This morning, Australia Hall was wrapped up in red ribbon – and bow – by the Nationalist Party Youth Movement (MZPN) which said that the building was a €10 million gift from the Labour government to the Labour Party.

The index card for this “gift” read “scandal: 10 million euro gift from our taxes.”

MZPN in the afternoon reported that the "wrapping" had been removed, as shown on the video.

A Christmas card showing Santa Claus presenting the building to Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was also produced: the card, in whose dedication the “Maltese people” claim they are certain that the Labour Party will have a good Christmas with the €10 million gift, will be presented to the party’s leadership.

Australia Hall was one of three scheduled Pembroke buildings – the other two were the Junior Ranks’ Club, more popularly known as the former Raffles night club and a soldiers’ cookhouse and dining room – at the heart of a court case instituted under the previous government.

Both Australia Hall and the Raffles club were gutted in a fire and left in a state of neglect since, and the Lands Department had argued that this was in breach of the contract through which they were granted to the Labour Party on a permanent lease in 1979. The cookhouse was transferred to St Michael’s School for close to €600,000 in 1998, and incorporated in an extension to that school.

But the case dragged on and on, beyond the change in government, until the case was dropped at the end of October when both the Labour Party and the Labour government decided to drop their claims against each other. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this agreement was not publicised, but it was revealed by The Malta Independent the following Sunday.

Since then, the Nationalist Party has called for the case to be investigated by the Public Accounts Committee in parliament, but MZPN president Kevin Plumpton insisted that the case should have been decided in court.

In a reaction to the MZPN’s stunt, the Labour Party reiterated its claim that the court case concerning Australia Hall was a vindictive act carried out for partisan reasons by the previous government.

It also insisted that it would have wished to wrap up the PN government’s scandals in ribbons, but could not find enough to go around all of them.

As it turns out, the Labour Party opted not to wait until Christmas to unwrap its ‘gift’: the giant bow and ribbons were removed hours later.