Bermuda faces a serious performance challenge in the years ahead; a challenge driven by the failure to solve public problems that have been long known to us.

We have made similar statements over the past year mostly by drawing attention to the disturbing gap between the government's promise and its performance. We do so again in the wake of President Obama's inauguration because his speech contained a statement which is wholly applicable to Bermuda and has been so for some years now. The statement reads as follows:

"The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works – whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified."

Few in Bermuda can say that this government has been effective in managing or even getting to grips with the challenges that affect our economic life. Not our seniors on fixed incomes who continue to be confronted by serious cost-of-living challenges every day. Not the people who cannot find a house they can afford to rent or purchase.

Not those facing costly health care challenges. Not taxi and truck drivers whose livelihoods have been challenged by Government policy. We have a government that has wasted tens of millions of dollars through poor management and seat-of-the-pants planning.

We have Cabinet Ministers called into question for unethical activities who continue without regard. We have had a chronically undermanned Police service and deterioration in effective community policing. We have a tourism industry in deep decline and a government that has failed to counteract it over 10 years in office. The same can be said for the decline in our health care facilities, though we note the hospital has new five-star executive offices.

The consequences of official inaction and indiscipline are accumulating and threaten our ability to conclusively deal with these challenges, which will not go away. Our concern is that the government lost huge opportunities to act when the economy was booming, and that its spendthrift ways during those 'fat' years has severely limited our ability to respond effectively in the lean times ahead.

Our circumstances mean that the government will need to bring to bear the sharpest focus — sharper than it has ever shown – on the most vulnerable people in our society. Lean times are when governments prove their value. There is a second quotation in President Obama's inaugural speech that is worth noting as we look for solutions to address the challenges before us. It has to do with our values and how they work for us.

It is widely felt that our values have been under siege for some time — leading to an unacceptable rise in socially unacceptable behaviour.

Bermuda was built over the centuries on a platform of human diversity, and whilst our journeys have been different — and painful for many — a strong work ethic and faith have been at the core of the collective experience; passed from one generation to the next. President Obama echoed our experience this way:

"Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism. These things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths."

There is no getting away from the reality that hard work will be required from all of us, not just to get through economic hard times but also to meet the long-standing challenges in health care, tourism, housing, education, crime and everyday cost-of-living challenges felt by so many.

This is the time for all Bermudians to draw closer to the core values that make each of us better and, by extension, our island stronger. Faith, hard work, brotherhood, honesty, openness, charity, tolerance and fair play. We know these values and what they mean. We know they lie within each of us.

Obama's inaugural call is a reminder that the opportunity for a better path is always before us. If we take it together, we will have the best chance to succeed.