This is just not good enough.

The people who voted for the Opposition, and even the country at large, expects the Opposition to oppose.

But over the past days, it has let itself be overwhelmed by the government.

First there was the incredible mistake by whoever organizes parliamentary business for the government who apparently did not realize that the approval of the estimates of various bodies had to be done before the end of June.

This meant that the House, after so many sittings hearing this or that minister make statements on every subject, had to compress the discussions on the approval of these estimates in a way that never happened before. We had three sittings in a day, sometimes with just a half hour breather between sittings.

To all this, the Opposition assented without a whimper. It was over-eager to please and to comply at a time when it could have made the government squirm for this incredible sign of incompetence.

Then there was more.

In the debate about Heritage Malta, not one member from the Opposition mentioned the Jason Micallef appointment to the Valletta 18 board. At the end, it was, ironically, the Parliamentary Secretary who mentioned V18.

Worse was to come with the debate on the Housing Authority in which Minister Coleiro Preca’s arguments about the queues of people wanting housing was echoed by some Opposition MPs who practically repeated what the minister had just said, instead of pointing out the huge amount of welfare fraud that goes on. It was only Censu Galea who tried to argue in this way, for which he was called ‘old-fashioned’ by the minister.

The other sittings, from those on Enemalta and WSC and yesterday’s on ETC were more balanced.

The point is not to urge the Opposition into opposing for opposition’s sake but simply to urge it to be a robust Opposition and to make sure its voice and its points are heard.

It has already been pointed out that the Opposition was also weak in its response to the widespread cull of professional diplomats from the Foreign Service.

This unequalness of treatment means, as was also seen yesterday, that those Members who stand out for their stance, such as Jason Azzopardi with regards to Minister Manuel Mallia (we are not saying that Dr Azzopardi is necessarily right) are then singled out for special treatment by the government front bench without being supported by the rest of the Opposition team.

To return to the housing debate. If the Opposition in its long years in government had left so many people without adequate housing, then it should hang its head in shame.

If on the contrary, a change of government has spawned a huge wave of people out to get housing or better housing without doing anything to improve their own situation, then the government should be warned against in any way encouraging people to go on relief.

But at the very least, the members of the Opposition should sing from the same hymn-sheet.