Budgets are meant to tell us where a government wants to take the country, but Budget 2027 tells us something more revealing. It shows a government stuck in campaigning mode, saying one thing in September and the opposite in October, and one that now wants employers to pay for a situation the Labour government created itself.

Take the story of the super bonus. Only a month before the budget, the Finance Minister hinted that Labour's flagship promise would not make it into the first budget of this legislature, and he said it was a choice between keeping energy subsidies and paying the bonus. Then, on budget night, we all saw the immense glee on the Government benches, as the Finance Minister announced the bonus.

Nobody will begrudge workers the extra money, and I certainly do not. The question, however, is, if the money was there all along, why did the government spend weeks playing it down and telling people they would have to choose? And if it was not there, where is it coming from now?

The same can be said about the measures on third-country nationals. For more than a decade, this government built its idea of economic growth on bringing in ever larger numbers of foreign workers, filling gaps in the labour market with imported labour while doing little to raise productivity, wages or skills. Employers were encouraged to depend on that model, and many had little choice but to do so. Now that the pressures of that model are impossible to ignore, the government has decided to raise permit fees and present the move as a correction, as if the situation had arrived from somewhere else.

Even employers are not convinced. The Malta Chamber described the permit fee hike as a disincentive for businesses that rely on foreign workers, and called it more of a revenue exercise than economic policy. The Chamber of SMEs warned that the TCN measures could raise costs for employers and make labour shortages worse, which is precisely the opposite of what any sensible policy should achieve. When the businesses expected to carry a measure say it will hurt both them and the economy, the government should listen more carefully.

The deeper problem is one the Malta Chamber also identified, namely that the budget failed to set out how the government intends to transform the economy and address Malta's productivity problem. Raising the price of a work permit does nothing to change the model that made us so dependent on imported labour in the first place. It simply sends the bill for that model to the businesses and workers who had to live with it, while the government avoids the harder work of planning for an economy built on higher value, better skills and a more sustainable pace of growth.

Taken together, the super bonus and the TCN measures tell the same story. This is a government that reacts to the moment, changes its message according to the audience, and prefers to tax the consequences of its own choices rather than admit that those choices need to change. Malta needs a budget that plans for the next ten years, and this government has once again given us one that is planned around the next tiktok or reel.