The Opposition Leader's Budget response was new Nationalist Party Leader Alex Borg's first major appointment in his new role, less than two months after he took office to become Malta's youngest ever political party leader.
The occasion didn't get to him: he delivered a hard-hitting speech and capped it off by announcing 50 proposals that the Nationalist Party had in mind in order to improve the country.
For a party which has often been derided as being too focused on criticising the government to actually come up with many ideas of its own, it was an important record scratch moment, as Borg used the country's most important institution to share what the PN wanted to stand for.
But how much meat is on the bone of the proposals? The PN's critics derided them as being either a "copy-paste" job or even generated by ChatGPT.
So how many of the PN's 50 proposals are actually new, and how many have we seen before?
What's new
Without a doubt, the PN's flagship new proposal is the idea of a Child Trust Fund for every child.
The scheme would see the government invest an initial €5,000 for every child at their birth into a long-term savings and investment plan which parents and guardians can contribute to and which will be managed by a National Child Trust Fund Authority that follows a low-risk, ethical, and sustainable portfolio.
The party calculates that the scheme would cost the government €22 million every year, and that when the beneficiary is able to withdraw the money when they reach the age of 20 they would have around €7,430 to their name, based on a conservative 2% annual return.
If parents would have contributed a further €500 annually, the same conservative workings show a yield of €20,570 after 20 years.
The only direct criticism that PL exponents could come up with in response was that the proposal was copied from the United States, Singapore and South Korea - but even that in itself isn't really a criticism. After all, there's nothing wrong in looking at what others propose and then adopting it and adapting it to your own needs and beliefs.
For instance, the Labour government's idea to offer a voluntary cash grant of €25,000 spread across five years for people who give up their car licence, one of its most ambitious measures from a raft of incentives aimed at reducing traffic and changing Malta's car-centric transport culture, was not a new idea either.
The Nationalist Party in fact had an almost identical proposal in its 2022 general election manifesto: proposal 66 was to offer a €10,000 cash grant spread over five years to anyone who gets rid of their car and doesn't get another one instead of it during that period.
The numbers are different, sure, but the principle is the same.
Notably, the PN is also proposing that it would keep the government's energy subsidies: a notion that it had never outright committed to before.
Ever since the government implemented the subsidies, the PN never expressed itself in favour or against them. There were question marks raised over its sustainability - but when the government made it out that the PN was against those subsidies, the PN steadfastly denied that they were.
This is, however, the first black-on-white commitment that the party has made saying that it would retain the subsidies.
Two more new proposals are the building of a new centre for Child and Young People Services (CAYS) and the building of a new water reservoir for farmers to use throughout the year.
Two of Alex Borg's transport proposals are new for the PN as well: his 21st proposal suggests the introduction of an Artificial Intelligence system to coordinate traffic flow, while his 23rd proposal suggests a comprehensive study of the country's bottlenecks and a subsequent analysis for specific infrastructural projects to eliminate those bottlenecks.
The government may argue that both of these points are being implemented - particularly the latter, with several infrastructural projects in places known to be traffic bottlenecks such as Msida Creek.
However, as far as the use of AI goes for coordinating traffic flow, what is certain is that a home grown piece of AI technology - the AI-powered Digital Traffic Brain that won funding from TVM's Shark Tank programme - ended up having to be tested in North Macedonia because of a lack of support from local authorities. Transport Malta had instead said that it was working on its own AI solution.
A proposal to incentivise private companies to provide child care centres within their own premises also appears new. The PN's manifesto in 2022 did include proposals on childcare centres, but they seemed to centre more on government investment rather than private sector investment.
Proposal 454 of that manifesto in fact proposed "further incentivising investment in high-standard child care centres which operate at more extended times." It was quite a vague proposal - Alex Borg's seems to be more to the point.
Two education proposals - a guarantee of an LSE for every student who needs one and an investment in the modernisation of science laboratories across Malta and Gozo's schools - were never explicitly mentioned as specific proposals by the PN until now.
This being said, the PN has consistently criticised the government in recent years for allowing too many children to be left waiting for an LSE.
Another proposal which the PN had never explicitly made up until now was the building of a new court house in Gozo - but again the party has consistently lambasted the government for failing to deliver on its own promise of a new court house, so the notion that the PN would want to build one itself should it come to power was always quite implied.
Likewise, the PN is now proposing that court-related documents move towards a digital paperless system. It's an idea which did not feature in past manifestos but it would be a continuation of the current government policy, which is following a 'digital by default' principle as part of its Digital Justice Strategy.
There were a few proposals that Borg mentioned which aren't new per se - but only because Borg had announced them himself before he got up to address Parliament in his Budget response.
For instance, Borg had already announced that a PN government led by him would commission a Labour Market Study and that he would advocate for the implementation of a four-day work week in the public sector as a pilot project.
He had also already announced that a PN government would re-open trade schools - something of a full-circle moment, as it was a PN administration which had closed down the trade schools in the first place decades ago.
What's expected
Any and every political manifesto includes a host of what you could call 'general measures': these are wide-reaching measures which don't necessarily go into all that much depth, but merely make a promise to tackle a problem without necessarily giving all that much detail into how it would be tackled.
They're also somewhat obvious measures. Of course, any political party is going to pledge to make the economy better, for instance. Of course, any political party will invest in things like the health sector or the police force.
Alex Borg's list of 50 proposals includes several measures which fall under this banner.
