Labour: Where’s the beef?

One would have thought that an interview on The Sunday Times was an ideal platform for Joseph Muscat to enlighten the nation on how a prospective Labour govern-ment intends to run this country. However, not a single word was uttered by the Labour leader on Labour’s policies.

On the same morning of the interview, Dr Muscat delivered the closing address of the Labour Party’s general conference. Again, another missed opportunity. No insight was forthcoming into Labour’s vision and all the Labour faithful heard was Dr Muscat reminiscing about his childhood, about his rise to glory and a series of empty platitudes.

Dr Muscat must have felt like Martin Luther King delivering his “I have a dream” speech.

He wants every family to have access to a good education and to enjoy free health care. He wants to promote free enterprise. He wants us all to live and feel free.

There was one fundamental difference though. When Martin Luther King spoke about freedom he did so because African Americans were deprived of it. Dr Muscat, on the other hand, is dreaming about things that we already have.

We have one of the most generous and modern health care systems. Our children enjoy free education up to secondary level and get paid if they study beyond. Our economy is fully liberalised, driven by small businesses. We have an abundance of media where one is free, as one should be, to say what one likes.

We are not perfect but as a country and as a people we have come a long way.

Dr Muscat himself is proof of all this. He told us how our public health system saved his father’s life. He told us how his parents set up private businesses and flourished. He told us how he obtained a good education, which served him in good stead when he took up his post in the European Parliament.

I suppose the interesting bits are not in what Dr Muscat told us but in what he left out.

He failed to say that, were it not for successive Nationalist governments, education, especially vocational and post-secondary education, would still be considered as a luxury that we do not need. We have an open economy in which the government acts as a facilitator and not as a barrier to trade.

While the rest of Europe is burning under the heat of one of the worst recessions, our economy continues to grow at a rate that is nearly double that of the European average.

It is heartening to see that our unemployment statistics remain low as the economy con-tinues to attract fresh local and foreign investment.

The tourism industry reached new record heights despite the troubles in Europe and the Mediterranean.

What was Labour’s contribution towards all this? They tried to keep us out of Europe, they wanted to turn students’ stipends into loans, they wanted to dismantle Mater Dei Hospital and they lost their social conscience and taxed us beyond belief.

They did not do this 25 or 30 years ago. They did this barely eight years ago. The people responsible are still very much in the heart of Labour. One can safely assume that they will form part of what Dr Muscat prophesised will be the best Cabinet this country ever had.

He expects us to take him at face value. He is acting like a used car salesman who tells you to forget about the car’s log book and its history, not to worry about the running costs and to take his word that his car is the best ever. Of course, if this car is not the best, if the running costs are too high and its engine turns out to be an old engine tuned up by outdated relics, we might very well end up parking our country’s development.

This government, on the other hand, delivered growth. It is not a government without mistakes, without faults. But this government does not deal in platitudes. It deals in economic policy that delivers jobs. It deals in foreign policy that delivered credibility and stability.

This government invested money and not empty words in education, health care and the welfare system. It put people and not power first. It is not about the singular but about the collective.

The true strength of this government lies in the fact that it continues to deliver despite the odds. A Nationalist government can guide this country through the tough times ahead. It can turn the aspirations of our youth into reality.

We have the beef.

Minister for Tourism, Culture and the Environment.