Let us repeat. Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Tharman Shanmugaratnam is no longer the Finance Minister.

Our new Finance Minister, who just delivered his first Budget statement last Thursday, is this nice, friendly uncle, who was formerly the Education Minister and the Managing Director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).

Anyway, Heng, 55, appeared on this one-hour special forum that was widely publicised by Mediacorp last evening (March 28).

And all eyes were on how Heng, dubbed by political observers as a potential Prime Minister after PM Lee, will perform in his first live televised show.

The verdict? Just like the delivery of his budget statement last week, Heng did not raise any eyebrows or ruffle any feathers in his first live performance.

Not withstanding our view that the one-hour forum was probably 30 minutes too long, here are our three observations of this Ask Finance Minister live television forum.

1. The live forum protected the Minister with kid gloves

Channel NewsAsia tried to hype it up as a special live forum, giving readers the impression that Minister Heng would tackle fast and furious questions from the public on the social media.

"Ask the Finance Minister" is at 9.30pm on Ch 5. Tweet us your questions with #SGBudget2016 https://t.co/i5pzjqIeea pic.twitter.com/PwbyTfl5RA

— Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) March 28, 2016

Because that was what CNA sold to the public.

Tweet us your questions on #SGBudget2016 and @NickFangCNA will put them to Heng Swee Keathttps://t.co/i5pzjqIeea pic.twitter.com/ykuHL4V2Do — Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) March 28, 2016

Except that most of the questions from the public weren't really live.

Many were pre-recorded, in fact, from a pool of two SME bosses, an economist, one couple, a Malay lady, and a lady from a VWO sector.

The forum was conducted live but the questions from the social media appeared to be heavily moderated by CNA.

In fact, one would be hard-pressed to find any of the questions from Twitter that appeared during the forum.

2. No one was really interested.

Fortunately, and unfortunately, for CNA, no one online was interested in asking Heng any questions.

If one were to count the number of tweets that used the Budget2016 hashtag during the three-hour period (an hour before and after the one-hour forum), there were about 40 tweets in total.

Yes. 40 tweets.

#SGBudget2016 Is the CNA show ongoing now live? Answer my question about the GST disadvantage leh.. @SGBudget2015

— Lai Weichang (@WeichangLAI) March 28, 2016

Some of the questions posed were pretty interesting, such as this: 

can the Minister find a way to raise revenue without capping personal reliefs at $80000 which affects working mothers ? #SGBudget2016 — feilipu (@feilipu) March 28, 2016

And these examples.

How do we help SMEs manage their need for cheaper labour vs the social impact of increased foreign labour? #SGBudget2016

— Jonathan Tan ™ (@JonInSg) March 28, 2016

Do you really think this Budget for 2016 will help the industry to come together or share facilities and lower costs. #SGBudget2016 — Athul Anil (@meow696944) March 28, 2016

#SGBudget2016 Love the focus on technology and facilitating societal welfare. In what ways can it assuage Singapore's widening income gap? — Tan Hong Kai (@hongkai14) March 28, 2016

3. Minister did not perform above or below expectations.

During the forum, Heng confidently handled questions on changes to the Productivity and Innovation Credit (PIC) scheme, personal income tax reliefs and collaboration between local SME firms.

The impression one gets is that Heng is a safe pair of hands, like your trustworthy accountant uncle. And a tad boring.

One hour passed and there were no interesting stories, anecdotes or soundbites to remember.

The only tough political question was the one posed by moderator and former Nominated Member of Parliament Nicholas Fang: Will the government raise taxes for increased social spending, especially when the economy is not doing well?

This "no taxes" poser was a political minefield that tripped politicians including former US President George Bush.

In the 1988 Presidential Election, Bush promised the Americans that he opposed the creation of new taxes but he had to increase several existing taxes eventually to reduce the national budget deficit. This hurt Bush politically.

So how did the Minister tackle this question?

Below is the full exchange:

Fang: "Minister, I am going to jump on the fact that if things (Singapore's economy) take a turn for the worse, we will have to spend more and we will be spending more socially as well. The question that is on the lips of many people: where will this money for the increased expenditure come from? Will it be from taxes?"

Minister Heng: "Well (pause) Er... We...as I said in the Budget, this is a prudent Budget. We have...er...we're running a surplus this year and it very much depends on how the economy turns out. I want to emphasise that we mustn't be overly pessimistic, otherwise it becomes self-fulfilling but at the same time we mustn't be complacent. We will monitor the situation carefully. If we have to act, we'll act, we will have the resources to act."

Undeterred, Fang decided to pose the same question about raising taxes in a different way.

Fang: "Obviously, we've seen levers such as GST (Goods and Services Tax) coming into play as well. Is this something that we would need to be prepared for in the next year or so? Is this something we could see?"

Heng: "I think we should monitor the situation carefully and see what we need to do. There's no need for us to speculate on what needs to be done at this point. (Raising his voice) Let's focus our minds on two things. One is how do we do our industry transformation and do it really well so that we work together with all our businesses to create vibrancy in the economy. When the economy grows I think we'll have more resources as well and second, how do we continue to build this caring and resilient society by again getting everyone to be part of this effort?"

Anyway, it was a safe reply and it did not really address Fang's question.

Of course, no one would have noticed this exchange except the 100 politicians, civil servants and journalists who had to watch the show.

The group includes the CNA Twitter manager, who appeared rather bored with his/ her tweets.

Just check out how many times he/she chose to use the same photo instead of a new one:

As S'pore population ages, social spending will increase, but need to make sure it's spent well: Heng #SGBudget2016 pic.twitter.com/fNXbF93FzC — Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) March 28, 2016

Companies have much to gain by collaborating, not just competing: S'pore Finance Minister https://t.co/qLLgaD9bcD pic.twitter.com/bikihj77Aa — Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) March 28, 2016

TechSkills Accelerator should be extended to other sectors, non-IT workers: Heng Swee Keat https://t.co/rpiwOY97Qt pic.twitter.com/SfylbXJ58U — Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) March 28, 2016

 

We have to transform our economy through enterprise, innovation but also build caring society: Heng #SGBudget2016 pic.twitter.com/JZR6auiFb1 — Channel NewsAsia (@ChannelNewsAsia) March 28, 2016

 

Top photo from Channel NewsAsia Twitter

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