Speaking at the Malta Institute of Accountants’ biennial conference last week, Finance Minister Clyde Caruana referred to an as yet unpublished study carried out by the Economic Policy Department.

This exercise, according to the minister, found that in order to keep an average growth rate of 4.2% Malta’s population would have to increase to 800,000 by 2040 unless a new economic model is developed.

Like other statements he made in the past, Caruana’s words caused an immediate controversy across the island. Straight off the blocks Opposition leader Bernard Grech warned that unless an alternative sustainable economic model is found, the Maltese risk becoming a minority in their own country.

Speaking on Sunday morning, Prime Minister Robert Abela too seemed to react to his Finance Minister. He spoke of a country in transition to a greener, more sustainable economy.

He was not in any way critical of his minister of finance but the Economy Minister did not seem to mind. In an interview given to The Times, Silvio Schembri said Malta does not need to completely change its economic model but just adjust it.

Without referring to what was said on Sunday, Opposition frontbencher Mario de Marco outlined the concrete repercussions of the government policy over the past years – the Maltese are finding themselves out-priced in the property market; our infrastructure cannot cope; we are spending more and more time in traffic jams; waiting time in hospitals has increased and food prices are rising. People are fed up with overdevelopment.

The debate was keenly followed, though not in an organised way, in the country.

For many, the 800,000 figure and what it implies was the ghost of a Christmas yet to come. Many dispute the 520,000 estimate of today’s population and claim there are a number of unregistered persons around. To say we may go up to 800,000 means we will go over the one million mark. With all that this implies.

Many Maltese are viscerally xenophobic and break out in Norman Lowell rhetoric. The trouble with this is that this no longer applies. The Lowell rhetoric fired up that section of the population when boat people numbers were high. That is no longer the case. The bulk of third country nationals today come by plane and with some sort of job in hand.

Besides, we are increasingly dependent on such people – we need them to collect rubbish, we need them in hospitals and old people homes. And we need their muscle power in our ever growing construction sector. Now which of these sectors will we be shutting down?

Neither Clyde Caruana in his Damascene conversion (after a lifetime trying to persuade us to open wide our gates because these people ‘will pay our pensions’) nor Mario de Marco nor Bernard Grech least of all Silvio Schembri with his tweaking have emerged with a proper solution.

We have been here before and have flunked the right approach – we have a limited land area and a very limited arable land but we still persist in extending the development area and in building and building.

So too now – we suffer because of traffic jams, because of the construction craze, because you cannot enter a shop or demand a service staffed by a Maltese person. And yet we refuse to change. No wonder some or many are thinking of moving elsewhere.

There used to be an expression that was turned into one of the most negative expressions invented by Labour in the bad old Eighties – “numerus clausus”. This was made to mean that your son could enter university but my son could not. It almost took a civil war until it was removed. And Malta flourished as a result.

Now we need a “numerus clausus” , or rather a whole series of “numeri clausi” – certainly one on the amount of cars allowed in, one on the amount of development permits allowed in a street or area, and (this is tricky) on the amount of people allowed in from notoriously poor countries. If Orban could do it, why can’t we?

The problem is why have too many politicians seeking praise and adulation and too few having the courage to propose hard remedies to what we all admit are the problems we face day after day. That’s why we sink and keep sinking.

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