The Nationalist Party's campaign strategy was based solely on negativity and the fear factor, Dr Muscat said this evening.

Speaking at Birzebbugia during the recording of One TV programme TX, Dr Muscat laid into his rivals' tactics.

"They have no plan..the only thing they're doing is trying to scare people with negativity. All they've done in these past weeks is criticise and try to instil fear," he said.

Dr Muscat pressed home the need to address rising unemployment, which has now hit seven per cent, and which he said the Prime Minister was in denial about.

"The Prime Minister hasn't even admitted there's a problem...one of the most astounding moments of this campaign was when he dismissed youth unemployment as 'irrelevant'," Dr Muscat said.

He said the PL would "open up the doors of public procurement" to small businesses, which were sometimes disqualified from applying for government tenders by overly tasking application criteria.

"How can a small start-up ever apply for a tender that requires applicants to have sold €1 million worth of products to the government?" he asked.

Self-employed small businesses were also caught in a trap of "institutionalised usury", he said, with VAT arrears sucking them into a vicious cycle of inordinate penalty payments and ultimately prison.

"Prison is no place for the self-employed," he said.

Dr Muscat argued that the PL's strength lay in its unity and unifying core message of change.

"This is not a coalition of the disgruntled. It is a group of people who genuinely want to see a change of direction. Everyone's fed up by the lack of responsibility. This is not the sort of politics I want to play a part in," he said.

The PL leader said that, if he found himself in government next week, he would "immediately" begin the process of drafting three key pieces of anti-corruption legislation: a whistleblower act, party financing law and removal of time-barring in cases of political corruption.

Dr Muscat said he was "100 per cent convinced" the party could bring its energy proposals to fruition. "We haven't budged an inch from our original proposals. And that's because we know they're doable. They've passed the acid test," he said.

Talk of energy prompted Dr Muscat to criticise the PN for its own energy proposals, which he said "lacked depth".

"They've yet to explain how much people will save through night tariffs other than saying it will be between six and 27 per cent," he said. Talk of a gas pipeline was also vague, he said.

Dr Muscat ended his speech like he started it, with an appeal for undecided voters to collect their voting documents, "vote for change" and vote for "each and every Labour candidate."