The big days of Budget 2015 have now come and gone, with the Budget Speech last week and the speeches by the two leaders this week.

Up till Tuesday at noon, we had heard a total of six or seven hours of speeches, not counting the Prime Minister's reply last night.

The Budget Speech was full of detail and rather less of explanation of the macro-economic plans and forecasts for the coming year. Predictably, the two political speeches would have been ... political. Nothing much macroeconomic there.

Of course, especially within the context of our political dialectic, there is, has to be, space for political comment, as otherwise what kind of Budget would that be?

But we are living in a world that evaluates budgets from the macroeconomic point of view: thus we can see ratings agencies and also the European Commission measuring by that metre. Hence the focus on deficit figures and debt figures along with the other broad parameters.

And talking macroeconomically puts the entire budget measures in perspective and context.

Of course, after these three initial debates, now there will be the debates according to ministries and obviously one of the debates will necessarily be about the finance ministry and others about the other ministries in related subjects but that's not like discussing the economy and the budget from the point of view of macroeconomics.

It is also true that on various occasions in the past, the House held debates, usually without a vote being taken, about the economy and these are, or can be useful. The qualification is important because parliamentary debates in Malta tend to be long in rhetoric and short on substance.

Our parliamentary system is one based on confrontation, which is why in the present Chamber the two sides face each other like antagonists. Hopefully, in the new quadrilateral (or however it will be described) Chamber, the two sides will be sitting more next to each other than facing each other. Hopefully, this will engender more dialogue and discussion than confrontation.

The economic situation of the country, one might add, is far too important to be left to be kicked around like a political football.

Hopefully, in the times to come, we will depart further and further from the televised confrontations of the 1980s and the 1970s and graduate to a more compromise-seeking mode as happens in many other parliaments around us.

With the Budget Speech containing the programme of the government for the coming year, one would also hope that in the future, less space is given to details and more to the framework of the economic programme. Apart from gaining in brevity, it would probably be understood more and explain the economic facts of life in a simpler and more understandable format. That is what people have come to expect.