It has, by now, become perfunctory for the Resources Minister to use his regular The Times column Blogtime to try and rubbish the Opposition in the hope of mitigating his own failures in the climate, alternative energy and waste management sectors.
On March 30, he complained that we had failed to submit any specific proposals before the lapse of the climate change strategy document consultation process, thus implying that we were responsible for creating a deafening sound of silence.
If the minister bothered to keep track of my official public statements as Labour Party main spokesman on the subjects concerned, he would have realised that we have long made it clear that we will give our official reaction to the climate document in the House of Representatives itself.
The minister can rest assured that rather than acting in a spiteful manner simply because our proposal for climate change legislation was turned down, our parliamentary response will be purely technical, focused and forward looking.
We intend to do the same regarding the government's draft strategic document on solid waste management, even though various information gaps still need to be filled.
The government should have realised by now that its own consultation processes on these subjects have been quite a sham. Public meetings on both climate and waste management issues drew such poor attendances that in the case of a particular consultation meeting held in Marsascala for southern citizens on the proposed waste strategy that recommends, among other things, the erection of a mega incineration plant right in their midst at Marsaxlokk, in the minister's own words, only 25 people turned up.
Were it not for my insistence, certain waste-related documents would not have even seen the light of day.
Until I spoke up, the minister told me that he was under the impression that all documents were already online.
That they were not was confirmed by the fact that they were put online only after I had drawn his attention to their absence.
Additional data and submissions that I had requested on waste management issues remain unprovided for, while to add insult to injury, although the waste strategy document claims that a waste management plan has already been drawn up, when I took up this issue with the same minister he told me that in actual fact such a plan had not been completed yet and would only be finalised once the strategy documents were completed.
This smacks of either political incompetence or, even worse, political deceit.
The PL has no intention of getting involved in and making an accomplice of itself in such sham consultation meetings to facilitate a rubber stamping process.
Our official response on both the climate and waste management strategy documents will be a serious, level headed, technical and objective one.
And as confirmed during a meeting I recently had with the Ramblers' Association on March 26 (four days before the minister's article appeared in print) our responses will be made, hopefully, in plenary in the House of Representatives.