Finance Minister Clyde Caruana is worried about the rapid increase in population. During a Malta Institute of Accountants conference, he argued that Malta needs to find a new economic model because the current one is unsustainable.

It seems that Caruana has finally had his Damascus moment.

The opposition has long been clamouring that the government’s policy of growing the economy by increasing the population is unsustainable. For years, our criticism was met with jeers by members of the government.

I remember disgraced ex-prime minister Joseph Muscat in parliament saying that if it were so easy to grow the economy by importing labour, everybody would do it.

We replied that there is a reason why other countries did not follow this economic model. It gives short-term gains but creates long-term irreversible pain. We are now feeling that pain.

The Maltese are finding themselves out-priced in the property market. Our infrastructure cannot cope with the added stress of a rapidly increasing population. We are spending more and more time caught up in traffic jams. New roads deliver more traffic jams instead of the promised quicker transit times. Waiting time in hospitals increased. Food prices are rising as demand increases.

We are ruining what is left of our streetscapes. People are fed up with this overdevelopment as evidenced by the thousands who took to the streets of Valletta to protest.

The government is caught between a rock and a hard place. It needs to keep on growing the population to sustain the current economic model but, in so doing, is putting even more pressure on our country’s infrastructure. Not to mention further deteriorating our standard of living.

Caruana said that if we continue on the current economic path, our population will have to increase to 800,000. What kind of standard of living will we have if we practically double the number of people living on this island?

Successive Labour governments failed to diversify the economy, choosing instead to base financial and economic growth on the sales of passports and importing cheap labour. We all remember minister “I-know-nothing” Edward Scicluna saying that Malta’s economy needs cheap labour to remain competitive. Caruana is admitting that Scicluna was wrong. Cheap labour is not the key to a sustainable economy. Real growth must come from a new economic model.

Caruana has every reason to worry. The national debt is at a record high and now exceeds €9 billion, and is double the figure it was in 2012. The golden passport goose has stopped laying eggs and exposed the fickleness of labour’s financial and economic policies.

Labour spent 10 years inflating the government’s recurrent expenditure, not least by putting thousands of people on the public payroll. With the money from passports drying up, the government is finding itself with a hole in its bucket, a hole that Caruana is finding more and more difficult to fill.

Cheap labour is not the key to a sustainable economy. Real growth must come from a new economic model- Mario de Marco

Whatever roadmap Labour had for our economic transformation and financial growth failed. It delivered a short high burst of growth but, in the process, damaged the foundation of our society irreversibly.

The truth is that Joseph Muscat et al needed this high-octane economic growth as a sleight of hand. They needed the distraction to carry on their underhanded business deals, the details of which we are only starting to fathom and discover. They relaxed planning regulations, weakened regulatory authorities across the board and allowed the black economy to flourish on the back of cheap labour.

Money flowed through the economy at a faster rate. This was Joseph Muscat’s panis et circensis ploy. They looted while many celebrated their newfound wealth.

Now is the time of reckoning. Labour’s popularity at the polls took a hiding. Robbed of their unassailable lead and without the shimmering lights of an over-performing economy, we see Labour for what they truly are: a government devoid of clear thinking and policy. A government that is a parody of what it promised to be. A government that delivered the very opposite of transparency, meritocracy and accountability.

I am relieved that Caruana finally realised that we need to change. But the people who created this mess cannot be trusted to solve it. They had 10 years to come out with sustainable economic policies but, so far, have delivered none. They are now harping about the urgent need to change without saying how they will bring about this change to undo the harm they created.

And for those who say or think that all politicians are the same, I ask you this: Who created the financial services industry in Malta? Who developed the ship registration industry? Who planted the seed and nurtured the aviation maintenance sector in Malta? Who brought the iGaming industry to our shores? We can have economic growth, real economic growth, by looking at new sectors, just as we did in the past.

Malta needs a fresh start. A fresh way of thinking. We can do this. We can turn things around, not by pushing up our population to unsustainable levels but by making the best use of our resources, our skills and our entrepreneurial spirit. We can grow by investing in every person living on this island and by investing in value-added activities that benefit the society of today and tomorrow.

Mario de Marco is the Nationalist Party’s spokesperson on tourism.