Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1515804
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 11 FEBRUARY 2024 7 INTERVIEW The following are excerpts from the interview. The full interview can be found on maltatoday.com.mt as well as our Facebook and Spotify pages. Scan this QR code to see the full interview. Your relationship with environmental NGOs is not as serene as it should be. En- vironmentalists did not take too kindly to your appoint- ment as planning minister. How do you react to these sentiments? I have always been open and willing to meet NGOs and stakeholders. I may not have a good relationship with one par- ticular NGO [BirdLife], but I have worked well with a lot of Gozitan NGOs, including Nature Trust… myself and the ministry are willing to listen to everyone but I will also be deciding things. My first steps over the past few weeks, I took alongside a big en- vironmentalist, Paul Buttigieg, who for the past 20 years has made it a personal mis- sion to save Hondoq ir-Rummien. We are now at a stage where we will be changing the policy to safeguard the place and I will be the minister to sign on it. There is this fear that you will give developers and contractors free rein to do as they please. How do you respond to this criticism? I don't know from where this criticism is originating… Nobody should give free rein to anybody. The rules, policies and laws are there to be applied equally. You can put your minds at rest that no one will be allowed free rein because of me. At Hondoq ir-Rummien, government will be changing the local plan to prevent any development from happen- ing. Every time environmen- talists and residents argue that the 2006 decision to include land into the de- velopment zones should be reversed through a change in policy, government argues against reversing past poli- cies [that gave land owners pretended rights]. But that is exactly what you are doing in Hondoq. People in Zurrieq, protesting against the devel- opment of agricultural land at Nigret would tell you why is it OK in Hondoq but not elsewhere? On Hondoq, the Labour Party has always had a clear commitment to safeguard Hondoq, expressed in several electoral manifestos. We are fulfilling the pledge we made… But this does not mean we cannot make changes in other localities. Obviously, every case has to be treated on its own merits… but where changes are needed we will be doing them. I have heard the Prime Minis- ter speak on several occa- sions saying changes [to the development boundaries] cannot be reversed because people cannot be denied the rights they were given. Why is it that you seem to have discarded this principle in Hondoq but are reluctant to do so in other cases? In Hondoq, our decision was based on the electoral mandate given to us by the people. We were clear with everyone – residents, people and the developers who were prospecting such a project – and so our position was crystal clear. The Prime Minister is correct when he speaks in this way. Let us be honest with ourselves; everyone is against development unless it belongs to them. As legislators and the Planning Authority we are obliged to make the good decisions. Every case is unique. In 2006, the Nationalist gov- ernment made a big mistake when it ex- tended development boundaries but over 20 years some of these zones were sold. Families invested in them and one cannot at the stroke of a pen deny these families the investment they made in their home... We have to be sensitive to these… In Hondoq the Planning Au- thority has argued that the developer was never granted a permit of any sort so there is no argument to be made that they will lose 'pretend- ed rights'. There are other sites where no permits were ever issued. Do you exclude that in other zones, policy changes will take place to safeguard them just like Hondoq? I don't exclude anything. We have to deal with these on a case by case basis. But there are a number of other zones where planning control applications have been approved. In 2014, a Labour govern- ment introduced the rural policy which practically al- lowed people who had a pile of stones on their land and could prove that someone used to live there at some point, to build again. Your predecessors committed themselves to change this policy but despite a draft being published it remained shelved. What is going to happen to this policy? The rural policy had clear objectives… to sustain and help farmers and animal husbandry farms. Before this policy there was nothing to regulate ODZ areas and the development that is necessary for ag- ricultural purposes. This policy created a level playing field for farmers… in the vast majority of cases it worked well. But there were instances where people tried to use the policy to turn a pile of stones in an ODZ residence by searching for documents that go back 100 years to prove that some- one lived there sometime. My predeces- sor Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi gave the PA direction to scrutinise such permit appli- cations well and there is also a clear di- rection that the previous property should appear in the plans of 1976… if need be it will change like any other policy that may need amending. But this process had already started. Are you committed to change the policy? There were holes in the policy and we have to see that these are closed, and the direction is such. But no policy can be 100% watertight. A watertight policy is of- ten one that is impractical. If there are as- pects that need to be addressed, they will be amended and not just in this policy… I can't say when the changes will happen because there is a bureaucratic process that needs to be followed. Do you agree with Joseph Muscat's candidature for the European election? Why not? Joseph Muscat was the architect of the Labour Party in government. After 25 years in the wilderness he was the per- son who handed the government back to the PL and so it does not bother me at all to see him on the ballot sheet. I have no doubt that [a Jo- seph Muscat candidacy] will give the PL an electoral boost because it creates enthusi- asm among Labour voters but don't you think this could cause problems for the party in the long term? At the end of the day, the people are sov- ereign; who am I to tell them how to vote? PHOTOS: JAMES BIANCHI / MALTA TODAY