Former Prime Minister Alfred Sant last Monday made a suggestion that should be taken up.
The Labour MEP said that budget speeches should not last more than one hour, and that the Opposition Leader’s reply to the budget, and the Prime Minister’s own response, should also not be more than 60 minutes each.
Nearly two weeks ago, it took Finance Minister Clyde Caruana more than two hours and 35 minutes to complete the presentation of the budget for 2024. Although it was nowhere near the record established by his predecessor Edward Scicluna in 2014 – when it took the professor three hours and 50 minutes to conclude – it is still too long and pedantic.
In last Monday’s bi-weekly column on The Malta Independent, Sant said that in one of his first meetings, as Opposition Leader, with then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, it had not taken long for them to agree that their budget speeches should be reduced from three hours to two, a practice that has been in place since.
Sant admits that the two should have also agreed to cut down the length of the budget speech, and indeed “curtail the duration of all three speeches to a maximum of one hour each”.
It did not happen 30 years ago, in what was a different world, but it should happen now. Incumbents Robert Abela and Bernard Grech should agree to the limit suggested by Sant. The time has come for such a change to be implemented.
If you take the speech delivered by Caruana on 30 October, it could easily have been whittled down to fit in a 60-minute timeframe. Part of his address was taken up by gratuitous propaganda and digs at the Opposition that would have to be eliminated if a one-hour limit is imposed. Sixty minutes would have been more than enough for him to list the measures the government was introducing.
The same goes for the two-hour speeches by Grech on Monday and Abela on Tuesday. Most of the time was taken up by verbal attacks, rather than constructive criticism (Grech) and constructive defence (Abela). If one were to cut down on this, they could easily say what they have to say in one hour.
We would extend Sant’s suggestion to cover other matters. Parliament is now debating the individual budgets for the different ministries, with three-hour debates on each portfolio. Followers of these particular sessions quickly realise that most of what is said is repetition, and does little to contribute to the debate in general. Even here, the two sides of the House should agree to reduce the allotted time.
And the same goes for the rest of parliamentary sittings. We have said it many times that speeches should be shorter and crispier. There are too many occasions when speakers take 20 minutes to say what they could say in two or three minutes.
In recent times, parliament had adapted itself to changing circumstances, such as by having sittings starting at 4pm instead of 6pm. It should now move another step forward by taking up Sant’s suggestion.