Labour leader Joseph Muscat this morning criticised government plans to fund the new parliament building through a special purpose vehicle which would manage rental income from the airport and the cruise passenger terminal.
Speaking at a political activity in Msida, Dr Muscat said the revenue from those rents to date went into the government's consolidated fund through which various programmes were funded, such as road-building, education and health.
Now that this revenue was being diverted elsewhere, would that funding be replaced or would those projects be scaled back?
Labour, Dr Muscat said, would not be an accomplice in all this.
Earlier, Dr Muscat said that Labour wants to build a coalition of workers, employers and the self-employed. Raising standards for employers meant raising standards for the workers, he said.
Facilitating business meant raising living standards for the workers.
The national wealth needed to be shared by everybody and not a few people, as was currently the case, Dr Muscat said at a political conference in Msida.
It was useless arguing about rights if there was no wealth and job creation.
It was not enough, for the PL to have work, but also rights. Slaves had work,, but no rights. The PL wanted decent jobs and this was a movement that was friendly to business and all those who wished to create jobs.
Dr Muscat recalled how three captains of industry in Malta had said that three things were holding them back – the power tariffs, the service charge and bureaucracy. A future Labour government would wage an unprecedented war against bureaucracy. Increasing bureaucracy did not mean improving accountability. It meant creating loopholes for those who wanted to cheat and hurdles and problems for businesses.
Dr Muscat said a Labour government would give as much importance to Maltese investors as foreigners. What was important was their ideas, not their passport.
Sectors such as financial services and remote gaming would be retained without change, he said, and investors therefore could have peace of mind to continue to invest, even now.
But Labour would give proper attention also to sectors such as the Monti hawkers, farmers and fishermen.
Dr Muscat said Labour was also listening to the problems of doctors and nurses, not least because of long waiting times at Mater Dei Hospital. Could such people be blamed for being disheartened when the Health Minister had said he had found an excess of €7.5 million in his budget instead of solving these problems?
NEPOTISM AND MERITOCRACY
Malta had ministers who were focused on nepotism. The Minister of Education, Dolores Cristina, had not even reacted by the worrying news that doctors were passed over for the appointment of a consultant so that the post could be handed to a person who did not have the necessary requirements, but who happened to be the son-in-law of Mrs Cristina.
One only needed to remember how the minister's own son was involved in the mess of the suspension of EU funds for education programmes because of mismanagement. And then somebody else was blamed.
It was not only Labourites who were disgusted by what was happening, but many Nationalists who were not in the government's inner core. For the government, it was not merit which came first, but who a person was.
GOVERNMENT FUNDS DIVERTED FOR NEW PARLIAMENT
The government was cut off from reality and from society, and this was evidenced in how the government was focused on building its own palace, the new Parliament House.
Labour would not be an accomplice in this.
While the people worried by rising prices, the prime minister wanted a new office in a new parliament. It was creating a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to fund this project that would administer rental income from the airport and the cruise liner terminal. Therefore such revenue, instead of going to the central government, would go to this SPV.
Such funds, Dr Muscat said, previously used to fund government programmes including roads schools, education and social benefits. How would these funds be replaced, or would the various sectors involved suffer further funding cutbacks?
The PL would not be an accomplice in this and whoever was taking these decisions would have to shoulder responsibility on his own.
This prime minister had burdened the country with €1.8 billion in debts. Debts were rising by €600,000 every day. And yet the economy was slowing down. The IMF and the EU had said that economic growth would be of 1.2%, which was half of what the government had projected. And government spending thus had to be scaled back.
It was worrying, Dr Muscat said, how industrial output was falling in Malta, as was the bulk of exports.
The Labour leader reiterated his criticism over the way the latest increase in gas prices was announced, late on Maundy Thursday, and how the Malta Resources Authority, the 'supposed' regulator, had still not published its workings.
Dr Muscat also noted how the government was in talks for gas purchases to convert the power station to use gas. This showed, he said, how Labour was right all along. The government wanted to convert the power station to gas when it still had not started to operate. Labour had long insisted it should have used gas from the outset.
Dr Muscat referred to an Opposition motion presented this week, calling for the resignation of Malta's representative to the EU, Richard Cachia Caruana. This motion, he said, was not about the Partnership for Peace. In view of how things evolved, Malta should remain in PfP. The Opposition motion was against Mr Cachia Caruana for a four-year plot to get Malta back in the partnership without going through parliament, and without even mentioning this in the PN electoral programme.
And then there was the case where it was decided that there would be an exchange of diplomatic notes to bypass parliament regarding the SOFA agreement with the US.