No room for complacency

Family minister DOLORES CRISTINA wants to toughen up the laws for underage drinkers. But she says government’s action on the issue is no knee-jerk reaction

It would have happened sooner or later; the tragic accident that would let all hell break loose. The moral panic became political. Alcohol, the culprit that may not have been, was pushed into the agenda as Cabinet started its discussions on new proposals to strengthen the law concerning underage drinking.
But the death of a 19-year-old university student, who fell to her death from the Valletta bastions after emerging from a New Year’s Eve party, became the focus of weeks of media attention on drinking laws, with the Malta Labour Party unrelentingly calling for an “administrative inquiry” to supplement the ongoing magisterial inquiry. The Minister for the Family and Social Solidarity, Dolores Cristina, thinks the political attention is all a bit too much, miffed at comments that her new proposals for strengthening the law on underage drinking come as a knee-jerk reaction to the tragedy.
“What annoyed me was that such a tragedy should be used and abused, in so many ways, even politically. It was ridiculous. But when you have a tragedy, we should talk about it. It was bound to create a controversy because there is a controversy surrounding open-bar parties. But there’s no room for politics here,” Cristina says.
Embarking on the final stages to get Cabinet approval to strengthen the law on underage drinking, Cristina wants to amend an anomalous situation where whilst selling alcohol to under-16s is illegal, the consumption of alcohol by minors is not. Cristina says the process has been going on for two years, starting off with a parliamentary committee which welcomed a wide array of participants, including members of the leisure industry.
“We took those various reactions, studied the law as needed, and discussed it in the Cabinet committee. To say this was a knee-jerk reaction just a week before moving these proposals to the Cabinet is not on, especially when considering the long process for such proposals to reach the Cabinet stage. The memo itself was presented in Cabinet back in November 2005. I’d hate to discuss someone who passed away. The girl in question was 19 years old – our memo to Cabinet concerns underage drinkers.”
But she is also of the opinion that the drinking age is increased to 18, although not the main thrust of her Cabinet memo. The proposal has elicited criticism mainly from the leisure industry. She says she will keep on expressing her personal opinion on both open bars, which she disagrees with, and about raising the drinking age to 18. “My personal opinion is informed by my agencies and consultative bodies, who tell me that open bars are a recipe for disaster. I am inclined to agree with them. However when I was talking with someone in the industry, they told me that, given the many ways organisers could get around a prohibition on open bars, the best thing would be to regulate parties. An open bar may simply operate with tokens, or by charging stupid prices of 10c per drink.”
Cristina says she does not want to see the toughening of laws on underage drinking, the crux of the proposed amendments, to be lost in a controversy which doesn’t even exist. “Many people, including members of the leisure industry, support this move with respect to under-16s.” In fact, the controversy surrounds raising the drinking age to 18.
“My intent, more than anything else, is to make underage drinking as it is today, for under-16s, completely illegal. I would like to raise the age from 16 to 18. It makes sense, but it is not the main thrust of our memo to Cabinet.”
Unsurprisingly, she is annoyed at the criticism of those who are sceptic about raising the drinking age. “I object very strongly to newspapers which come up with remarks about the ‘silly reasons’ for making underage drinking illegal, and calling the ministers involved ayatollahs, which is what your newspaper said. With all due respect, we are also looking at countries that are looking for solutions for these problems. To call the ministers ayatollahs and to say there are silly reasons for raising the minimum consumption age, is just not on. Shall we say the same about other democratic and liberal countries that are doing the same?”
Whether raising the drinking age will work or not, it’s the scary statistics of a binge-drinking nation of teenagers which lends credence to the move to raise the drinking age. Cristina is categorical about the issue: “Alcohol is bad for young people physically. At 15 and 16, and even at 17, a person’s organs are still developing. What a 30-year-old can drink with impunity, cannot be taken by a 16-year-old, who is also susceptible to alcohol poisoning. This is primarily a health issue. We are also looking at a cultural issue here, especially when it comes to parish feasts. If someone is happy to see 15-year-olds drunk and throwing up all over the place at a Church feast, then you live with it. I cannot live with it, I don’t like it, and I want to change it.
“We should all ask ourselves a question. Do we believe there is a problem? Should we look for a solution? Should we retain the status quo, where we see 13 and 14-year-olds all over the island imbibing alcohol? I cannot live with it. Another point is the system of using breathalysers, which is a farce. It is time to make the testing random and make the tool work as a deterrent.”
With the leisure industry crying foul at the plans to raise the drinking age, Cristina now is also fending off Alternattiva Demokratika, who are spearheading a campaign on rent reform, claiming government is dragging its feet on the issue.
