In an act that defied both logic and common sense, Tourism Minister Renee Webb tried on Friday night on ABC's '20/20' news magazine to defend the indefensible; Bermuda's use of a photo taken in Hawaii in its advertising campaign.

For those who missed it, the key exchange in the episode was this:

Ms Webb: "What's important about the stock photography is it does not misrepresent Bermuda. The woman on the beach was used to represent the mood and charm that Bermuda has."

Interviewer John Stossel: "But the photo is Hawaii. It's Hawaii's mood people are looking at."

Enough said.

The only good news is that the real Bermuda was seen by millions of people, some of whom may now think about coming to Bermuda instead of, well, Hawaii.

But the odds are that most people will watch the show and wonder why Bermuda lied by using the images - and why the Government could not just admit it had made a mistake.

Instead, there was the spectacle of Ms Webb looking foolish on Bermuda's behalf.

This is not the only gaffe that has been made by Government on tourism this week. As she has done on several occasions since the Election was called, the Premier again declared that her Government had turned around tourism. Not even Ms Webb claims that; she says that tourism faces "challenges".

The Premier defies not logic, but the cold facts.

And it is these kinds of gaffes that raise the biggest questions about the Government's fitness to manage an industry whose recovery really is essential.

Not only does it employ thousands of people and brings millions of dollars into the economy, but its revitalisation is essential because Bermuda has become dangerously dependent on international business for its wellbeing.

Both parties will be accountable to their record on tourism during the Election campaign, and neither has much to be proud of.

Under the United Bermuda Party, arrivals figures - and yes, they are important - declined from 1988 on, many hotels closed and none of the several Ministers who held the portfolio seemed able to come up with a cogent or longstanding plan for the future.

The same has been true of the PLP over the last five years. What was worse was that the late Tourism Minister David Allen promised that his Government would revitalise tourism and promised a plan to do so within 100 days of taking office.

Instead, the industry continued to spiral ever downward, there was turmoil within the Department of Tourism and a growing sense that the Government's plans for the industry were changing, if not week by week, then month by month.

Millions of dollars were spent on trips and marketing efforts, almost all to no avail. Perhaps recognising this, the Finance Ministry did little to increase the Ministry's budget, except in the sense that the Hotel Concessions Act gave tax breaks to hotels engaging in major renovations.

That Act is, in essence, the PLP's record. It has been a success, encouraging reinvestment in properties that desperately needed it. To be sure, similar schemes were already in place under the UBP, but not on the scale of Mr. Allen's legislation. Nor did hotels respond to the earlier schemes in the way that they did to the HCA.

It is also fair to say that no one could have predicted the September 11 attacks or the war in Iraq, which have combined to hurt tourism around the world over the last 21 months.

But that does not excuse the Government's lack of focus on tourism through much of its term. It was only towards the end of Mr. Allen's life and under Ms Webb that the Government came to the belated recognition that Bermuda had to return to marketing the Island to well-heeled visitors, primarily from the US East Coast. But that came only after years of wasted effort and wasted money.

The United Bermuda Party's major idea is to take tourism, if not out of politics, then away from it through the creation of a Tourism Authority in which Government and industry members would be partners.

The PLP dislikes the idea, preferring the much lower profile Bermuda Alliance on Tourism.

But it is worth asking if Ms Webb would have been so adamant about defending the Hawaii photo if there had been less at stake politically.

The tourism authority is an idea whose time has come.