Written by Brian Scicluna, Vice Chairperson of IDEAT

Two articles published yesterday on the PN’s official online media outlet Net News illustrate a growing contradiction in our national conversation about work, life, and wellbeing in Malta. The first paints a bleak picture of a country where “life has become a race against time,” where people are “just numbers,” overwhelmed, overworked, and burnt out. The second, however, enthusiastically promotes a Nationalist Party proposal to eliminate tax on the first €10,000 earned from part-time and overtime work.

Taken individually, each article raises valid points: yes, modern life can feel overwhelming, and yes, tax incentives can offer immediate financial relief. But taken together, they expose a jarring inconsistency, and a worrying one.

How can a political party simultaneously decry a culture of overwork while incentivising more of it?

If life in Malta has become a daily sprint, why is more running being presented as the solution?

This contradiction points to a deeper problem in how the PN approaches economic and social policy. On the one hand, they portray a picture of workers drowning in stress, struggling to maintain any semblance of work-life balance. On the other, they dangle carrots that encourage them to clock in longer hours…not because they want to, but because they feel they must.

Let’s be clear: the proposal to remove income tax from overtime and part-time wages is not inherently bad. For some families living paycheck to paycheck, it offers short-term relief. But as a long-term vision for Malta, it entrenches a broken model. It says the only way to make ends meet is to sacrifice more evenings, more weekends, more time with children, partners, or even rest.

What we need instead is a radical rethink of the value of time, not just its economic value, but its human value.

Rather than pushing citizens to work more, the conversation should be shifting towards how we can allow people to work less and live more. Other countries in Europe are already trialling or implementing four-day work weeks or 35-hour weeks, with promising results. Productivity hasn’t fallen, but wellbeing has soared. People are healthier. Families are stronger. Communities are more vibrant.

This is the discussion we need to have.

If the PN believes that life in Malta is suffocating, that the average person is collapsing under the weight of time poverty, then why do their policies continue to treat Maltese people as economic engines to be fuelled by fatigue?

It’s time to start demanding policies that respect not just our work, but our lives. A better Malta is not one where people are working more hours tax-free, it’s one where people don’t need to.

Work-life balance is not a luxury. It is a right. And any serious political vision for Malta’s future must put that front and centre.

What good is a few hundred euros more in the bank if you never have time to spend it — or the energy to enjoy it?

It’s time we stopped applauding overtime and started building a society where it’s no longer necessary.

Brian Scicluna