Opposition Leader Bernard Grech said he would not be averse to raising salaries for the prime minister or ministers and MPs, in hopes that it would attract more people to public life.
Grech was interviewed by Times of Malta journalist Mark Laurence Zammit on a wide variety of issues when the topic came up.
Although Grech strongly refuted the idea that people currently in politics do so for the "wrong" reasons, he acknowledged that salary limitations may be a barrier discouraging competent and passionate people from pursuing a political career.
"How can the prime minister, who is like the CEO running the entire country, have a salary that is about a third of what the CEO of a private company would make?" he questioned.
He said he would not be against raising salaries for the prime minister, ministers or members of parliament, but stressed that this would have to be coupled with robust party financing law.
"I don't have this problem in my party, but let's remove all shadows and doubts from this and create proper party financing laws," he said.
Asked about his criticism of bloat in the public sector as well as 'persons of trust' positions common in government, Grech vowed to make a "clean sweep" of corrupt officials in public roles.
Referencing recent scandals involving agencies such as Identità, Grech said that those responsible for corruption would be swiftly axed and that the "mafia" would be purged from such entities under his watch.
Those who are competent at their jobs and are diligently fulfilling their public service have nothing to worry about, he went on, but if entrusted to govern, the PN would ensure that all those appointed to important roles would be trustworthy and credible.
"People don't have to have the same political colour, if they are competent they can work with us," Grech said, adding that the PN in government would not be ignoring all of those who had been sidelined by the Labour government just because they happened to be sympathetic to the PN.
Grech spent considerable time discussing the PN's vision of transforming Malta's economic model, saying that it would work to carve out new, non-labour-intensive economic niches and invest heavily to incentivise the private sector to create more "high-quality" jobs.
The PN leader said that he would "guarantee" that he would be able to achieve this as prime minister while also retaining Malta's current rate of positive economic growth.
Conversely, he said that the government has only grown the economy by "importing" thousands of foreign workers every year and the failure to adequately plan for such rapid population growth has had a negative impact on communities.
Touching upon people's frustration with the development lobby, Grech cooled talk of slowing down construction, saying that there is still more room to develop Malta.
But, he said, this would be achieved by putting a higher value on sustainable buildings and whipping the industry into shape in such a way that it understands it must work in harmony with its neighbours and preserve the quality of life.
Speaking about reducing traffic congestion, Grech said that the issue must be looked at holistically and while improving infrastructure is part of it, incentivising people to ditch their cars and decentralising services from traffic hot spots would be the way the PN envisions paving the way forward on the matter.