Minister Austin Gatt makes an excellent Queen of Hearts. In Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland the Queen wants to be the judge and the jury, and wants to behead Alice before hearing the evidence to establish the facts of whether Alice stole the Queen's jam tarts. Minister Gatt is not only bad-tempered like the Queen but also shares her contempt for facts.
In his letter 'Standing by the PM' (The Sunday Times, April 30) he refers to my University years as "the years when Varist was part of the extreme left, theorising socialism and watching Mintoffian thugs brutalise fellow students".
I graduated in 1975. The violent incidents he refers to happened in 1977. By then not only had I left University, but I had also left Malta to spend time doing voluntary work as an educator with the anti-mafia activist Danilo Dolci in Partinico, Sicily, where he had just opened his Centro Nuovo Educativo.
I came back to Malta just before those violent incidents took place at the university. After my return to Malta I started teaching English at De La Salle College and I got involved again with the Xirka Gustizzja Socjali.
When students were beaten up in November 1977 we issued a strong condemnation. In fact, In-Nazzjon Taghna (Tuesday, November 22, 1977) gave our press release top prominence on its front page under the banner headline "Kundanna Qawwija ghall-Vjolenza".
Minister Gatt can reread that press release, carried in full in his party newspaper, and see that I did the opposite of condoning violence against fellow students.
I find it funny that he refers to me in those years as "part of the extreme left". The PN courted Xirka Gustizzja Socjali incessantly as they saw us as a good stick with which to beat Mintoff's Labour Party. Minister Gatt can verify these facts with his colleagues Minister Louis Galea and President Emeritus Dr Ugo Mifsud Bonnici.
In those years as "part of the extreme left" I was invited to address several seminars organised by the PN and AZAD on education and democracy. I used to participate willingly as I have always wanted to give my contribution to build a civilised political culture based on diversity, democracy and tolerance, abhorring violence, fanaticism and blind partisanship.
Minister Gatt should check facts properly before he jumps to conclusions. That he shows such strong disregard for facts that do not fit his prejudices is a serious flaw in such a key policy-making role. His position on low-cost carriers is paralysing the government in taking effective steps to attract them to Malta.
For Minister Gatt everybody who would like to have low-cost carriers operating from Malta is in the "lowcost at all costs brigade". I agree with Minister Gatt that some deserve to be defined as such, especially those who would like Malta to become a colony of Ryanair.
I also agree with him that it is indispensable for us to ensure a viable Air Malta, as it is crucial for us to have our own airline connecting us to the rest of the world.
I also agree with him that low-cost carriers are no miracle cure to revive our tourism. We need a national strategic plan for tourism. We need a government that reduces the tax burden on our travel and tourism industry.
We need to improve and innovate the products and services that we offer tourists. We must become cleaner, better organised, have a healthier environment and get our act together and mobilise all our natural, cultural and human resources to convince people that our islands are worth visiting and worth telling others to visit.
We need to make ourselves more visible and in a much more effective way on the Internet, and use it as a marketing and sales tool. We need to market ourselves much better in our different source markets. We need to enter new markets. We need to provide good quality, affordable and welcoming experiences to all those who visit us and make them feel at home.
So low-cost airlines are only one factor in the equation. But they will help. Low-cost carriers are driving the tourism growth of most of our main competitors. But Minister Gatt is totally wrong to equate low-cost carriers with low-cost tourism.
He is totally wrong in taking the position that we should not give any subsidies to promote tourism to Malta. He is totally wrong in dismissing the Labour Party's position that with MIA in public hands we would have more tools at our disposal to stimulate tourism.
Low cost tourists?
Why do we need low-cost carriers? More and more people expect to fly cheaply. A survey compiled by the Civil Aviation Authority of the United Kingdom shows that 50 per cent of passengers of low-cost airlines come from the richest 25 per cent of society.
Those who use Stansted Airport to take their low-cost flights earn an average salary of £51,000. One sixth take a low-cost flight regularly to spend days in their second home in France, Italy and Spain.
Money saved on airfares is then spent on other tourism services. Low-cost airlines have created new traveller segments. Wherever they operate, they have increased tourists and hotel room rates have improved.
The Internet and cheaper travel are transferring more power into the hands of individual travellers. Traditional airlines, airports, tour operators and hotels have to adjust, reinvent themselves or, sooner or later, die.
A survey carried out by MORI in our main source market two years ago called 'The changing face of travel in Britain' concluded that the British package holiday industry that for years has competed on price and price alone is on the decline.
The same survey states that the traditional sun, sea and sand package holiday focused on the Mediterranean region appears to be slipping in popularity, to be replaced by more independently arranged travel.
Low-cost travel plays a crucial role in this new scenario. All these changes have massive implications for us in what we offer, how we market ourselves and the access people have to our country once we create the demand for them to visit us.
By 2010 the share of European traffic by low-cost airlines is set to rise to 36 per cent. Can we miss out on these 36 per cent?
How many low-cost airlines, traditional airlines and tour operators can our market size support? If we take steps to help low-cost airlines operate feasibly to and from Malta, what will the effect on the existing traditional airlines and tour operators bringing tourists to Malta be?
Can we afford to be ignored by low-cost airlines when we know that there is a close link between Malta's tourism performance and the capacity and ease of air access to Malta, not only for our hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions and facilities, but also if we want our cruise passenger business to succeed and develop into a fly and cruise operation? There are no easy answers to all these questions.
Our market size is always going to remain a major disadvantage for us to be considered a viable operation for many airlines and tour operators. They will squeeze each other out and we must be careful not to take the wrong step and end up being the biggest losers.
It is in the small markets that incumbent airlines and tour operators are more likely to reduce capacity and even withdraw in the face of increased competition from low-cost airlines. Having only one airport, and selling it off to a foreign company, has reduced our space for manoeuvre even further. The British Airport Authority (BAA) uses its earnings at Heaththrow to cross-subsidise Stansted.
Eric Weinsten of the UK Department of Transport says: "The rapid success of Stansted as a hub for low-cost airlines is in part due to BAA's ability to keep landing charges down by subsidising them with profits from Heathrow."
Our competitors give market support (another term for subsidies) to operators to channel tourists to them. The last subsidy scheme operated by Malta for the British market - known as TOSS - served us very well.
More than 100,000 British tourists (33 per cent of all the arrivals from Britain), with additional real revenue of over Lm20 million, used to come to Malta thanks to this subsidy scheme. For every lira we spent on the subsidy schemes, Lm10 were generated as additional revenue from UK tourists.
We must find ways to support all the traditional airlines, tour operators and low-cost airlines that operate to Malta, rewarding them on the basis of how many people they bring to Malta and Gozo.