The prospect for change that the big majority of people in this country look forward to had best happen as a cooperative movement by all commercial and social forces in the country which have a direct stake in the outcome. In Labour's Plan For A New Beginning, we insist on the priority that must be given to a greater, sustainable economic growth that gives dividends directly to the people, in as wide ranging a manner as possible.
Still, there must be a parallel move to create the basis for genuine social reform. While Labour is proposing urgent action to boost economic growth in sectors which will have a direct, trickle down impact on the quality of life of middle-class and lower-income families, it links this to another, equally important objective. Our priorities must relate economic progress to sustainable social reform. The challenge is that despite the hype of the Gonzi Administration, Malta still lags by a wide margin in the listing of targets set under the Lisbon Strategy. On key areas such as education, the environment, technology, research and innovation, male/female participation in the labour force, among others, we come bottom or next to bottom among EU member states.
Labour's Plan For A New Beginning has identified the priorities. Education policy and the environment need to be tackled according to a timetable that establishes what we need to correct sooner rather than later. In education: The lack of sufficient emphasis on vocational and technical education, including the areas of IT, management control and science, plus the plague of illiteracy. On the environment: The spread of multi-dimensional pollution.
However, equally pressing programmes of a long-term nature need to be implemented across a triad of social welfare areas.
In first place comes health policy. Here, if we really believe in ensuring free health care delivery to all citizens, we must urgently agree on a plan to rationalise the huge expenditures needed to run the Tal-Qroqq hospital, in tandem with the expenditures required to keep other essential hospital and health care services going, like for mental health. Indeed, the preventive and primary care sectors, which have been allowed to languish, must be given a new lease of life.
Secondly, there is an urgent need to review and modernise the social services we provide to our people. Most welfare systems were devised 30 to 40 years back. What we have done over the years was to tag on additional services. Meanwhile, our society has changed radically. The social welfare system must fit with the new realities in which we live.
In third place, comes the policy for the elderly, who are rapidly becoming the most numerous segment of our society. Issues related to the cost of food, to medicines, to care when illness prevails and when advanced old age sets in, are among the more salient questions that need to be resolved.
Given forward movement on this policy triad, then real and long-term pensions reform would need to be agreed upon and implemented.
Such an agenda cannot be - should not be - tackled by the government alone. That would be a recipe for confusion or stagnation, which is what we have now. There must be concerted forward movement by all the players involved... the social partners and the government. The mechanisms by which the social partners and the government believe they can be, and effectively are, in a partnership to create meaningful change are crucial. In and of itself, the process, which keeps consultation going and which ensures that dialogue between all parties concerned is moving and getting somewhere, should be considered as an important tool of reform.
Even as it remains a "consultative" body, the Malta Council for Economic and Social Development can and should serve as the institution by which the social strategy for the future is discussed and finalised. However, its current operating mode hardly provides a reasonable base from which this can happen. The council has been mainly used as a sounding board for when the government needs to implement difficult budgetary measures, or when it needs to showcase particular decisions.
By contrast, the MCESD should function as an ongoing mechanism to maintain the momentum for social reform. It should be the forum where dialogue happens and where consensus is forged. Which is why Labour agrees that the MCESD should be strengthened in scope and operations. It should be endowed with greater resources. Its chairman should be given greater clout to ensure that the dialogue process remains an essential focus of national decision-making.
Whence the proposal for the MCESD chairman to be accorded Cabinet rank. He/she would have a voice when the Cabinet of ministers is discussing and deciding on matters related to essential economic and social reforms. His/her input at government level would not be related to ensuring that government decisions are implemented, but to ensuring that when decisions are being taken, the government is fully aware of what the social partners are lobbying for, and to insist in the interest of a really constructive national effort, that their concerns are being fully taken into account.
The prospect would be to deliver the change this country needs through a wide involvement by all social partners around an adaptive and forward-looking approach.