The government was not right when it regularised the Armier boat houses by installing smart meters, Opposition leader Simon Busuttil said today.
Asked during a PN Independence activity what he would have done about the Armier boathouses had he been prime minister, Dr Busuttil said that there were some people who had a right for a boathouse, but he would not ignore the illegalities or, worse still, give people who committed such illegalities a smart meter and regularise their position.
"If I was prime minister today I would not have given a smart meter and regularised the theft of public land," he said.
He insisted that his policy, as the party's new leader, was that if someone broke the law, his action should not be regularised.
"There are many law-abiding citizens who do their utmost to follow the rules, while those who are doing whatever they want are given leeway," he complained.
He admitted that the Nationalist government might not have given enough importance to the illegalities at Armier, but, he added, this Labour government was going beyond and even regularising the illegalities.
The government itself did not lead by example, he said, mentioning the sale of Australia Hall and the government's use of illegal billboards.
Referring to Justice Minister Owen Bonnici, who has been summoned to court over his involvement in a traffic accident, Dr Busuttil said Dr Bonnici should have considered resigning so as not to influence the magistrate.
CIVIL UNIONS
On civil unions, Dr Busuttil said in reply to a specific question by interviewer James Debono that were he in government, he would not remove anything from the recently-enacted law, but would seek to improve it.
Earlier in his reply to various questions, Dr Busuttil referred to last week's tragedy in which 500 migrants reportedly drowned when their boat was rammed.
"We have to accept this reality of immigration. There should be more willingness on a regional level to pull the same rope. The responsibility for the 500 people who perished falls on everybody, including us. I want to see an EU that is more united about foreign affairs so that it can be strong enough to address this issue. No one - neither the EU nor the US - has a magic wand that can solve the problem but we can unite more," he said.
On last week's favourable credit rating by Fitch, Dr Busuttil said that once Malta had been given good credit ratings in the past, as it battled a tough international economic climate, he wouldn't have expected Fitch to say Malta was doing worse now.
Turning to the bus service, Dr Busuttil said that after so much criticism of the PN government, he would have expected progress by this time, not a deterioration.
Arriva was out of the picture now and the service was being managed directly by the government. The former government used to give €10 million in subsidies per year. The present government appeared to have lost account of its subsidies - it was scared to say how much it was paying out. His hope was that Malta would have the best possible service, especially given the amounts being paid in taxpayers' money.