There is bound to be a time, and that may be sooner rather than later, when both sides of our parliamentary divide will, willy-nilly, find themselves face to face with tough, long-term problems that will demand concentration.

It was not all that long ago when former finance Minister John Dalli referred to the problem. He confessed that “transferring the provision of welfare benefits to the private sector was high on the government’s agenda” and that “the projected demographic changes had brought into question the extent to which the State could continue to afford the current level of provision”.

A move in this direction, he suggested, would bring about far-reaching changes and represented a fundamental shift of responsibility from the public to the private sector.

The argument was not whether or not it was possible to create more wealth to sustain the social framework, but how to rid the public sector of its growing burdens.

Brutal truth

John Dalli shared his thoughts early in January 1998 when he inaugurated the premises of the Malta Insurance Institute. We all know how the government has performed since then, and the brutal truth is too ugly to behold.

The government kept on spending steadily beyond its means. Enterprise has been flogged mercilessly by taxation. The middle class has been whipped incessantly ever since. The economy ran aground and has been in a quagmire for years.

It is becoming a cliché of market rhetoric to proclaim the need for an opportunity State to match and sustain the welfare State. Politicians normally desist from defining these two terms with any precision.

It is a thundering fallacy to imagine that an economic advance is feasible without two essential conditions. On the one hand, the State must be in a position to ensure that all citizens render unto Caesar what is due to Caesar.

Foremost responsibility

The foremost responsibility of the welfare state is to provide a safety net for that social segment which may otherwise find itself below the plimsoll line of survival. For this, it needs revenue that comes from taxation and contributions from the “better off”.

On the other hand, significant growth of our national income is going to depend, as it has always done, largely on the activities and decisions of enterprising men and women.

To induce them to do the exceptional things of which they alone are capable, is part of the very mechanism of creating the necessities of life (and even the luxuries) of the nation as a whole.

As much as the State would be well advised to sustain and, if possible, uplift, the weak, it should see to it that it does not penalise and/or exploit citizens on whom it depends for its progress.

By promoting and sustaining the interests of an upwardly-mobile middle class, and by reducing disincentives to work and save, society enriches itself.

It is the middle class, largely consisting of industrious citizens, willing and able to take advantage of available opportunities, that gives momentum to economic advance.

Imperatives of development

The advance registered in former years resulted in higher social and economic aspirations that must be met in an environment of ruthless international competitivity. This development imposes its own imperatives: Maltese institutions, as well as their political leaders must conserve the available resources and employ them to their most productive use.

No one who genuinely cares about contemporary social conditions would shrink from doing everything possible for their improvement. At the same time, there is so little that could be achieved in a positive sense by spreading existing wealth more thinly while there is much that could be done by means of our economic resources.

Think of the slum houses that are unfit for human habitation and of the outdated, choked and dangerous roads that pose constant danger to Malta’s quarter million vehicles. Effluents contaminate Maltese waters. Air pollution has become a significant threat.

We have to measure up to the rising threat of crime and juvenile delinquency and to the drug problem. We have to strengthen the moral mortar which holds the social fabric together: how much, for example, might the authorities save on public care of children, on national assistance to separated wives and single mothers, if they give more attention to the arrangements for pre-marital education and training and more encouragement to the agencies of matrimonial guidance and conciliation?

Public policy aims

Yet, the welfare state must not be allowed to develop into a delayed reaction to pre-war or new poverty. As aspirations continue to rise, the national outlook has to make its own adjustments. Public policy should aim at giving consistent, maximum encouragement to citizens to be as self-sustaining as possible, to become owners as well as earners, to pay for their own homes, to tailor their own pension arrangements. At the same time, the government must exercise frugality and desist from the extravagance that has become its trademark

Is there time left for the people of Malta to try again? We will perhaps know the answer at the next general election.

The optimum that could be attained is an expanding economy, with a high level of employment and fiscal discrimination in favour of the family, intent on raising living standards to a level where people can freely exercise social responsibility and go for growth.

This is an objective worthy of the aspirations of business organisations as well as trade unions. As much as there must be healthy concern for the plight of those who require a safety net, employers and unions should be seriously concerned with those who, on no account, must be seduced into decadence and into thinking that affluence is a licence for them, and for the State, to squander resources capriciously well beyond the limits of prudence

Malta predicament calls for realism and this is not the time to score political points. But what can one say about an administration, which is under EU scrutiny, that is supposed to be abiding by the rules of austerity in terms of an agreed Convergence Programme, but which had no hesitation to go overboard in its spending last year?

It did so by spending no less than Lm5 million in consultancies, Lm3 million on travel, Lml.7 million to hire government transport and another Lm250,000 to purchase new cars?

This is all about the welfare of a closed circle having a good time travelling on the gravy train.

It has nothing to do with the serious business of promoting and sustaining the nation’s welfare!

[email protected]