NSANITY, we've been told Mr. Editor, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result ? which, of course, never happens.

So this time around for the annual grand yawn on the parliamentary calendar known as the Budget Debate we in the Opposition thought we'd try a new approach ? and hopefully produce not just a different result but a better one.

How so? Let me break it down for you.

One of the few things the Opposition gets to decide in the House in the Hill is just what will be taken up in the Budget Debate, and in what order, and just how much time will be allotted to each department.

The power to do so is in the House Rules, Mr. Editor. You could look it up: in there from the days, believe it or not, when the nasty old UBP was in charge and they actually did a correct and progressive thing.

But I digress.

However, the challenge today is to make those selections within the prescribed time limit of 42 hours ? which is why we are meeting three days a week this week and next, setting aside seven hours each day for the Budget.

Sound reasonable? Well, maybe it was once, like 25 years ago.

You don't need me to tell you, Mr. Editor, but I will: Government has grown to the point where we are talking about a Budget of expenditure totalling of close to $950 million ? some $806 million in current account expenditure, up $95 million from last year, plus projected capital expenditure of $110 million on top of the $138 million which is still being spent from last year.

Okay, okay, I can see your eyes starting to glaze over, but stay with me on this (even though there is no happy ending; there rarely is these days): this document which we call the Budget, which is also known as the "Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure for the Year 2006/07", lays out the accounts for a total of 71 heads of expenditure, more commonly known perhaps as cost centres, found within the various Government Ministries.

Imagine then, if the Opposition chose to set down all 71 heads for debate within the 42 hours. That would be just over half an hour for each.

It's hardly enough time to even have a look in ? and remember, Mr. Editor, the purpose of this parliamentary exercise is to review and debate and then approve what's proposed. Sadly ? and I mean , people ? what we have seen in recent years is the development of a debate debacle: the tedium of Ministers reading long and laborious Briefs (which are anything but) prepared by savvy swivel servants whose overriding goal is not so much as to bore (although they do that) as to fill in as much time as possible with all the good things they've done this year and last, and to gloss over the bad or, better still, to not mention the bad at all.

It is a trend that started under the United Bermuda Party and the Progressive Labour Party have continued, if not advanced on this debilitating and deleterious parliamentary practice that masquerades as debate.

So what's an Opposition to do? This year we decided to stop knocking our heads against a parliamentary brick wall and exercise our power to choose by limiting the number of heads for debate and thereby increasing the hours for examination (and participation) for each. The schedule also shows what we think are the most important areas we need to address. The jury is still out on whether this will be an improvement.

I am writing this column after Day One of the Six-Day Debate. But if Monday's session was anything to go by, at least more people got a chance to participate (I counted eight members after the stand-in Minister and her Shadow completed their opening three-hour parliamentary pas de deux); and ? catch this ? the Opposition ensured that there was time at the end for the Minister to answer some of the questions which had been asked.

You might say, Mr. Editor, that activity in the House on the Hill actually started to take the shape of . . . wait for it . . . debate ? and you can't say we didn't try.

The high five

ET me let you in on a secret, Mr. Editor. We could increase the time allotted to the Budget Debate. If Government was actually aggrieved, the Rules provide that we can add to the 42 hours ? if the House agrees.

They have the numbers to make it happen. We don't and it isn't happening. Ministers whose portfolios don't get debated, have to find other inventive ways to talk about the good things which their Ministries are doing.

Minister Dale Butler showed his creativity when he found a way during the General Economic Debate last Friday when members are restricted to general economic principles. Minister Butler argued that Bermuda's strong economy made it possible for his Department to fund so many grants for so many sporting bodies, naming them and the amounts.

There was a comeback though. There always is ? and it came from a former Finance Minister. Grant Gibbons made the point: it isn't just the spending, it's the amounts and the negative inflationary effect which they will have on the local economy.

A few examples:

Example No. 1: The total current account expenditure of Government. It's going to be $806 million, a $95 million increase over last year, a 13 per cent increase that is four times the rate of inflation.

No. 2: Government salaries and wages ? $30 million higher than last year, a nine per cent increase which is three times the rate of inflation.

No.3: Professional services, a $19 million or 42 per cent increase over last year.

No. 4: Communications, $7 million more or an increase of 106 per cent.

No.5: Travel, up some $6.75 million from last year, an increase of 131 per cent. That's some high five, Mr. Editor.

