“Teach a parrot to say ‘supply and demand’ and you’ve made an ‘economist’ out of him.” The famous dictum by Thomas Carlyle (former rector of Edinburgh University, among so many other attributes) sprung so easily to mind when I read Chris Grech (of Dhalia’s) letter of February 7, which was (by him or the editor?) appropriately titled ‘Supply and demand’.

And the leitmotif of his clamouring came out large and strong: “The free market (in property development and operations) must be allowed to function,” he bleated.

The funny thing is that, just one line below this assertion, Grech says that “The real estate industry as a whole is desperately awaiting long-promised regulation to enforce ethical standards of professional behaviour”.

Grech, and all others in the development and real estate sector, badly need to be much more clear, and specific, and morally inspired when they speak of ‘regulation’.

Does he or does he not know thatthis is a word pregnant with implications? Is he possibly using the word only in the usual lobbying context where he wants regulation that only pleases the sellers of property, that is regu-lation which, for example, allows them to claw prices out of thin air and then flog them onto the market simply because, for him and his ilk, a chunky part of that market may be comfortable enough (or, indeed, sometimes forced) to pay whatever is asked from it and to hell, for example, with locals who simply cannot keep up with the foreign players on the market?

Grech clearly comes over as being ready to accept a situation where estate agents and developers are, on the altar of the so-called ‘free market’, allowed full reign to charge whatever rentals they want, in the process driving overall rents ever higher and higher… and then just saddle the government of the day with having to (from taxpayers’ money) vote an ever bigger and bigger budget for rental subsidies and provision of social housing.

This is classism of the worst kind imaginable. It does not give two hoots about the inevitable subdividing of societies and residential areas and communities into ‘elite’, ‘hoi polloi’, ‘foreign residential’, ‘high value’ and ‘the rest’. And it does not care either about soundly managed public finances.

All of this reeks out in his letter ofFebruary 7, where, in one part, he says “…introducing regulation in the property rental market would be contradictory, especially in view of the government’s incentives”. Woe betide us all if the government were to fall for this type of lobbying… over a term it would be condemning itself to a type of society and popular pressure on how subsidies are spent, plus public finance impacts.

If any government simply accepts blindly that the real estate and/or development industries are economic activities where it [the government] should simply be a totally passive viewer, only – if at all – being present through writing subsidy cheques, then that government would be, and this especially so in a Malta that is 17 miles by nine, condemning itself to a quick popular backlash.

There is, at this point in time, already a very big number of workers and families who are being squeezed into poverty and penury simply because owners of rental property are, in simply uncontrolled manners, freely pushing up their rental demands in whatever way and rate they choose. This is precisely the juncture where all simplistic talk about ‘the free market’ and ‘supply and demand’ should be thrown out of the window.

Succumbing to that sector’s ever greedier and unchristian demands can be a very easy form of political suicide. Yes, control that ilk, irrespective of what they say and who they may be.

John Consiglio is chairman of the Malta Financial Services Authority’s educational consultative council but writes in his personal capacity.