No one can argue that the Public Accounts Committee has a crucial and fundamental role to play when it comes to the regulation of spending from the public coffers, which is why it has a distinct setup.

Not only in Malta but also generally across the Commonwealth, since the Commonwealth will be the talk of the town in the coming week, parliamentary Public Accounts Committees have a unique setup in that they are chaired by a member of the Opposition but the government holds a majority of members.

And Malta is no different: this country's PAC is in fact composed of seven members - four from the government benches and three from the Opposition, which also holds the chair. 

The idea is to give a sense of balance to the committee's somewhat sensitive undertakings: the Opposition chair can set agendas and the like, but the government side of the equation will always have the last say in any matter given its majority of members.

Other parliamentary committees - such as the House Business Committee and the Privileges Committee - are, due to the nature of their remits, chaired by the Speaker of the House of Representatives and are composed of a one-MP majority in favour of the governing party.

The exception is the Select Committee on Standards, Ethics and Proper Behaviour in Public Life, which is chaired by the Speaker and comprises two MPs from each side of the House.

As for the others, some have seven members and some have five, but they are all weighted in favour of the government and are chaired by a member from the government benches.

That situation also applies to the Environment and Development Planning Committee, which has been, along with its former chair, the cause of so much consternation this week.

Former Labour-turned-independent-MP Marlene Farrugia this week resigned from the Labour Party and, quite correctly, from her position on the environment committee, where she had been doing nothing short of a splendid job - as acknowledged by just about anyone in the country who has the environment at heart.

Since then, calls have come from far and wide for the now independent MP to remain on as the committee's chair - calls which have fallen on deaf government ears.  Government MPs and the Prime Minister himself have dismissed those calls in Parliament as being against the rule of law, which provides for parliamentary committees' specific compositions.

But to make such statements in Parliament - where the laws are actually created and amended as required - is nothing short of ludicrous. Surely if any laws of the land are to be changed, they must be changed in Parliament and to say that Parliament cannot change a law to provide for better governance is something of an oxymoron.

The government has stuck to its guns and has point-blank refused to entertain the idea of retaining Dr Farrugia as the committee's chair, arguing that the government needs to have a committee majority. Although the government is technically correct in its argumentation, its resistance, given the environmental controversies that have reared their ugly heads over this last legislature, is morally flawed.

Flawed because if the government is to attempt to salvage the last shreds of environmental credibility it may have left, it should have at the very least made a show of entertaining the idea of reinstating Dr Farrugia to the chairmanship of the committee.

An independent MP such as Dr Farrugia will have no partisan motivations and as the chair of the committee - essentially having a casting vote when PN and PL MPs are at loggerheads - she would constitute a truly independent voice on environmental affairs.  

But the government instead rubbished the idea and the Prime Minister, in reply to calls from the Opposition to do so, quipped that Dr Farrugia could have one of the Opposition's seats on the committee and be made chair.

Then, on Friday, the Opposition leader rose to the challenge with a novel concept: increasing the committee's membership to seven MPs - four from the government benches and three from the Opposition - and offered Dr Farrugia one of the Opposition's committee seats, from which she could chair the environment committee.

With this move, the Opposition has well and truly thrown down the gauntlet at the Prime Minister's feet. In one fell swoop, he took up the Prime Minister's challenge to surrender one of his MPs' seats to Dr Farrugia, ensured that the government retained its voting majority in the committee, and challenged the government to allow Labour's current bête noir to continue to chair the committee.

This government, which has been so vocally zealous about safeguarding the environment but which has acted in a diametrically opposed way, would do well to take this challenge. 

This would be an ideal move that would send all the right kind of signals that the government really needs to be sending out right now if it is to somehow salvage its relations with the country's ever-growing environmental lobbies, which have all been fighting Dr Farrugia's corner and are insisting that she continues to lead this committee.

If it fails to rise to the Opposition's challenge on this one, after so many environmental debacles it has been accused of since its election in March 2013, it could very well be a public relations disaster for the government and a huge loss for the kind of environmental protection as espoused by Dr Farrugia.

But the government, despite all its bluff and bluster about the environment, failed to take up the challenge on Friday. It is hoped that after a weekend of reflection, it will have seen the error of its ways and accede to the Opposition's proposal if it is limit the damage it has already sustained and which it will surely continue to sustain.

With today's heightened national awareness and concern about the environment, it would be fitting for the environment committee to be put on a somewhat equal footing with the PAC and it would be even more fitting for that committee to be chaired by an independent MP of Dr Farrugia's ilk and with Dr Farrugia's environmental credentials.