of kids was to their parents.

In a State like Singapore, that still predominantly adheres to this "family values" approach, it should be unsurprising that the social safety-net pendulum remains towards the "look after yourself" end of the range.

So perhaps the question for Australia should be differently phrased: "How much should the State be required to take over the traditional responsibilities of the family unit, that are gradually being abandoned, one by one"

"Welfare" is such an easy word to bandy around instead, isn't it.