This is serious business, Mr Editor, governing Bermuda. If you had no sense of how serious — and that’s no small “if”, you do now.

The 2015/16 Budget Statement makes it pretty clear, although I agree pretty is not exactly the right word here.

What makes it even clearer is the apparent about-face the Minister of Finance and his Government are about to take. Despite signs that the economy may be turning around, albeit slowly, and the promise of better things to come, all of which are trumpeted in the Budget Statement, we learn that taxes are going to go up, pretty well across the board (there’s that word again, pretty, which this isn’t), and concessions scaled back. They are also figuring on borrowing a further $125 million in the coming financial year.

The Finance Minister doesn’t exactly say this, but what we are being told is that they don’t have much choice — at least not if he and his Government are going to achieve and maintain their goal of balanced budgets.

The debt which they inherited, and to which they have added, makes the task difficult. The annual cost makes it at $170 million the second most expensive Ministry. But on the bright side, thankfully, doesn’t require another Minister or Junior Minister.

Still the OBA have taken on what they fought for at the last election and nearing the mid-point of their term find themselves in the awkward position, financially, of having to deliver on what they promised: and one of those promises, remember, was not to cost civil servants their jobs.

SAGE tried to work around that rock and hard place. The Commissioners came up with a glide path on how to trim expenditures over three years. There were some specifics. The pity was that following their report public discussion in the form of public meetings didn’t continue to attempt a community census on what was possible and necessary. The pity was too, that public discussion did not extend to revenue and to ideas which Commissioners and the public might have on that front as well.

Instead, now we are promised help in the form of CARTAC, an IMF regional body, which will be asked to study the feasibility of broadening Bermuda’s tax base. Interesting that: given what IMF bodies have had to say about us elsewhere, you might think that is a bit like inviting a wolf in to take a closer look at how to better organise the chickens.

The Finance Minister tells us there are two rules Government is trying to follow going forward:

• Borrow only for capital expenditure; and

• Always ensure current revenue covers current expenditure.

Any surplus becomes a welcome bonus — to pay down debt. But rules are only just that, rules, which can easily be broken and usually are — with regularity. What’s needed is the will to enforce them, to make them work.

But there’s the challenge. Politics often intervenes and political considerations prevail. Supplementaries have a habit of following sadly — and long after the fact. It is so bad and the need so strong that some jurisdictions have taken to legislating the rules and making balanced budgets a legislative requirement. Idea?

Here we are told that we are going to get an “international independent committee” to review, monitor, assess and report publicly on the financial progress of Government. This to enhance “transparency and international credibility”. That’s nice.

But what about making work what we already have? Here I am talking first about the Budget Debate itself. The Opposition delivers its Reply today in which they get to not just set out what they think of what Government is planning but what they would do if they were in power.

That’s the Westminster tradition and practice. Fair enough. It’s what is called the in-principle debate that helps set out the choices voters have. What the heck: each side might also learn a little something too, from each other to Bermuda’s benefit.

But it is the two weeks of three days a week that follow that really count. This is when backbench MPs are meant to drill down (a) on what Government has done (or not) in the current financial year, and (b) on what they propose to do in the next.

Starting with the obvious for this year:

• Why Government fell short of $25.8 million in revenue?

• Where were the $9.4 million in overspends and why?

After the debate is done, answers obtained and promises made, a keen backbench, which includes everybody who isn’t in Cabinet, that is both Opposition and Government MPs, should be keeping a keen eye and tracking progress at every and any appropriate turn.

This is where the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) is also expected to spearhead parliamentary scrutiny through public examination of past and current expenditure. This is the way accountability is brought to bear. This is the role our legislators should be taking up on our behalf, Mr. Editor. We don’t need outsiders to do that work for us, do we?