This government’s lack of adherence to the principles of good governance and to the rule of law will probably be the worst side of its legacy. But its disdain for the environment and its sellout to the construction industry will surely come a close second, with a lasting impact on the island. The corruption will one day be cleaned up. Environmental damage is mostly permanent.

Ever since Joseph Muscat’s Labour Party was first elected to office in 2013 we have witnessed a ridiculously excessive pro-construction policy emerging from Castille, a complete disregard for the plight of residents suffering from the effects of overdevelopment, a weakening of our environmental watchdog authorities, indifference towards our heritage, the championing of a number of mega projects without any genuine impact assessments being conducted and the gradual erosion of what’s left of our green areas.

The trend since 2013 has been remarkably one way: the government has done whatever it could to accommodate the construction industry.

In 2014, for instance, the law was changed to allow development in ODZ areas so long as dwellings there, however tiny, were once habitable. Of course, it is not just this limited sort of development that has been allowed on ODZ land. Part of the campus of the so-called American University of Malta, if it gets off the ground, is to be built on 18,000 m2 of such land at Żonqor Point, Marsascala, ruining a pristine coastal area.

A proliferation of petrol stations is also heading to ODZ land, with an area totalling over five times the size of the Floriana Granaries earmarked around the island. All these fuel pumps, some within half a kilometre of each other, are utterly unnecessary, a testimony to the unbridled greed that seems to have gripped the sector and swept the government up with it.

Likewise the applications for old people’s homes on ODZ land, such as for Wied Għomor, Swieqi, the locality’s ‘last green lung’ – which in a rare flowering of common sense has thankfully been rejected – as well as in an area near the Ta’ Pinu Basilica, in Għarb, one of Gozo’s most beautiful zones.

The approval of mega projects, some of which will uglify Malta to a whole new level, epitomises the construction mania that has taken hold. The government, as exemplified by its political appointees on the Planning Authority, takes everything but a holistic approach to such ventures. It seems not to give a hoot about the effects of such development on the locality in question, on its residents and on the infrastructure, whether such projects are going to destroy the landscape or townscape, or indeed if they are actually feasible.

In Sliema alone, there are three such projects: Fortina and Fort Cambridge, which are expected to be approved, and Townsquare, which has been approved (although appealed) and where work has already started. All three, in a residential area, are within walking distance of one another. Plenty of other high-rise projects are going up or are in the pipeline: Pender Gardens, City Centre (ITS site) and Mercury House in Paceville as well as others in Qawra, Ġżira and Mrieħel.

Does this not have a whiff of irrational exuberance? Will demand for all the units flooding the market be sustained? Is there no one in government questioning the goldrush and urging caution, despite the Prime Minister’s swaggering reassurance last week that there is no bubble? Make hay indeed...

This trend is reflected in smaller but more widespread development: the approval of applications for apartment blocks irrespective of the character of the urban surroundings, the confined spaces or the multitude of gross inconveniences caused to neighbours, such as having to put up with contractors who block narrow roads, damage pavements and fill the air with dust and noise for months or years on end.

Rather than being based on solid social democratic values, this government’s approach has been savagely neo-liberal and laissez-faire. The construction industry is being allowed to do as it pleases while trampling on the rights of ordinary people and the interests of future generations.

This is not a call to stop construction. The industry is a major player in the economy and the demand for property has been fuelled by foreigners fulfilling the demand for labour. However, there is an urgent need to restore balance, to have a more comprehensive approach to planning that would protect the environment, our heritage, the long-term health of the economy and the ordinary, long-suffering citizen.

Unfortunately, the demands of political party funding make this an unrealistic proposition. Both major parties have their own cosy relationship with the construction industry. It’s an indecent threesome. It’s about time, though, that the Nationalist Party joins its partner in on the Opposition benches, the Democratic Party, and makes the environment a key policy area that distinguishes it from the Labour Party.

This is a Times of Malta print editorial