It was a budget that was typical of the Labour Party of the last decade – hand out as much as you can, possibly more than you can afford, to instil a feel-good factor that has progressively been lost among the electorate, in an attempt to win back voters who, since the 2022 election, have abandoned the party or are threatening to do so.

But it did little, or nothing at all, to explain what the government’s plans for the future are, how it intends to alter an economy that is based on population growth with all its repercussions on the infrastructure and negative sentiment of suffocation, how it plans to create new niches, how it proposes to move towards industries that are qualitative.

If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach someone to fish, you feed them for a lifetime. Well, the budget has given the country a fish, but it fails to teach it to fish.

It is a budget that thinks of today, but not about tomorrow.

The Labour government patronisingly is making people more dependent on it, rather than seek to fend for themselves and have the ambition to work to move forward and rise up the social ladder. The more time passes, the more people are being made to rely on cheques and vouchers handed out by the government, with the expectation that they (the people) are grateful for being provided with a supposedly better livelihood thanks to this financial assistance. The worst part of it all is that the impression one gets is that this is being done intentionally.

In other words, to steal a phrase from dear Michelle Muscat which is already mentioned in the headline, the budget is weighty on socialism, but light on vision.

Finance Minister Clyde Caruana took more than two and a half hours to deliver his speech. It could have easily been wrapped up in 30 minutes but, as is usually the case, the budget is an opportunity for the government to deliver propaganda, knowing that more people than usual are following the parliamentary session.

So, in between how much children’s allowance is going to rise and how pensioners will get their own increase, we had self-advertising which must have felt like heaven on earth for the blinkered Labour supporters, but which seemed like diversionary tactics for the rest.

For one thing, does the government really want to boast that 95,000 families will benefit from an additional Cost of Living Adjustment next year? Doesn’t this mean that the number of people in financial difficulties is rising sharply and that more and more of them are moving towards poverty? Is this what the government is proud of?

What the government did not say was that the number of vulnerable families who received the additional COLA in the budget for 2023 was 45,000. This means that the number of families in great financial distress has more than doubled in one year. Will the number of families to get this little extra rise to 130,000 next year?

They labelled the budget as being one for a “just Malta”, but for Malta to be “just” it does not only mean that people in the lower rungs of society are given financial support, as the government wants to portray.

This is not enough.

“A just Malta” should also mean that people who stole from funds aimed for disabled persons should pay the price, along with those who organised the scheme for them.

“A just Malta” should also mean that all those who took part in a racket to give unskilled drivers their licence, endangering the lives of many, should be brought to book.

“A just Malta” should also mean that anyone involved in the €400 million “collusion” to hand over three public hospitals to the private sector shoulder their responsibility, not only in the political sense.

“A just Malta” should also mean that the institutions, especially the police and the Attorney General, do their duty with regard to the big guns, and not only against people who steal a can of tuna because they are hungry.

“A just Malta” should also mean more accountability and transparency, the end of nepotism, and a society built on merit, not one that pushes you forward just because you know a minister.

“A just Malta” is a million other things the government should do but doesn’t.

At the end of the marathon budget speech, Prime Minister Robert Abela was to first to jump out of his seat shouting “well done” and “bravo” to Minister Caruana. At least there was no bear-hug caught on camera.

But as the slaps on the parliamentary desks subsided, the thought that came to mind was how easy it must be for champagne socialists to smile while handing out titbits.