Prime Minister Joseph Muscat this evening dismissed the PN's suggestion that development outside development zones should be subject to approval by a two-thirds majority in Parliament.
He said he did not agree with this recommendation as he didn’t want politicians to decide on such projects, as this should be left in the hands of experts.
"I don't want to turn the clock back and leave these decisions up to politicians, as that is the recipe for corruption, Dr Muscat said an extraordinary meeting of the Labour Party's general conference, convened to elect the new deputy leader for party affairs.
Dr Muscat said land was a scarce resource, and the government had only taken a very small amount of ODZ land for its projects, when compared to previous administrations.
"Don't judge us on applications filed by the private sector," Dr Muscat urged those present.
In a reaction to Dr Muscat's comments on its ODZ proposal, the Nationalist Party said Dr Muscat had shown how he was cut off from the people when he described the proposal on ODZ developments as a recipe for corruption.
Dr Muscat was also isolated, since he was the only one to have criticised the proposal, with environment NGOs...
