The public pays for its own deception

In 2016, Joseph Muscat broadcast his New Year’s video. Muscat was shown visiting a couple at their new property, which they purportedly purchased thanks to Muscat’s generous tax-exemption scheme.  The couple told the Prime Minister on that promotional video that they were expecting a baby,  encouraged by the disposable income left in their pockets by Muscat’s amazing policies.

Yet the whole thing was staged. The couple, Fernando and Lorella Agius, had actually acquired their property more than seven years before and had never benefited from any of Muscat’s tax exemption schemes. They didn’t need Muscat’s help.

They are part of the families behind Construct Furniture, Labour’s favourite company, which reaped millions of euro of Labour government contracts, tenders and direct orders in just a few years. Muscat had tried to fool the nation – but got caught. Muscat’s playacting was exposed as a total scam.

When we thought we’d finally got rid of the “artful dodger of Europe”, as the BBC described him in an interview, Robert Abela crops up with his own fraud. Fronting Abela’s “best in history” budget is a poster family – Jean Paul Attard, his wife and his two daughters.

Yet again, the Attard family isn’t your average family struggling to make ends meet to raise their children.  They don’t represent the low- and middle-income families who will not have to pay tax because they earn less than €30,000.

Jean Paul Attard has eight paid positions, funded mainly by the taxpayer. He is the head of operations at the National Development and Social Fund (NDSF), the agency managing the pile of cash derived from Muscat’s cash for passports scheme. Attard also sits on the Cultural National Heritage Advisory Committee, the Scholarships Appeal Board and the Malta Qualifications Framework Appeals Board.

He also lectures at the government’s Institute for the Public Service.  He’s a football commentator on Labour’s TVM.  He has also been appointed to the Board of the Institute for Financial Services. He even finds time to work in the film and television industry. And his wife has her own job. Attard’s family are unlikely to be earning less than the €30,000 that will qualify them for Labour’s proposed tax benefits.

Surely Labour could have found a family within the right income bracket to pose for that propaganda photo. Why does Labour keep trying to dupe the public? Maybe we should thank God for small mercies – at least Robert Abela didn’t feature in his own propaganda video at the Attard family home.  At least Abela still has some catching up to do to reach Muscat’s nadir.

In that New Year’s video, Fernando and Lorella Agius host Joseph Muscat for coffee in their kitchen at their “newly-purchased” house, bought over 7 years earlier.  Muscat discussed the Agius household economy with the couple. He asked them whether they had benefited from the scheme for first-time buyers introduced by his government, to which Fernando falsely replied that they had and waxed lyrical about what a boost the scheme had been for them.

Muscat thought he could fool the whole nation.  Instead, his deception was exposed.  The OPM was asked by the press whether it knew that the Agius couple had not benefited from the tax exemption.  Muscat’s OPM didn’t even bother to reply. Muscat’s office refused to clarify whether he was part of the scam and was simply “playacting”.  Fernando Agius also did not comment.

Why does even a New Year’s broadcast message by a Labour Prime Minister have to become an exercise in duplicity?  Why does even a family photo for Labour’s budget propaganda campaign feel like we’re being duped?

In 2016, Muscat spent €8,474 of our money on his fake New Year’s broadcast video intended to highlight his generous budget measures.

We still don’t know how much of our money Abela is spending to boost the message that his 2026 budget is the best in the country’s history.

What we know is that he spent over €280,000 on Budget 2025 advertising.   He spent another €196,235 for Budget 2024 propaganda.  He spent another €115,000 for promoting the 2023 budget.   In 2021, Abela spent €438,804 of our money on pre-budget consultations and promotions.

The saddest part of the story is that Labour not only tries to deceive us but does it with our own money.