Is it really a ‘progressive’ budget?

The government’s latest Budget sends an unmistakable and troubling signal about how women are valued in Malta today. The clear implication is that a woman’s contribution to the nation is measured foremost by her willingness to have children.

Beneath the customary fanfare of tax rebates and cost-of-living relief lies a clear subtext: that a woman’s primary value to the country is measured by her willingness to have children. In 2025, such a message feels not only out of step with Malta’s social and economic progress, but starkly regressive for a government that insists it is “progressive”.

This is not a debate about whether families deserve support. They do, and urgently so. It is a debate about state priorities, political messaging, and the troubling assumption at the heart of this Budget: that national demographic concerns can be solved by incentivising women to produce more children.

The government that has long been geared towards money at all cost now believes it can solve a societal problem with more money. That is consistent with Labour’s governing philosophy since 2013: treat every challenge as a financial transaction.

When the economy needed growth, it imported cheap labour. When its electoral base required maintaining, it expanded the public sector payroll and padded state agencies with jobs. Employers across the private sector have long complained that they cannot find workers because so many are absorbed into government structures that do not necessarily require them.

Now, confronted with the predictable consequences of a decade of economic policy built on cheap labour, the government is again reaching for its favourite lever: cash, despite an €11 billion debt.

This time, it is throwing more money at families who have children because, we are told, “we have a problem.” But demographic complexity cannot be bought off with cheques.

Fertility rates do not rise because a Finance Minister announces a grant. They rise in countries where young people feel secure enough to form stable households, where housing is affordable, where career progression is compatible with parenthood, where childcare and healthcare are accessible, and where employers adapt to modern life rather than anchoring it to a 9am to 5pm model.

The Budget narrative appears driven less by a progressive vision for family wellbeing than by panic about numbers. Government ministers have warned that foreigners may soon “outnumber the Maltese”, as if this outcome were some unforeseeable act of nature rather than the direct consequence of Labour’s economic strategy: A model dependent on rapid population expansion, cheap labour and construction-led growth.

Years of inadequate planning in infrastructure, housing, health services and education have culminated in pressure that many families are now feeling acutely. Instead of acknowledging and addressing the structural causes, the government’s reaction is to urge Maltese women to have more children, and to sweeten the plea with money.

In a country that has invested heavily in female education, this is a regressive message that jars with the lived reality of thousands of women who contribute to society in myriad ways beyond motherhood.

Child-free adults and single people are not societal outliers. Many are taxpayers, employers, innovators and community leaders.

They run businesses, generate employment and contribute to the country’s cultural and economic life no less than parents do. To suggest otherwise is to ignore the whole tapestry of Malta’s social and economic ecosystem.

The Budget narrative appears to have been shaped not by a long-term vision, but by short-term anxieties.

Years of inadequate planning have fuelled concern about population growth driven by foreign workers – a concern now seemingly being “addressed” by urging Maltese women to produce more children.

Those are the measures Malta needs – and they require regulation, not cheques. Women who run businesses already understand this; many are leading by example with flexible work models that retain staff and support families. The state should be challenging employers to modernise, not bribing families to reproduce.

The message reduces women to instruments of demographic policy. It is not only patronising; it is intellectually lazy.

Women did not pursue degrees, careers and public roles merely to be told to return to the domestic sphere in the name of national strategy. Motherhood is a personal choice, not a state-directed duty.

Those who choose it deserve strong support. Equally, those who do not should be recognised for the value they bring to the economy and society in other forms.

Malta should be celebrating the remarkable achievements of women across all sectors – in business, academia, healthcare, the arts and public life. Instead of treating women as a lever to remedy policy missteps, the government ought to address the root causes of the pressures it now seeks to relieve: sustainable population planning, infrastructure strain, labour market dependence and housing affordability.

If the country truly believes in equality and in making full use of its human capital, it must trust women to decide for themselves if and when to have children, and respect every path they choose.

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister tours the Monti, camera crew in tow, listening selectively to praise about how well he is doing. It is political theatre, not leadership. Malta does not need staged walkabouts. It needs honesty about the consequences of a decade of wrong decisions and a willingness to change course.

Malta should be celebrating women who have expanded the nation’s intellectual and economic horizon. They are not an untapped reserve of potential mothers waiting to be summoned into service.

The responsibility of the state is to build a country in which every choice is respected, and in which no woman feels pressured into motherhood because a Budget speech implied that her patriotic duty is to give birth.

The government would have been wiser to focus on fixing the mismanagement that led us here.