Serious affair, not one-night stand

It's that time of the year again. And here we are repeating what we said last year and the one before... same old same old. If only the government achieved half what was pledged in last year's budget speech. If only we were prepared for the explosives - which affect our daily lives - concealed on budget day, to be foisted on us on every other day of the year.

Many people I meet couldn't be bothered. Some suggest the outright abolishment of the budget day spectacle. Surely the television and radio stations and the newspapers will not like that: the yearly budget show is an easy and quick way to fill air time and column centimetres for about a week. I consider the system to sabotage a much-needed serious exercise because, instead of being an occasion that focuses effort towards accomplishment, budget day is rendered to an event whereby the Finance Minister is spurred to overpromise and invariably underperform eventually.

It's a simple point I'm making here. Give a Finance Minister a prime time audience nationwide and the power to address it for two hours and you know why government budgets are presented the way they are and why the real issues become surreptitious business not to be aired on this special day. In an expectations-driven atmosphere, the Finance Minister maybe has no choice but to play along, after all he was in his party's group when they worked on the electoral programme and now he has to persuade us that his government will be delivering on the pledges made then.

Thus, the yearly budget display becomes a one-night stand: the minister promises as much as he deems necessary, knowing that a lot of what is said will not be extended beyond the budget day encounter. Suffice it to mention the projects that for years on end have been cut and pasted from one budget speech to the other, without ever materialising.

Another reason why this is done is because probably the most intense human instinct, after the desire for food and sex, is the impulse to look away from unpleasant truths hoping they will disappear. It's misplaced optimism, which makes us believe that something will happen, some deus ex machina, and the problems will be solved, so we needn't worry now. But, obviously, realities won't just go away. For instance, the fact that the public finances are in deep trouble will not be erased by this insouciant attitude about the future, which is transmitted from the top all the time as the government continues to lose its grip on public spending.

Even when it comes to priorities, the government has a nonchalant approach to spending when forking out millions of euros for botched up contracts (Fairmount), for dubious tenders and commissions (power station), and is then parsimonious with the real needs of people who require a hand-up (the sick; the hard-up, including some diligent self-employed people who have been left with no option but to close down). The government is generous when it comes to awarding contracts and paying contractors for work that is badly done, for work which had to be redone and for work many years overdue (Mater Dei Hospital) but is tight-fisted when it comes to employing more hospital staff and paying for medicine, which matter much more to the patient than the de luxe building. It also pains us to see that the debt crisis is thus compounded on matters of form before those of substance.

Of essence, furthermore, is the employment problem. Some may remember that, when the unemployment rate was lower than what it is today, Eddie Fenech Adami, as Leader of the Opposition, was rallying the faithful crying out that we had a catastrophe in this area of policy. What do we have now? Falling investor confidence and more jobless people. But no fuss is made because it's alright as long as this is happening under a PN government and not under ghastly Labour.

It also doesn't matter that our experiences and concerns are corroborated by The Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 (World Economic Forum) in that the most problematic factors for doing business in Malta are: inefficient government bureaucracy, tax rates, access to financing and an inadequately-educated workforce. Among our competitive disadvantages one finds the burden of government regulation, the lack of female participation in the labour force, the government deficit, government debt, the low level of University-industry collaboration in research and development and tertiary education enrolment. Surely competitiveness is critical, even more so when it comes to enabling an economy deal with a downturn. But who's losing sleep over this issue? We've had these problems for many years and look where we are now.

Will the minister have his tongue firmly planted in his cheek when he tells us on Monday that the government will implement a proper plan for growth? That the government will be giving investors confidence? Or that the government will work on a credible plan to get the deficit under control? Will these again be mere promises quickly forgotten the morning after, while the minister continues to play the all-pervading blame game: quick to fix the blame but slow to fix the problem. True, it's a tempting relief from the inconvenience of accountability. But it can't go on forever.

Dr Dalli is shadow minister for the public sector and government investments.