I never quite bought the argument that the main reason why asylum seekers need to be fought off by means fair or foul is that Malta is a tiny island. I always thought this was a bit of doublespeak, at best an excuse for a general dislike of black skin.

Until last Wednesday, when I had a conversation with an eminent demographer. It was an eye-opener, epiphanic in all respects. I now realise that I was wrong, that Malta is indeed too tiny to be able to accommodate uninvited guests. So tiny, in fact, that resisting these guests is just one of many necessary steps that must be taken if we are to avoid a hellish future. In what follows I shall list some of them, in no particular order.

First, dwellings. The average Maltese home has more rooms than are strictly required. That’s down to the never-used salott, the kamra tal-pranzu that seldom sees a stray crumb, the two bathrooms, the study that contains all the right furniture but is missing its St Jerome, and so on. One might add the barbecue deck that’s used once a year, or the swimming pool that’s so close to the sea it comes with a big stick for fending off the crabs.

All of which would be fine in a big country. But Malta isn’t a big country – it’s rather a tiny one, in fact. My suggestion would be for the Malta Environment and Planning Authority to commission a scientific study on optimum living space and proceed to enforce the recommendations, gently at first, but with increasing vigour.

The second is related, in the sense that it departs from the premise that space must be at a premium on a tiny island. I refer, of course, to second and 10th properties. Villeġjatura may have made sense when only the red-heeled could indulge. Things are different now that even people on a modest salary can afford a small flat in Gozo or St Paul’s Bay. As for properties bought and left vacant on some twisted pretext of investment value, and those bought by foreigners, let’s not go there.

For starters, the Government might want to put into place a system of disincentives. A property tax – an anvil of a property tax, that is – would be one fair and compassionate way forward. I don’t think we should consider confiscation and redistribution just yet.

This brings me to transport, relevant here in two ways. I sometimes like to sit by the roadside and watch cars pass by. It’s not just that there are very many of them; what always strikes me is the number of empty seats zooming all over the place.

The obvious solution would be bicycles. More realistically, I would recommend the one-seaters marketed by a number of reputable makers. There should be a total ban on the importation of sport utility vehicles (SUVs), on multiple ownership, and so on.

Also, there are too many roads for such a tiny island. Be it the beach or the supermarket, we really need to get used to parking some distance away and walking or cycling. The side-benefit would be leaner figures, easier on the eye, and in any case more sensible (fat takes up space, not wise in such a small country) than blancmange bellies.

The fourth thing is churches. I read on BBC News last week that Romania builds three churches a week on average. So that’s a long way to go to catch up with us then. Given the size of the island, there are too many churches in Malta; besides, most of them are unnecessarily cavernous. Should it be demolition, change of use, or simply a moratorium on new edifices? The choice is not for me to make; certainly one must respect the Christian spirit of this tiny land.

Fifth,tourism. Yes it’s the lifeblood of our economy and all that, but numbers are numbers and space is space. Some might object that tourists come and go unlike, say, asylum seekers, but that’s flimsy. It’s true that individual tourists come and go but the mass of humanity stays. A morning in Sliema, or Mdina for that matter, should settle the argument.

One way forward would be to set a maximum annual figure which would have to be infinitely lower than the current one-million-plus. I believe the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan does that, and a merry place it sounds like too. Obviously, things like cruise liners that flood us with daily hundreds who eat, travel, and dirty the place, will have to go. Our harbour withstood Dragut once, so it should be a song to repel Disney.

There should be a total ban on the importation of SUVs

My penultimate point concerns people who marry foreigners and live in Malta. I wouldn’t wish to be misunderstood. Choosing who to marry is a basic freedom and heaven forbid one should intrude on that. I also think it would be unwieldy physically to stop couples from living where they deem fit.

Still, the tiny size of the island demands certain difficult decisions. (Mind you, there are enough eligible Maltese people to choose from.) Simply put, we cannot take more people. One plausible solution would be a special ‘local settlement tax’ or, more agreeably perhaps, incentives for mixed couples to leave the country and settle elsewhere.

I’m aware this last one is a tad tricky. It all boils down to Thomas Malthus really. Yes it’s a Mediterranean summer of sweaty passions and all that but we desperately need to control population growth. The vagaries of abstinence and contraception being what they are, sterilisation would be one painless way forward.

Sounds mad and fascist maybe, but Sanjay Gandhi did it (for others, admittedly) during the Indian emergency, first by offering radios as an incentive and later by more robust methods. The Chinese have their own one-child policy. These and others are effective strategies we will want seriously to consider in the long term.

In sum, it’s not enough to keep asylum seekers out and/or bundle them off to Libya or wherever. That only makes sense (and it does, I now understand) as one of a set of rational and humane policies that recognise that Malta is indeed tiny and that proceed to do something about it.

mafalzon@hotmail.com