For example: Borg proposes fiscal incentives to encourage investment, diversifying the economy to ensure the worker salaries increase, offering financial assistance and opportunities to NGOs and artists, investing in the police, building new schools, reducing bureaucracy, reducing out of stock medicine and waiting lists while investing in more new medicines, and attracting quality foreign direct investment.
There's nothing wrong with these proposals - incidentally, there's not much where to go wrong with them. Every political party will have made these proposals at some point or another. Even the Labour Party's last general election manifesto had some 'obvious' proposals like this.
These are the objectively simple proposals to write - but they're also among the most difficult to quantify and properly implement. That will be a key argument for the PN: that the government has not diversified the economy, that it has not invested enough in the police, that it has not built enough schools or reduced bureaucracy enough.
What these measures however hinge upon is people trusting the credibility of the party promising it. No doubt both parties, come election time, will be promising pretty much all of the above: what will count here is not the whether people disagree with or find the idea controversial - because they won't - but on who people believe has the most credibility to actually implement those ideas.
What's not so new
Besides the new ideas, Alex Borg's 50 proposals also include quite a chunky number of ideas that are being carried over from the PN's previous administrations.
Borg's first proposal - for example - is the removal of the tax on the Cost of Living Allowance: an idea we have heard Bernard Grech speak about since at least May 2023.
Then there are other carried over proposals. The "tax cut for everyone" that Borg promised in his 3rd proposal was also pledged by Bernard Grech in October 2024 and the pledge to eliminate taxes on the first €10,000 earned from part-time work or overtime was pledged by Grech in May 2025, shortly before his resignation.
Economically speaking, the PN's focus hasn't really changed. Borg proposed eliminating the cheap labour environment that the government has created - a fundamental change to the economic model that we have heard successive PN administrations call for over the years.
Borg's proposal to build new economic niches revolving around high-value economic sectors also isn't new although the sectors that he mentioned - MedTech, Cyber Security, and Cryptography - are different from the 10 economic niches that the PN wanted to focus on in its 2022 general election manifesto.
The equal-pay-for-equal-work principle - Borg's 15th proposal - was advocated for by Simon Busuttil's PN in the run-up to the 2017 general election.
It was also in the Labour Party's electoral manifesto for last election - and in June 2024 the government announced a legal notice that enshrined the principle as of January 2025. Earlier this month though, the PN said that workers had been left empty handed as contract workers were still waiting for their arrears with the government to be settled.
Borg's 15th proposal creates financial incentives for civil service workers to invest in second pillar pensions, a position that the PN has held since at least 2014, while his 16th proposal - to top up pensions to reflect the needs of today - was advocated for in the PN's 2022 general election manifesto, where the party proposed tacking the pension onto a national minimum income for adequate living.
Borg's proposal for a mass transport system - although not given too much detail during the Budget speech - dates back to 2022 as well, when the PN proposed a trackless tram system in its general election manifesto, and a proposal to incentivise car pool was first made by the PN in October 2021 - although it hasn't really been mentioned since.
The PN's 2022 general election manifesto also included measures on remote working - though Borg's proposals go further as they included incentives for reduced hours and flexible hours.
In the health sector, the proposals to build a new hospital in Gozo, a new mental health hospital, to regenerate Mount Carmel Hospital, St Luke's Hospital, and Karin Grech Hospital, and to put more investment into palliative care all pre-date Borg's party leadership.
Borg's 38th proposal for an afforestation and ecological restoration programme could actually be seen as adopting a keynote proposal from the PN leadership campaign of Adrian Delia, and also as a continuation of a 2022 manifesto promise for "the biggest afforestation programme ever done in this country."
You can find ideas which correlate with Borg's 46th proposal - to reduce court delays - and 48th proposal - to identify new social housing projects - in the 2022 general election manifesto as well. In the case of the latter, the PN had even promised "the biggest change in this country's history" when it comes to social accommodation.
There were other pre-announced proposals. For instance, an idea to improve the waste service in all likelihood bases itself around a waste management document that the PN issued for public consultation in August 2025.
In terms of Gozo, Borg himself - when he was still an MP - had proposed a brand new fleet for Gozo Channel and the transformation of the Mgarr Harbour in March this year: two proposals that he mentioned in Parliament.
A third proposal for Gozo - the opening of a permanent cargo route from Mgarr Harbour to mainland Malta - had also been announced in March 2025 by Bernard Grech. Borg has tweaked this proposal slightly: Grech had initially suggested that the cargo route would end in Valletta, but Borg is now proposing that the route runs to the Freeport in Birzebbuga.
Borg's 49th proposal - to offer "significant help" to those who wish to purchase their first home - lacked any depth, and it will be interesting to see how the PN wishes to build upon an area where there are already hefty PL-introduced measures such as the First Time Buyer's Scheme and the €10,000 cash grant spread across 10 years for first time buyers.
The verdict
All in all there is a pretty considerable balance between what is new and what we've seen before.
Is this such a bad thing? A change in leadership does not necessarily equate to a right-about-turn in political ideology and philosophy.
It stands to reason that Borg - who was part of Bernard Grech's parliamentary group which actually came up with some of the ideas detailed above - would actually maintain some of the PN's more recent proposals.
There will be heart taken in the fact that there were some pretty significant new ideas and commitments and, more so, that the PN has clarified its stance on certain issues such as the energy subsidies.
As Borg settles more and more into his new position, we can likely see more proposals - but it seems that rather than this PN being a revolution when compared to its past ideas, it's set to be more of an evolution.