A Shaggy defence

EAVE it to Ren?e, Mr. Editor, to try to spice up debate. There we were trying to hold the PLP Government responsible for the constant and steady spending overruns on ? what else but? ? Government projects which they have initiated since they came to power in '98. The Berkeley Institute is Exhibit Number One: now some two years behind schedule and $50 million over the original budget ? and still counting.

Well, said Ms Webb: "You don't expect anything to be on budget or on time (here in Bermuda). It just doesn't happen. It's a cultural thing."

Oh, really. As Grant Gibbons later pointed out that wasn't the case with CedarBridge Academy. He was the Finance Minister at the time. Good example.

But, in any event, Ms Webb went on to say you can't hold the PLP Cabinet or the individual Ministers responsible. Say what?!

"The civil servants are to blame," she said. Describing them (some and not all) as "mediocre" and "incapable" and "lackadaisical", Ms Webb argued that they needed to be held "more accountable" and, in some cases, fired. It was unacceptable to be drafting budgets, not sticking to them and then coming back for more of the taxpayers' hard-earned money.

Well, excuse me, Mr. Editor, but as Dr. Gibbons later observed, doesn't the buck stop with Ministers and the Cabinet? In a responsible Government Ministers are meant to be just that, and that is responsible for what goes on in their respective Ministries. It's up to them to either control what's going on (or not as the case may be) and/or to put in place systems which ensure projects are on schedule and allocated monies are being properly spent.

As one of my colleagues quite rightly observed, Ms Webb's line of argument, the old two-step, sidestep ? which incidentally was quickly and wholeheartedly embraced by the Premier, who was, surprise, surprise, Works Minister at the start of the Berkeley project ? sounded too much like the Shaggy defence: it wasn't me.

Few of us in the Opposition ? and the listening public too, I hope ? have forgotten the criticism and scorn which the PLP, led by the Premier, heaped first on former Shadow Minister Erwin Adderley and then on the Auditor General Larry Dennis, especially when the latter, in fulfilling his role in our system of checks and balances, was prompted to ask some searching questions in a special report to Parliament in October 2002 when he foresaw that this project was headed in the wrong direction, i.e. behind schedule and over budget.

But I tell you what Mr Editor ? and you don't want to get me off on a rant about this, again, do you? ? if the PLP Cabinet really wanted to do something about improving the system, they could do something about it now.

For instance, let's get on with parliamentary reform and boost membership of the Public Accounts Committee (so we can muster quorums to meet) and open the meetings up to the Press and the public, and call Ministers and departmental staff to account as these projects go along. I mean this would be accountability and transparency in action all rolled into one ? and, dare I say it, a common feature of most other modern parliamentary jurisdictions.

It isn't even viewed as progressive reform any more elsewhere, just standard.

A PS for you too: Independence is not required; just independent thought and action.

No laughing matter

UNNY the column isn't so far, Mr. Editor. But there again the need for reform is no laughing matter. To give you some idea how far we have come, consider this: it used to be that one of the time-honoured Parliamentary traditions to delay debate, or to squelch debate without really appearing to do so, was to send it to committee.

That was yesterday.

Today the Speaker of the House felt compelled to advise members at the outset of the Works & Engineering debate that they were to steer clear of commenting on past practices at the Bermuda Housing Corporation, because of ongoing criminal proceedings, and to stay away from delving into matters which might be the subject of arbitration between Government and Pro-Active over Berkeley ? and then, to top it all off, at one stage of the debate, we had the spectacle of one Government Minister, Walter Lister, trying to stifle any discussion at all on the Berkeley fiasco by claiming, unsuccessfully, that the Speaker's caution amounted to an outright ban on the subject.

What is it, you told me last week, Mr Editor, tragedy with a little effort and time can amount to comedy? I think we're running out of time . . . this week anyhow. You're joking, right? If it's a laugh you'd like to end on, Mr. Editor, try this one ? taken from the general Economic Debate last Friday.

Shadow Finance Minister Pat Gordon-Pamplin was in full flight, giving her maiden Budget Reply. She was listing all the housing developments which had been built by the UBP when they were the Government. Pat went from Boaz Island in Sandys to Top Square, St. George's and left nothing out in between.

"But that was the old UBP," shouted out Cabinet Minister Dale Butler of the PLP.

"The new UBP hasn't built one."

"Just like you," shot back Maxwell Burgess, "and you've been the Government." Many a true word, Mr. Editor, spoken in jest.