It was a mystery to me, Mr. Editor, why Wayne Furbert changed his motion on campaign financing to a take note debate.

As an independent MP, I figured he wasn't just looking for an opportunity to stick it to the parties, and to watch them squirm on the issue of whether their funding ought to be regulated, but also for the opportunity to stake out his own ground as an independent voice in the House on the Hill.

The original motion only called for the appointment of a select committee to examine the pros and cons of the issue – which was actually rather tame when you think about it. But Mr. Furbert amended the wording at the outset, without objection (no surprise there) and what might have been a hot potato debate soon slipped into a lukewarm discussion that ended not long after it began.

That's not to say it wasn't an interesting discussion. It was.

The regulation of campaign financing is part of a larger issue: the need for reform generally in matters of governance.

I had had my reservations about a select committee – and said so. First, we only have so many members to go around on the backbench and committees under the current rules have so far proved pretty much of a flop; the joint select committee on education being the most recent example. The House Rules need to be revised – modernised actually – to make committees more meaningful and effective than they have been to date, and that has to include making hearings open to the public. The Legislature must also be given the necessary resources, which includes access to key personnel in the civil service, if committees are going to work – and work on a timely basis.

Secondly, there is also some important preliminary work to be done before we get to the regulation of campaign financing. Aside from updating our Rules, and ultimately the way in which we conduct business on the Hill, there are some additional key reforms that need to be put in place. We need to develop a system that not only incorporates modern standards, but which also features the equally critical means by which those standards will be upheld and enforced.

We already have the Members' Register of Interests, but it is voluntary, and we have a Constitution Order which states that members should lose their seats if they do business with Government but fail to publish their interest in a newspaper within seven days of entering a contract. There are those among us who wonder whether the controls which we do have are honoured more in the breach than in the application.

Meanwhile, the rest of the modern world has marched on. Integrity in Public Office legislation is pretty commonplace throughout the Commonwealth of parliamentary democracies. Reporting is mandatory and there is someone charged with responsibility for investigation and enforcement as well as advising and developing guidelines. For my money, Bermuda can no longer afford to be another world – in every sense of the word.

Our Parliamentary Election Act could also use an overhaul. We need to move on like other jurisdictions and feature an independent Electoral Commission, multi-partisan where appropriate, to tackle ongoing and thorny issues like voter registration, campaign advertising, print and broadcasting, and, yes, campaign financing.

I have said it before and I will say it again: What we lack around here is the political will to get on with the job. There is some sign that this may be changing. Readers will recall the promise of a Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in the Throne Speech to help us build "an efficient and effective model of legislative democracy, fashioned through an inclusive, participatory process". There was also some suggestion on Friday that the Conference will be the means by which all these strands to better governance can be pulled together. We'll see, although I have heard nothing further since the idea surfaced – neither officially or unofficially.

We do now appear to be moving on PATI though, and speaking of which, my remarks last week generated a fair bit of discussion in and out of the House. Good. We need to get people talking and thinking more about freedom of information. Information is power and PATI is about giving more power to the people.

The reversal on the issue of retroactivity is a start. But there is still a ways to go to make PATI the meaningful tool it is meant to be. The drafters need look no further than the 400-plus submissions – and the number alone speaks volumes.

Meanwhile, in announcing his apparent reversal on retroactivity, the Premier couldn't resist a swipe at me for my comments here last week that PATI could be used to obtain the guest list for the Queen's dinner. (Fair enough: you stick your chin out in this business, you can expect to get bopped from time to time. Mind you, I also appreciate the public acknowledgment that I am read by people in high places). The Premier thought PATI should be about more serious business than requesting a list of dinner invitees. It can be, of course. It can also be used to keep track of how Government spends our money and on whom: not just dinners but projects like Port Royal and Dockyard to name but a few. It's all serious business. We were told there were only so many places at the table, and as there were limited opportunities for people to meet the Queen, the overriding goal was to spread the love around and have the Queen share dinner with a broad cross-section of Bermudians.

OK. Sounds reasonable enough, but show us the list so we can all be the judge. We should not have to continue to guess who came to dinner. Inquiring minds want to know. It's their right to know and that, Mr. Editor, is the very purpose of PATI.

Comments? Write jbarrittibl.bm

Thought for the Week from "True Compass" by the late Senator Edward Kennedy: "My father had a general rule of thumb: bet on what you think a man will do rather than what he says he will do and you will be right more often than not."