This government never learns.

Although most of the ministers have their own families and get on rather well with them, and with a ministry for the family and family values and what not, it still hasn’t learnt to act like all good families should – with temperance, moderation and good husbandry.

Any family in time of need would try to downplay, reassure and share the burden.

Instead, this government now shocks, undermines confidence and most importantly shifts all burdens on to the taxpayers, in one way or another. Oh, and it has tried to salve its conscience by offering an option.

The social partners were more than right to reject the government’s loaded offer. They would have been saddled with the responsibility for whichever option was chosen. The government has its own share of responsibility and it cannot try and pass all the burden of the new, steep increase in the cost of oil on to the customers, as though they were to blame for it.

Again, the model of an exemplary family must be considered here. A model family, faced with an unforeseen burden does not just subdivide the burden among the family members: “You have to pay X, and you have to pay Y” and that’s it. On the contrary, a model family tries really hard to avoid the full burden falling on the members of the family. When you consider everything, the way the government has gone about this oil price business is obscene: no family should do what this supposedly model family government did.

Does the government know the huge wave of pessimism it has unleashed on the whole country? You hear people talk of nothing else. People, families, already stressed out and hardly managing to make ends meet are now despairing. Whatever is chosen of the unholy Hobson’s choice will affect people badly, very badly. At the most, there will be a demand for a wage rise to cover these increases, which will make companies even more uncompetitive and could lead to job losses and even closures. As for the people in government employment, the renewal of the collective agreement is coming up, which is why the unions have been saving their fire so far, and also would not commit themselves to choosing between either option.

As this newspaper commented two weeks ago, the government is mainly to blame for not having taken steps during the year to adjust the prices of electricity to the increased oil prices, as a result of which it is now has a huge increase to push through in one go and, quite naturally, finding it difficult.

Let’s go back to a family which, partly due to the inaction of its head, finds that it has a huge bill to pay. What should a sane and adjusted family do? The head of that family must, first of all, admit his mistake and take some responsibility for what happened. If needs be, he must forego some of the expenditure or dig around for some of the funds so that his family does not have to suffer so much. Secondly, he will try and reassure the family members, not scare them out of their wits.

It has been claimed that if the government were to take on 30 per cent of the additional Lm50 million bill, it would have to tax the country anyway to get the Lm16 million it had contributed. As Woody Allen would have said: “That’s no contribution”.

This is no more a case for only the unions to make, or whoever else at MCESD, this is a case for the whole country to make: the whole country must tell the government that while the rates have to reflect the real prices of oil the country is paying, the government is not there to shift the added cost on to the taxpayers. We do not need a government to do that, we can do it ourselves. One very valid reason why the government is there is for it to protect the country, especially the small people, from blows such as this. Nor can the government pretend it is just an impartial conduit passing on the increase from the oil producers to the oil consumers.

In this case, while it may not make much sense now to hedge the future price of oil, it may have made more sense to have hedged it in the past months, even though this is an argument made with hindsight.

If, for argument’s sake, the government can absorb 30 per cent of the increased oil cost and then come up with some sort or other as taxes, it may as well absorb a further 30 per cent only this time not through taxes but through other means. It has been said by others, notably the GRTU that the government holds far too much land. Imagine if it were, for instance, to auction off the St Luke Hospital site and pass the proceeds of the sale on to the oil bill.

The danger now, as always in pre-Budget days, is that the government, now that no agreement has been reached with the social partners, falls under the hands of the mandarins at the Finance Ministry and we all know one thing at which they excel: cutting and slashing to get the figures right. Ever since the government was made to bring its deficit down by stated figures, the government and the Finance Ministry have not looked at any other figures. We all know how it goes: the man at the top slashes the expenditure figures, then those under him in the pyramid of the public service slash the expenditure figures of those below them. As a result, overtime is banned, allowances cut and penny-pinching kicks in. But even at that point, for all the pain it would have caused, such penny-pinching just does not work: the worst wastages in expenditure would still be going on, as when there are extra people doing nothing, and nobody does anything about increasing revenue in the meantime. Isn’t it amazing that ever since we started to focus on the deficit, in 1996, our economy has just refused to grow?

You will not have the private sector being so foolish. The private sector is very careful when it comes to costs, but really careful not stupidly careful. It is always on the look-out for added opportunities where it can make more money and, if it needs to spend in order to generate more revenue, it does.

Nor has the government been clear on many things that have been said. It still has to show how the additional bill for the increased oil prices will cost Lm50 million more. It still has to show seriousness of intent in going for alternative sources of energy, of which Malta has an abundance. For, if, as has been said, wind power is costlier than electricity, why do so many countries have wind farms? And why do so many countries, especially in our latitude, give more space and opportunity to solar energy while here we treat it as if it were a child’s experiment? Nor has it been made clear enough that Enemalta is doing everything to be leaner. The government seems to have left Enemalta to be the last of the companies it will restructure and one still gets the impression it is still full of those people who have been hived off from the dockyards and Air Malta.