Labour MP Alfred Sant told Parliament yesterday that the Sustainable Development Bill was an example of how laws should not be written.

The Bill is intrinsically wrong

The aims and structures of the Bill were vague and the proposals made would never function.

It failed to define the government’s environmental strategy and its political motives with regard to sustainable development.

Moreover, the Bill showed that there was a governance problem through lack of focus and accountability. The Bill’s goals needed to be concrete, defined and realistically addressed. The structures then needed to match these goals in order for these to be affective.

The Bill proposed complicated open-ended structures which had no direction and left people in the dark with regard to the aims relating to sustainable development.

It created three different bureaucratic structures to implement which were not defined: the competent authority, which would be a directorate in the office of the prime minister; the warden for future generations; and the network of people which would come up with ideas to promote sustainable development.

These were all superficial structures which would not work. There was no commitment down the line with regard to such structures and these were a waste of time,money and manpower. The government had placed a number ofstructures on paper which werenot functioning.

The Bill showed that thegovernment did not have any policies for this sector. Instead ofpolitical development, the government was presenting a governance of discontinuity.

The government had proposed self-defeating structures. The Bill was intrinsically wrong and the country deserved much better.