Shadow Minister Anton Refalo’s criticism of Gozo Channel’s performance (TMID, 23 March) is constructed on three premises.

The government need not claim credit for Gozo Channel’s financial turnaround because the turnaround is due to a new subsidy that finances the company’s social obligations.

To start with, this is nowhere near true. While the cost of fuel for Gozo Channel was increasing by Lm200,000, Gozo Channel cut down its expenditure by Lm200,000 after paying that difference. That is a cut in expenditure equivalent to half the losses Gozo Channel used to make year in year out.

Yes, the government believes it is its duty to compensate for the natural disadvantage of living on the smaller island. It does so through the vehicle of a transparent public service grant rather than through covering the losses of a technically bankrupt company.

True to Labour form, Anton Refalo may not see the difference. We do. The difference is that a contractual subsidy ensures that only the real social obligations are paid for and any inefficiencies traditionally considered inevitable for a public entity are exposed and have to be resolved. As they have been.

It is not true that quite as many people went to Gozo as the National Statistics Office counted.

Labour discredits statistics that it cannot use to feed the furnace of its anger. During 2006, 2.6 per cent more passengers and five per cent more vehicles crossed over to Gozo than the year before. Fact. Labour would not like that to be true. Also a fact. Too bad for them.

Now, that increase may not be entirely attributable to Gozo Channel’s good behaviour. There may be other reasons such as improved economic well-being, better weather, more activities in Gozo attracting more mainlanders for longer. But what that increase does prove is that Gozo Channel with its new boats, better service, even increased tickets and all, has attracted more – not fewer – people to Gozo.

It also proves that working together with the business and local community of Gozo really draws results to the island and the bankruptcy of the channel company is not a necessary price for the prosperity of the island. The incentive schemes for winter and off-peak travel have attracted more people to the restaurants and hotels of Gozo: to their operas and carnivals, feasts and cultural events.

Working together is one way of doing things. Then there’s Labour’s way of doing things when Anton Refalo was quasi-minister for Gozo but Alfred Sant called the shots. Gozitans remember that too.

Though there were more trips to Gozo in 2006 than there were in 2003, the Government has no right to claim improved accessibility because 2000 had more trips than 2006 anyway.

The conveniently short memory of Anton Refalo is absurdly optimistic. There were older, smellier boats sailing between the two islands in 2000. Above all, they were smaller. They took fewer cars aboard and left more people waiting in the harbours. The introduction of the new boats was the maritime equivalent of building a highway in place of a dirt road.

Now Anton Refalo may deride the government because there were fewer trips between the islands in 2006 than there were in 2000, but the man must clearly have his priorities upside down. True there were fewer boat-trips but more people were aboard. With lower fuel consumption, less pollution in the waters of the channel, less pressure on the quays and less waiting time for passengers, more people were carried across the channel.

Yes, Gozo is more accessible. No thanks to Anton Refalo.

It was, is and will be up to the PN to represent the needs and aspirations of the people of Gozo and it was, is and will be up to us to continue to exceed even those. Gozo is at the heart of our politics because we are the party of solidarity, where all regions of the country have to enjoy an equal share in the wealth created here. This is the politics that inspires locating Smart City in the most relatively depressed portion of the larger island. It is the politics that inspires subsidising the “road on the sea” (as Gozitans like to describe Gozo Channel) to ensure that there is no economic or social price to pay when living and earning a living in Gozo.

That is a boat Anton Refalo was never willing to catch.

Austin Gatt is Investments, Industry and IT Minister