by Daphne Caruana Galizia

It's reassuring to see that the Catholic Church in Malta has spoken out against bird-shooting at last. It did so through its environment commission, the chairman of which said last week: "Hunters' organisations, which promote this pastime, have to realise that hunting and trapping protected species, the illegal sale of carcasses of rare birds, and disrespect for the laws are harming their 'passion', and drawing down opprobrium." In its statement, the Church environment commission said that a few representatives of the Church may have contributed to this problem in the past by further fanning the flames, instead of trying to encourage hunters and trappers to be reasonable.

The commission pointed out that it is a mistake to carry on trying to justify the trapping and shooting of birds as though the circumstances are unchanged from what they were in the past, when people shot for the pot and when there are now developments like high-calibre guns and shooting at sea. It is clear, the commission said, from the ever-decreasing number of birds that pass through Malta, that bird-shooting and trapping are unsustainable pastimes.

The government has taken a firm stand against indiscriminate hunting already. Now that the Church has done so, perhaps the Labour Party will find the strength to follow suit. The political groupings which favour hunting tend to be ultra-conservative and right-wing – hence our own National Action. It seems, from the reluctance to tackle hunting as well as from other issues like Euro-phobia and fear of foreigners, that our supposedly left-wing and liberal Labour Party falls squarely within the ambit of the right - a case of very confused identity, and a clash between what it claims to be on paper and what it in fact is.

We need some reassurance from the Labour Party that when it is elected to government, it will carry on with the ongoing harsh stance against bird-shooting and trapping. George Pullicino may be thought annoying for a great variety of reasons, but he is the first government minister that I can remember as having confronted these anti-social persons and faced them down. Even so, we're only a fraction of the way there yet, and while Alfred Sant has made it a point to go on television to hector about zero tolerance for corruption, we haven't heard a word about zero tolerance for those who massacre protected species.

He took great care, the other day, to visit a nonagenarian lady in Sliema, whose long-time home is threatened by aggressive developers. He took the press with him so that he could be photographed in his usual stiff suit, regarding her with kindness and an extended hand. I can't remember any press photographs of him visiting nature parks wrecked by pro-hunting vandals, or taking a trip to Mizieb to pose with a bloodied eagle. No, he might lose some votes, there, mightn't he? Or maybe he approves of bird-shooting. How would we know, when he hasn't bothered to tell us?

People living in Sliema have been debilitated by digging and building going on next door for 20 years at least. It's not a new problem. At least one woman has died, and when my children were babies I was forced to leave my own home between 6am and 6pm every day because of the hideous racket, returning one time to find that a large hole had been knocked into our bedroom wall. That was 17 years ago, though perhaps it has taken Alfred Sant that long to find a Sliema resident who would accept a visit from him - and she had to be a nonagenarian, poor thing.

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Perhaps the Labour Party, which has a long tradition of utilitarianism, will see police guards for rare birds as something of an uncalled-for luxury, like getting as many young people into tertiary education as possible, instead of keeping them uneducated and then trying to attract manufacturing investment to Malta so that they can get cheap jobs on the factory floor. That was what Alfred Sant announced a few days ago, giving us a rare insight into his policies for Malta's future: that a Labour government will go out of its way to attract manufacturing industry to Malta. Maybe now that his vision for a Switzerland in the Mediterranean has failed, he's going for a China in the Mediterranean instead.