A sustainable community

The President's address at the opening of Parliament last week had one central theme - sustainability. The address, which is a presentation of the government's proposals on actions that it intends to take in the legislature that emerged from the general elections held on the March 8, highlighted not only the very difficult international economic situation, the need to continue generating jobs, to address the increases in the prices of fuel, cereals and foodstuffs, and to strengthen our economy, but also about the need to strengthen our educational, health and welfare system, while addressing the needs of the environment.

Maybe it was the first time that government has articulated very clearly that in our country, where resources are indeed very scarce, we need to achieve a balance between the need to have robust economic growth, the need to maintain social cohesion with everyone enjoying a better quality of life and the need to protect our environment.

Unless we manage to create and maintain this balance over the long term, our achievements, in whatever sphere, will be short-lived, and therefore unsustainable. And to achieve sustainability, we should think of ourselves not only as a sovereign state, but more importantly, as a community. Since sustainability is based on interdependence, it is necessary that the community feeling is all pervading in our country.

The nature of our economic performance today, the extent of social cohesion and the level of environment protection today, on the whole, may be judged to be adequate. The environmental NGO's may not be satisfied with the level of environmental protection, while the business community may not be totally pleased with our economic performance, and those working in the social sector would like to see a greater element of social cohesion. Yet, I do believe that when one considers the three factors together, 'adequate' is a good adjective to use.

However, in today's world, with the type of challenges that we know we are facing and shall continue to face, is 'adequate' good enough for our community to thrive in the future? Are the challenges that we have to sustain the competitiveness of firms operating in Malta, such that we can keep on doing what we have been doing so far, or do they require us to look at things differently? Do we need to push up our performance a notch or two to maintain our achievements? And is there consensus that we need to push up our performance in the three sectors - economic, social and environmental - a notch or two to achieve and maintain sustainability?

What are the qualities that we are required to have to create this sustainable community? We certainly need a great deal of respect for one another. We need to emphasise that all our human resources are valued in this country. I do appreciate that there can be divergent views on how to address certain issues, but the "us" and "them" attitude that is so prevalent today in many aspects of our society, but evidently so, when it comes to a discussion on economic issues, needs to be eradicated. The EU experience, the VAT experience, the Sm@rtCity experience are ample proof of the damage that can be done to our country, when opposition becomes an end in itself rather than a means of improvement.

We need a great deal of courage and humility. The use of hyperboles, in both a negative and a positive sense needs to stop. It cannot be that everything is either all wrong or right. There is the need to admit one's mistakes, but also the courage to give credit where credit is due.

There is the need to have the courage to change where change is necessary and the courage to think outside the box. We have one example of this need to think outside the box. When the Nationalist government started to implement policies that encouraged young people to move into tertiary education, after completing their years of compulsory schooling, there were many that opposed this strategy as they claimed that we would end up having an army of unemployed graduates. Employers know only too well that this has never been the case. We had a similar situation with the development of ICT and the development of the services sector.

A sustainable community also needs persons who are capable of putting into practice the famous John F. Kennedy statement about the need to ask what one can do for one's country, rather than what one's country can do for oneself. In too many instances we have people seeing what they can acquire for themselves rather than what they can contribute to Malta's good.

The issue of tax evasion is one such instance. Everyone needs to accept that our own needs can be taken care of, only if everyone contributes what one should in terms of payment of taxes.

Put all together, one starts to recognise that although the achievement of short term results for personal gain is important, we also need to focus on long term strategic issues, that are of benefit to the country.

This would mean that the yearly budget is important, but more important for Malta is the vision that government has for this country. It is that vision that binds us as a community, and we need to ensure that we keep the need for economic, social and environmental sustainability high on the agenda of that vision.