There was a time when Budget week meant that Malta would be aflame with debate about the future prospects of the country, arguments and counterarguments flying from all quarters. Nowadays it’s a very different picture. Perhaps it is a good thing that people today approach politics with a cooler, more level-headed temperament, which hopefully allows them to be more logical about it. I suspect that our politicians don’t help themselves either, however.

Like many, on Monday I sat to follow the budget speech as delivered by the Finance Minister, who to anyone’s surprise decided to spend the opening 20 minutes of his speech quoting from past-budget speeches delivered more than 12 years ago, taunting his opponents.

Now, anyone who has ever spoken in front of a group of more than 10 people will tell you how important the opening lines of your speech are. It is the moment when you are meant to hook your audience, and convince them that what you have prepared for them, is worth their time! The first few minutes of a speech are like the opening notes of a symphony, which are meant to invite you in by sweet coercion or clever curiosity, to listen in and enjoy the ride.

Instead, the Finance Minister, rather uncharacteristically, decided to squander this precious once-a-year opportunity he is granted, in which people who might not be your usual political animals, tune in to listen to the budget speech. The sound of the collective remote-control buttons being pressed in unison after the fifth ‘ahna u intom’ (us and them), must have sounded like a thunderclap which should send shivers down any politician’s spine!

Sadly, past the opening litany of tu quoque arguments, the speech didn’t really take off either. It was instead a rehash of the same of formulas that haven’t worked. The same usual stale initiatives that have actually contributed to the situation our country finds itself in.

With budget being the most important speech of the year, expected to outline the financial and economic policy of Government for the year to come, it was extremely poor on the policy side.

It was the confirmation, if we ever needed one, that this Government has run its course, and it has run out of ideas.  In fact, it is reproposing the same old re-heated grub we have seen so much of, which sadly only helps to keep things going as they are.

At a crucial moment, people were expecting some real out-of-the-box thinking, that would bring a breath of fresh air, and break the vicious cycle of government handouts and social inequality.

Solutions for a new economic model that would rely less on foreign workers who are tragically exploited, while wreaking havoc in the labour market in the process. A new model that would not result in the island’s population to continue growing the way it did in the past ten years, with all the stresses that brought with it. A new model that would result in better paying jobs in Malta, which could perhaps slow down, or better still reverse, the brain-drain of young graduates who can’t wait to scoop up jobs and prospects in London, Germany and the United States.

“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day; give him a fishing rod and feed him for life,” the old adage goes. Sadly, this Government doesn’t only insist on giving out fish, because it has no idea how to provide the fishing rod – tragically, it hasn’t even realised that the entire fishing game has changed completely, and it is now trying to fish in an empty barrel.

There was a lot that could have been done, yet sadly this Government has run out of juice. Like that flashy car that once was the envy of all, it has been driven way too carelessly, and after one too many ugly accidents, is now plodding along, with the few drops of fuel it can scrape from here and there.