Salvino Giusti is yet another dinosaur-era fossil

Salvino Giusti

The consultancy fees paid to Salvino Giusti, who advises the Foreign Ministry on consular affairs in a position of trust (please, enough with the ‘person of trust’ which, like ‘house of character’, is a peculiarly Maltese creation) have made the news.

The Foreign Ministry has since issued a correction, saying that he is paid €28,420 every year and not every month as declared in the government’s response to a question in parliament.

Giusti was engaged in this position of trust, as adviser to the Foreign Ministery, in February last year.

But here’s the thing. Giusti lives in Australia – quite a long way away for a consultant to an office in Valletta – where he has been Consul-General for New South Wales also since February last year, and for which he is paid €59,261 a year.

That makes his ‘position of trust’ consultancy look like nothing more than justification for paying more than he should be paid as consul-general.

But to my mind that’s not the main issue. The main issue is that the man is a septuagenarian and, because fossils of his sort are now clogging up the works, young and dynamic men and women are not getting a look-in.

Let’s put things into perspective. This website is written by somebody who was BORN in 1964. But Malta’s new Consul-General in New South Wales JOINED THE CIVIL SERVICE in 1960. So when I was born, Salvino Giusti had been in the civil service for four years already. Even if he joined at the earliest possible age – 16 – that makes him 71 today at least. But it’s probably more like 73 or 74 – and at that age he has moved to Australia to represent Malta.

His last position in diplomacy was as Malta’s Consul-General in Libya, a full 30 years ago. He left that position in 1987.

Before the last general election, Giusti – who was living in Malta and not Australia – canvassed for Labour candidate Charles Buhagiar and managed his political surgeries. He was promised a job in Buhagiar’s private secretariat should he have been made a minister. Buhagiar, however, remained a backbencher.