So, Robert Abela assures us the time has arrived for a major policy change. The first 11 years of Labour in government, he says, guaranteed quality of life by making everyone better off. Now, however, quality of life must include the environment.

It all sounds like part of a deep strategic plan. But Abela has been saying the same thing for four years.

In 2020, not even a month after he entered Castille, the minister operating from within the prime minister’s office, Carmelo Abela, declared in an op-ed for this newspaper:

“… proper and sustainable planning has never been more important than it is at this moment in time. Knee-jerk reactions to problems that we should all have seen coming when our economy started growing will do us no good…”

Castille itself told us the right moment was four years ago. And did you notice that offhand remark that the problems of sustainability, going back years, were obvious and predictable?

Here comes the peach: “…from now on, we should be seeing an improvement when it comes to planning in general.”

That was February 2020. In July, at the Labour general conference, the new prime minister said that decisions, tough as necessary, needed to be taken. It’s his signature tune: he said the same thing this month after the European and local council elections.

Labour’s 2022 electoral programme spouted more commitment to sustainable development.

A year later, in 2023, Abela promised a reform of the planning law. Halfway through 2024, we’re still waiting.

Abela’s credibility problem isn’t simply that he’s made and broken the same promise multiple times. We also have reason to doubt his sincerity.

The prime minister promising us upgraded environmental planning is the same man who has personally profited from the degradation in planning.

In 2017, he bought his 2,200 square metre Żejtun house for a song; days later, its multiple illegalities were officially absolved, doubling the value of the property. The following year, he made a cool €45,000 by selling a different piece of property on the same day that the Planning Authority approved a permit.

In 2022, Abela promised the electorate that the government’s “new priority” was to protect the environment. He declared that “we cannot continue to stretch our policies beyond reason”.

At the same time, however, he had dinner with the developer, Joseph Portelli, who, a week later, had a permit approved for a huge apartment block some 300 metres away from Sannat’s cliffs.

Then, last year, the courts declared that minister Ian Borg’s notorious swimming pool had been built illegally. The chief justice slammed the planning review tribunal that had outrageously read the rules in the minister’s favour.

As luck would have it, the court sentence was pronounced at around the same time that Abela was promising the reformed planning law on illegalities. Over a year has passed: still no law or any action taken against Borg’s illegal pool.

Abela’s record is of broken promises given insincerely. But, if he sincerely believes his own potted economic history of the last decade, it’s even worse than that. It means he’s deluded and cannot be trusted to make judicious assessments of quality of life.

Abela’s record is of broken promises given insincerely- Ranier Fsadni

Abela rationalises the last 11 years by saying that, back in 2013, something needed to be done to jump-start the economy after years of Nationalist “stagnation”. Unfortunately, official statistics and Labour’s own actions contradict him.

The economy did take a hit (mild relative to the rest of Europe) in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. By 2011, however, the Central Bank’s statistics show a solid recovery underway.

In 2013, there were many reasons to be furious with Lawrence Gonzi’s government but economic mismanagement wasn’t one of them. Indeed, after Labour contrived to have Gonzi’s last budget voted down in parliament, it promised to pass the identical budget immediately after the election if Labour won.

It made this promise to soothe the jitters of the business community. There was no doubt, in 2013, about who enjoyed more economic authority.

It is also indubitable that, once Labour began effectively to deregulate the economy and environment, the economy took off at rates we had not seen for decades. However, deregulation has social costs, which is why authentic centrist and centre-left political parties are wary of it.

The costs were almost immediately obvious – as Abela’s own government acknowledged in 2020. Infrastructure suffered. Some state schools had to cope with many new pupils without the necessary resources. Hospital waiting lists grew longer.

Corners were cut on construction. Deaths on unsafe worksites mounted. Cowboy developers made life hell for people who did not wish to sell their property. And then buildings began to collapse.

Between 2016 and 2021, in a guide to the world’s best places to live and work in, Expat Insider, Malta slid from the top five to the bottom 10 for quality of life. It’s at the bottom that, after four years of Abela’s promises, Malta still lingers.

While average income rose, quality of life didn’t remain steady; it deteriorated. To gloss over that is callous. It discounts the experience of those – and they were always the most vulnerable – who suffered the deterioration most.

For all we know, Abela means what he says this time – whether out of conviction or electoral necessity. But his record means his word isn’t enough. Until we see Malta climb back up the established quality-of-life indexes, we have every reason to be incredulous.