At last, it’s under way. The work of the Commission of Inquiry into the Auditor-General’s scathing reports on the Bermuda Government’s finances between 2010 and 2012 has started.

Expectations from the public will be high — and rightly so. The slipshod management of public money during those years was both disgraceful and deeply damaging.

Taxpayers deserve to know how and why it happened, who allowed it and whether funds were misappropriated.

All residents continue to pay the price for the profligacy of that period, a time when the debt juggernaut charged into top gear and started careering downhill.

It has taken a few years of relative austerity just to apply the brakes, but we are still at least a couple of years and several more tax increases away from the day when the Minister of Finance can project a balanced budget for the year ahead.

The $2.3 billion national debt is a burden we must all shoulder. Servicing the debt costs more than every ministry bar one and this limits the Government’s ability to pay for health, education and transport services, for badly needed infrastructure upgrades and to employ the next generation of civil servants. It also necessitates tax increases that reduce every individual’s spending power and dissuade businesses from hiring. Its effects are broad and deep, and will last for many years to come.

If the careless management of public money evident in Heather Jacobs Matthews’s reports was not the only reason why the debt became unsustainably large, it was certainly a significant contributor. Her predecessor in the Auditor-General’s office, Larry Dennis, also found evidence that financial instructions were being ignored on a worryingly routine basis.

Their findings point to a cultural problem within Government that may go back many years.

It would appear that the lines dividing the responsibilities of politicians and civil servants became blurred. It is the politician’s job to make policy and the civil servant’s job to enact that policy within the rules. It is downright wrong for senior civil servants to follow the orders of a micromanaging minister when doing so means breaching the rules. The financial instructions that civil servants sign up to are there to protect taxpayers and to limit opportunities for corruption — and no minister’s demands should override them.

In practice it takes backbone for a permanent secretary to refuse a minister’s orders, particularly when there are fears of jeopardising a career and the benefits that come with it. However, in principle, government employees at all levels answer to the public before any politician. That is why they are known as civil servants.

While Mrs Jacobs Matthews has already established that rules were frequently ignored, it is to be hoped the commission’s efforts will give us some insight into why this happened. It is difficult to believe that such widespread breaches were all down to ignorance, although that is no defence in itself. So the motivations of individuals in repeatedly throwing the rule book out of the window will be key to discovering the core reasons behind the mass abandonment of controls. Light will be cast on the relationship between politicians and civil servants, and this will help to determine whether any corruption took place.

The commissioners have a weighty responsibility to work quickly, dig deep and provide the public with clarity over what happened to their money. It is not surprising that suspicions linger around the events of the period in question, given that rules were broken in the awarding of contracts and jaw-dropping cost overruns became the norm. The commissioners’ work will go some way towards allaying or confirming such suspicions.

If their findings warrant it, disciplinary measures, even criminal investigations and attempts to salvage misappropriated funds, could follow.

The public hearing on June 27 will have an element of theatre about it, but the grilling of the people who allowed such lax control over the public purse will have a serious purpose. The process will emphasise that those in public office or those entrusted as guardians of public money are truly accountable for their actions. It seems an obvious point to make, but given the conspicuous lack of consequences so far for those involved in the shambles described by Mrs Jacobs Matthews, one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise.

The put-upon taxpayers being asked to dig ever deeper into their pockets to deal with the fiscal consequences will be naturally hungry for justice and full disclosure over the events of 2010 to 2012. Just as important is that the inquiry leads to an end to cavalier attitudes to public-sector financial controls, a clarification of the roles and responsibilities of politicians and civil servants, and a realisation that the people of Bermuda will not tolerate corruption.

The key point is that this inquiry is as much about the future as it is about the past.