Unlike the Shadow Minister of Culture, Julie Zahra, I am not bothered by the comments of a film director about my country, and the outrage, although politically legitimate, (this director was given a tax rebate of €47 million), is very disingenuous, or at best naïve.
Calls for Johann Grech to resign should have been made explicitly and by Parliament a long time ago when the Film Commission has been abusing public funds apart from distributing a bonanza of tax rebates to foreign film productions. These calls should have been made by the Opposition with the backdrop of clear policies on the culture industries, and so far, the Nationalist Party has none of these.
Let’s put something in perspective. The policy by the government to dish out tax rebates to foreign film productions was started by the Nationalsit government. In addition, the government’s policy to dish out a bonanza of public funds to foreign artists to supposedly promote Malta as a tourist destination, was also invented by a Nationalist administration. Isle of MTV is actually a product of a Nationalist government: Labour didn’t change any of these policies and only augmented them as it increased the distribution of the related public funding to its contractors and friends.
The Nationalist Party sufferers from a serious deficit of serious policies, which is also reflected in its reluctance to speak openly with the press about the issues of the country. Julie Zahra is yet to come with any comprehensive polices about the culture industries.
As a professional in the culture industries, what is fundamentally alarming with the Labour government is it that despite spending increasing amount of public funds on culture, these funds have not lead to any international breakthrough by Maltese artists except in some exceptional cases with literature. In addition, despite the increased funding, the renewed and return on investment on this public, especially with regards to foreign direct investment, is as low as zero. When public funds are increasingly spent without incurring a significant return, it is often the case that public spending is managed and is rife with rent-seeking.
Here, I’m being very concise without going into detail, however the Nationalist Party should be leading on issues instead of reacting to press headlines. After all the it expect us to take it seriously enough to consider it as an alternative government.
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Historian and Publisher
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