Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said this evening that the court action by the Director of Lands to recover Australia Hall from the Labour Party had been an act of vindictiveness against the party.

Reacting in parliament to criticism that the government had given the PL a €10m gift when it dropped the court case, Dr Muscat said that at the outset, it needed to be remembered that the properties which included Australia Hall in Pembroke were given to the Labour Party in compensation for the properties taken from it in Marsa for use in the Malta Shipbuilding properties.

The Marsa properties, he said, were far better than the ones in Pembroke for the party. The figure of €10m mentioned by Nationalist MP Beppe Fenech Adami as the value of Australia Hall was laughable.

He said that the court case was instituted at the time of the Nationalist administration when somebody told the Nationalist Party that a settlement was about to be reached between the Labour Party and people interested in developing the site.

Once the Director of Lands instituted the court case, everything was stopped. The court case, clearly, had been an act of vindictiveness.