It’s impossible to disagree with good governance legislation, but that does not mean that there shouldn’t be a vigorous debate on the issue.That’s why the debate on Friday in the House of Assembly was welcome.Several issues arise when debating good governance in the Bermuda context.The first is that due to the small size of the Island, conflicts of interest will arise from time to time.The important thing is that they be declared and that the person with the conflict removes themselves from the decision.That does not end the problem. Often Ministers can feel beholden to do a favour to friends and colleagues. Civil servants can feel pressured to make decisions on behalf of their political masters.That is why transparency matters so much. It is why contracts should be tendered and bids should be open. Only then can there be reasonable certainty that the best bidder won the contract. To be sure, the best bidder does not always mean the lowest bidder. But whoever is awarding a contract should be able to explain and justify their decision.The second factor that is important is that any rule is only good when it is enforced. Some of what is contemplated in this legislation and other good governance rules has already been in place, or is covered by plain common sense.But a failure to enforce or follow the rules will lead to abuse and questions, and this is why clear and unambiguous codes of conduct are necessary.The current debate over whether the board of directors of the Bermuda Land Development Committee should have appointed their chairman and deputy chairman to a $160,000 consultancy could have been avoided with clear rules on conduct and conflicts of interest. That is just one example.A good deal of Friday’s debate was taken up with discussions of alleged abuses which had taken place during the Progressive Labour Party’s tenure.As usual, the primary defence for this is that the same and worse allegedly occurred under the United Bermuda Party.There is not a great deal of proof offered for this, apart from allegations about events from 40 years ago and the Sea-Land bailout which was revealed by the Auditor and reported on exhaustively by this newspaper.In any event, the easy response to the current Government is that two wrongs never make a right, and after 14 years of government, that defence is beginning to get very thin.The other defence is that many of the allegations are unproven.But the record does not bear this out.In fact, it is too the credit of Ms Cox’s former Premier Alex Scott that they have made efforts to introduce good governance legislation. But the fact that the legislation is needed and the fact that it has not always been enforced proves that you need rules and you need the will to carry them out as well.That is true for politicians and it is true for civil servants. The problem is there is so much money in government that the pressure and temptation to pocket some or steer it towards friends and family will always be there.Only by enforcing the law and ensuring that the penalties are sufficient to be a deterrent can clean government be assured.