The Nationalist Party's pre-budget document, which it "wanted to keep secret from the public", was leaked to the Labour Party which published it this afternoon.

Ministers Jonathan Attard and Byron Camilleri both addressed a press conference on Monday in which journalists were given a copy of what the Labour Party is saying is a document the PN prepared for the budget but never published.

Attard remarked that following months of work, what was supposed to be the Opposition's pre-budget document ended up not being published and was instead hidden away.

The Justice Minister said that Opposition Leader Bernard Grech started writing the document in question with the help of six other senior party members at the beginning of last summer. He said that these party members were Deputy Leader Alex Perici Calascione, Secretary General Michael Piccinino, and MPs Graham Bencini, Jerome Caruana Cilia, Ivan Castillo, and Ivan Bartolo.

Attard remarked that after months of working on the document, which was "so bad and full of mistakes", it was decided that it should remain hidden. With that in mind, he commented that it is important for the people to know how incapable the PN is of governing.

Going over the energy and infrastructure sections of the document, Attard spoke of how the document writer wrote down that these sections were deemed as needing "more beef", and how another section detailing proposals intended to support first-time buyers was left with comments of "this needs work". Attard said that during this time, Grech had been boasting about how he had proposals prepared that were an improvement over those offered by the government.

The Justice Minister remarked that the greatest loss of the document is where one finds the section for medium-to-long-term proposals. "You would imagine a set of proposals here because they are always going on about their plan for the country, but this section has literally nothing." He continued that instead of clear ideas, the section ends with a statement about how it would be completed once more insight is gathered from stakeholders and MPs.

Attard concluded that the PN not being able to finish the document despite working on it for months is a confirmation that the Opposition cannot be trusted to lead the country. "The PN's economic and financial competence continues to get worse, and Bernard Grech has never presented audited accounts of the party despite admitting to a record amount of debt... This alone puts serious doubt on how the PN can be trusted to handle the country's public finances."

For his part, Home Affairs Minister Camilleri said that in the PN's unpublished pre-budget document, there is a target to boost employment by 32,000, but given how every year more Maltese are retiring than there are new young people who can enter employment, this target would mean an increase of foreign workers. With that in mind, he commented that while Grech accuses the government of wanting to increase the number of foreign workers, the reality is that the PN's economic target would result in an increase of such workers.

The PL said that the report is full of basic errors, such as the debt figure for 2023 being listed as €10.6 billion when it was “almost €800 million less”. Camilleri continued that the document also contained errors regarding the number of people working in certain sectors, which resulted in the target increased employment shown in the report for those sectors leading to the country having the present amount of employment.

Camilleri echoed sentiments of whether the people can entrust the PN with the country's leadership, as he commented that the pre-budget document has "enormous mistakes" when one looks at the numbers detailed within it, referring to parts of the document going over the national debt, employment, and workforce education.