Unfortunately, the direct screening of Parliament seems to be reducing the amount of parliamentary coverage from the pages of the papers.

Hence, while those who can follow the sittings on television or on a PC, get the full direct impact, those who only follow news on the papers or online news get an account of what happened in a very diluted way.

If this is the case, those who do not follow Parliament TV, lost a gem of a discussion on Tuesday while the rest of the country was celebrating the end of Carnival.

Minister Owen Bonnici stood up and launched into a vituperative attack on Jason Azzopardi, a far cry from Minister Bonnici’s usual suave self when he presents himself as the voice of reason.

Then, to the surprise of objective viewers, Minister Bonnici criticized two heavyweight criticisms of the draft media bill – one by the Dean of the Faculty of Laws Prof. Kevin Aquilina and the other by the European Court of Human Rights, no less.

This he did in a supercilious tone that implied that both Prof. Aquilina and the ECHR do not know their matter right and that the Government of Malta, in proposing this Bill, was not motivated by anger at the way in which Daphne Caruana Galizia had run circles around Chris Cardona and his garnishee orders, but solely by a desire to give Malta a better Press Law than it has.

This is the minister who when it came to the appointment of members of the judiciary had lay himself open to the charge he did not even know the Constitution of Malta.

This is the minister who sweet-talks about anything and everything and would have everyone believe he is the voice of reason and moderation. Except when you wave a Jason Azzopardi at him and he reacts just as a bull faced with a red rag.

This is the minister who, as in the interview he gave to this paper, would have you believe the aim of the Draft Bill is to remove criminal libel and iron out some kinks in the law. Then you find he intends to force all online news services to have to register with the government.

This is finally the minister who said that if the pending criminal libels are scrapped as per ECHR caselaw interpretation after the Press Act is revoked and since prescription has already run for civil libel in these cases, then no remedy will be possible for the affected persons.

This is so wrong. The solution is to find a legally safe remedy for the affected individuals post-revocation. And the solution can never be the conscious breach of Human Rights by the government – one that says it is a liberal one.

Human Rights are not a commodity to be dispensed with on a whim by a minister.