As the months roll by, the true colours of Joseph Muscat’s government are starting to emerge. In the past few days alone, we have witnessed not one, but two major scandals: the sale of the 100-year-old Australia Hall to private owners and the bailout of Café Premier.
The Australia Hall and Café Premier share two things in common – both are public property and both have been hit by a political decision. The Labour Party has sold Australia Hall, and an adjacent piece of land, totalling over 6,000 square metres for the ridiculous sum of €580,000. An analysis undertaken by Times of Malta had concluded that the realistic value of this sale should have been to the tune of €12 million. Not only does this vindicate the Nationalist Party’s declaration of €10 million – it actually makes it a conservative one.
This leaves little doubt that the Labour Party has undervalued the sale’s realistic declaration abusively and with intent. I wonder whether any architect in their right frame of mind could confirm this sale as a realistic one. This is why this government in morally corrupt. I have heard of stories from first-time buyers, newly wedded couples, receiving a hefty fine for having undervalued their property by a few thousand euros.
The Labour Party has not undervalued Australia Hall by a few thousand. Its declaration is off by some €11.5 million, 12 times less its realistic value. It positioned itself in a privileged manner and put itself above the law. In allowing its party to behave in such a way as to break the law, is Prime Minister Joseph Muscat expecting everyone else to do otherwise? Furthermore, what will the government’s architect have to say about this sale?
The Labour Party acted in a morally corrupt manner in the Australia Hall saga right from the start. Back in 1979 when land was required to make space for Malta Shipbuilding, all landlords whose land was expropriated received a ridiculous financial compensation from the government that did no justice to the lands’ real value. The Labour Party, under the Labour administration at the time, received three large pieces of public land in Pembroke in return, with a total surface area of 14,000 square metres. It sold Cook House in 1998 to St Michael’s Foundation for more than half a million euros. This was the first time the Labour Party sold public land to private individuals – nicely piling up its bank account.
The Australia Hall sale thus makes it the second public property sold by the Labour Party to private individuals. Parts of Australia Hall were also destroyed in a fire and the cause of the fire was never identified by the police, particularly because the building was not equipped with any electrical fittings and the incident happened at midnight in rainy weather.
Our nation has sacrificed a piece of its heritage to make good for the Labour Party’s private debt
The property has been destined to ruin since the Labour Party abandoned Australia Hall for more than 30 years. Was this Labour’s intention after all? Under the Sant administration, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority ashamedly reduced its level of protection from Grade One to Grade Two. In so doing, its potential increased, opening it up for more substantial interventions and uses. Now that Australia Hall has been sold, the Labour Party’s mission has been accomplished.
The party is now left with the Junior Ratings Club, better known as Raffles, a piece of land and a building of more than 4,000 square metres, with an estimated potential of €7 million.
Café Premier is the second scandal. In a nutshell, the Labour Cabinet approved a payment of €4.2 million from public coffers to acquire back a public property. It’s like having a landlord buying his own property! This is why the Café Premier scandal stinks of corruption.
The €4.2 million deal included a third of a million euros in ground rent arrears, half a million in capital gains tax arrears, a quarter of a million in VAT arrears, €130,000 in water and electricity bills and a €2.5 million bank loan. And the Labour government made the public taxpayer foot all these bills. It takes a morally corrupt statesman to accept such a scandalous deal. But of course, the rest of us mere mortals have to foot our own bills, pay our own utilities, put aside money for our monthly loan repayments and pay income tax from our monthly salaries.
This country could have achieved so much with €4.2 million! Australia Hall could have given the Pembroke community or perhaps a non-governmental organisation an opportunity of a lifetime. This is now no longer possible, as Australia Hall is ‘Tagħna Lkoll’ no more. Our nation has sacrificed a piece of its heritage to make good for the Labour Party’s private debt. In so doing, Muscat’s credibility with respect to party financing has reached close to zero.
Not only has it State-financed its own operations but it continues to hold on to party clubs in private properties at ridiculous rents. What a farce it will be when Justice Minister Owen Bonnici presents the party financing Bill in Parliament. It will most probably be the first for the new Parliament. Perhaps we can call it: The Opening Act.
Ryan Callus is the Nationalist Party’s spokesman for planning and simplification.