Prime Minister Joseph Muscat this morning said that he will not be afraid to take the decisions that need to be taken when the inquiries into the incident involving the driver of Home Affairs Minister Manuel Mallia are concluded.
Without mentioning the minister by name or referring directly to the incident, Dr Muscat repeated that he was "sorry and angry" that the Gzira incident had tarnished the reputation of the government.
"I was never afraid to take decisions and I will not (stop now)," he said when speaking in Birkirkara. But he said he must wait until the inquiries are concluded to make up his mind. "I have given a timeframe for this to happen and when it does, I will take the decisions that are necessary".
This is contrary to what the Opposition leader did when confronted with a situation involving former Minister George Pullicino, Dr Muscat said.
He also referred to the honoraria dispute, saying that he was surprised to learn that the former Cabinet members had returned only a small part of the honoraria they had received in the previous legislature. Simon Busuttil is still surrounded by people who have kept €1.3 million to themselves, he said.
In the first part of his speech, Dr Muscat said that as from next year the government's financial budget will start to be presented in October to fall in line with the exigencies of the European Union.
Dr Muscat said that during the past days the Opposition tried to raise doubts on Malta's financial exercise, saying that the EU had chastised Malta.
But what the EU had told the Maltese government that it did not need to change anything from its budget, and this is already a great achievement it itself.
What we need to change is when we present our budget, because this year we could not let Brussels know what the measures were going to be before they were presented in the Maltese Parliament as this could have affected stability. The Prime Minister here mentioned the increase in swimming pool licences and the measures on property.
Malta was part of a group of countries listed by the EU as needing to reply to some questions. "We were not placed with Italy, Belgium and France whose budget needs to be revised in March," Dr Muscat said.
As from next year, however, Malta will need to change its budget calendar and be able to present it in Parliament in October to be in line with what the EU is requesting, he said.
We were being told that we would not have been able to manage the economy well, Dr Muscat added, but results are showing that this government is performing to the expectations it raised.
This government is creating one more employment per day, contrary to what happened in the previous legislature when one job was lost every day. This is an important factor when one judges this government because the creation of jobs was always a priority for the Labour Movement.
The Opposition was saying that this was happening because the government was employing more people in the civil service. But it has not realised that with pensionable age going up by a year, the number of people who retired was 600 and not nearly 2,000 as used to be the case until last year. The PN is also choosing to add the 700 former Arriva bus drivers as part of the equation, which means that if it had been in government it would have dismissed these workers.
Dr Muscat said that the government had employed more learning support assistants, teachers, nurses, carers and doctors. Was the opposition against such employment in the education and health sectors, he said.
The Prime Minister went on to explain some measures introduced in the budget, which are aimed to awarding whoever wanted to work. He said that the additional bonus of €35, added with the cost of living adjustment, meant an increase of €1.25 a week, which is more than the €1.16 given by the previous government three years ago.
It must be remembered that at the time the energy tariffs had been raised together with the price of petrol and diesel. Today, the energy tariffs have been lowered while the price of fuel will go down as from January.