“I don’t feel I’m in competition with Alternattiva or any other body to deliver first,” Cristina says. “I am doing things in my own style and in my own way, and in what I consider to be a responsible manner. It is easy to shoot from the sidelines without seeing the whole scenario. Government has to be responsible. It is a complex issue. It’s not only about residential and commercial rents. It’s about agricultural leases, property that government rents out and from the private sector. It’s about requisition orders, and creating a better rental market.”
Cristina says that before the Census data is out within the next weeks, the government is unable to compile the social impact assessment which she says is instrumental before proceeding into any reform. And with that, she will also commission a financial impact assessment, saying she wants to know what it will mean to government when it comes to shouldering the burden.
“This is one of my deliverables. But the data we have is 10 years old, and we cannot work on a 1995 census. Cabinet has directed me to issue a draft White Paper. But I cannot deliver that before I present a social, and financial impact assessment. I am not going to be hurried before the crucial data is in.”
She called AD’s recent proposals “simplistic” partly because she says they lack a true picture of the situation on this island. “AD is looking very much at the landlords, and I must admit landlords have had a tough deal. My own family has landlords and I know what the situation is. But have they looked at the tenants’ issue? Landlords don’t need to shoulder this responsibility. We have to find remedies, and these remedies will be costly. I have to find out how much this will cost government. I cannot just tell all married couples living with their parents to move out once the tenant dies: what’s the alternative? I need to know what the alternative is. I know that some of the tenants are better off than the landlords, but I need to know what the true picture is. Even GRTU, which is not against reform of commercial rents, want to know what the effects will be of reforming the rental market will be, whether it will result in businesses closing down or loss of jobs. Has Alternattiva done this?”
Cristina says that in principle the government wants to move to a time when landlords can enjoy their property. They are currently commissioning reports from other countries which had similar reforms, to look at transition periods. “Now it’s the computation that counts. What government would like to do is make this transition the least painful possible. I don’t think this is procrastination or lack of courage. On the contrary, we are being responsible, just as any government should act.”
With no apparent timeframe for reform, she hopes that even before the next election, government may look at the least painful situation before gradually moving on. “But we won’t stall things until an election passes. There is no direct stalling here. I intended to prepare the draft White Paper to be presented to Cabinet by the first quarter of 2006. The Prime Minister said “no”, and said it should be ready by the end of October. That’s how government is stalling it. Now we finished it in November, and I don’t think anyone will hold it against us for taking it up two weeks late. Things are happening, but we have to get the impact assessments on the table before proceeding.”
Her most radical reform yet to come is getting the invalidity pensions system restructured, after strengthening the ministry’s Benefit Fraud Unit into a directorate. Describing the situation of boarded out workers as an area where there is “rampant abuse” Cristina says the government will also be issuing impairment bands which will determine the extent to which somebody qualifies for an invalidity pension. “If someone has an impairment which is say, 30 per cent limiting, it doesn’t mean you cannot contribute anything in the labour market, so we are looking at retraining and re-skilling opportunities for these people. We are going to review existing beneficiaries. We know there is a culture of benefit abuse and we need to cut down on it because it is costing a hell of a lot of money. The expenditure will go down if we cut on abuse but it will be redistributed to other sectors. There may be less beneficiaries but there will be a redistribution of resources, so we won’t necessarily cut down on expenditure. And we will restructure the system of medical boards.”
So at how much does she quantify the bogus claims for invalidity pension? “Well they are quite substantial. What is interesting is that over 60 per cent of invalidity beneficiaries are boarded out for psychiatric reasons. You would think that people asking to go out on an invalidity pension are masons, for example, who hurt their back.
“One of the areas we are looking into is the issuing of ID cards. There are cases in which say, three people in one household have an ID card issued on three different addresses – their front door address, their garage address, and the address of their back door which falls on another street, in order to claim more social benefits. The system has to be reviewed to make sure it does not allow any abuse. We have to make sure that people’s addresses are the actual place where they are living.”
Cristina can expect a more busy schedule as spring creeps in, and with that the sign of calmer waters and the approach of more boat arrivals of asylum seekers from North Africa. Her ministry is entrusted with the open centres which host asylum seekers who have been released from detention, and other migrants granted protection. Last year she expressed her surprise at the level of xenophobia that existed on the issue. Her reading of the Depasquale report, which looked into the use of force on detained asylum seekers at the hands of the Armed Forces of Malta, is that there were parts “which left a couple of grey areas”.
“There is great need for an educational programme on the issue. And politicians need to be careful in their choice of words on the matter. We have to be careful, because the words we use change perceptions, and introduce new perceptions.”