No, it has not. It is being defiant at it has been in the past, ignoring the fact that such an attitude is not conducive to good bilateral relations.

You leave out Forace’s biggest blunder as Malta’s High Commissioner. He encouraged the Maltese community to vote for the Labour Party in the Australian elections.

Whether he did this on his own initiative or following instructions from Malta is not known.

The Australian Labour Party lost the election and Malta’s relations with that country plummeted to insignificance.

The outgoing Labour government in Australia has reluctantly agreed to the present nomination. What will happen if the party is not re-elected?

Let us not forget that post 1987 the Fenech Adami administration also negotiated for the benefit of Maltese migrants better pension access under a bilateral Social Security Agreement.

As for being an Australian citizen, I ALSO became one but not until 1988 when it became legally possible to be BOTH. While I have lived in Australia since I was a 12 year old child, I am also proud to be a citizen of Malta.

[Daphne – You became a Maltese citizen in 1988. Significant – it was one of the first liberties the incoming Nationalist government made possible after the outgoing Mintoffian/KMB regime made it impossible for 16 years, along with Maltese women having to leave Malta if they married non-Maltese men, because only ‘foreign wives’ were permitted by the Mintoffian regime to live in Malta, and not ‘foreign husbands’. And yet, you remain a committed Laburist, as though politics has nothing to do with policy and beliefs, and is just a football club which you support mindlessly. As somebody who has always taken a decision on how to vote on the basis of rational assessment, I find people who reason as you do absolutely fascinating.]

Her? Its.

I suppose ours will just go back to his shop.

Similarly in 1971, the MLP appointed Joe Forace, also an Australian citizen, and also an ALP activist, with dire consequences. In 1972, he fell out with his old ALP buddy Geoff Whitlam, then Prime Minister. A year later, the ALP lost to the Liberal Party, and Malta’s – read MLP – High Commissioner couldn’t buy a bloke a free drink from then on.