The Public Accounts Committee’s report on the Department of Tourism and the Bermuda Land Development Company contains a litany of horrors, but there is one good thing in it.The efforts of the PAC and, earlier, Auditor General Heather Jacobs Matthews, show that the system of audits and reviews by parliamentary committees works. Wrongdoing has been revealed.The fact that the PAC now holds at least some of its meetings in public means that more information is flowing to the committee and to the public. This is democracy at work.The fact that a Minister resigned subsequent to the revelations shows that there is some accountability. To be sure, former Works Minister Derrick Burgess continues to maintain he did nothing wrong. But the fact is that he resigned.So the system works, at least retrospectively. But are similar abuses being prevented now?The mere fact that these issues have been brought out in public should encourage the boards of quangos to be more aware of their responsibilities in the future.And in the case of Glenn Bean, the former North America director of sales and marketing for the Department of Tourism, who was effectively driven out of his job, it is to be hoped that civil servants will get more backing and support from their superiors in the future, since the full glare of publicity can be damaging.But there are no guarantees for this. Premier Paula Cox said changes have now been made to the means by which tourism advertising is tendered and procured.And she noted that actions concerned the BLDC were dealt with in 2011 when the quango was moved to a different Ministry and the board was replaced.Further, she said Permanent Secretaries and heads of department have been reminded of their responsibilities.That is all very well. But nothing contained in that stops Ministers or Premiers from abusing their positions, as the PAC report, signed by MPs from both parties, alleges.In the case of Glenn Bean, the report and previous evidence from Mrs Jacobs Matthews states that he was first subject to personal attacks by the head of the Global Hue advertising agency writing directly to Premier and Minister Dr Ewart Brown and strenuous efforts were made subsequently to force him out of his job. Readers will remember that those actions ended with the taxpayer paying Mr Bean $440,000 to leave Tourism.This is not the only time the taxpayer was has been forced to pay up following mistakes and abuses by Ministers. But the question is, is it still happening?Similarly in the BLDC scandal, it has now been revealed that BLDC deputy chairman Pastor Leroy Bean had a painting contract cancelled and then directed that it go to the son of chairman Edward Saunders.Pastor Bean has since said the original contract had been cancelled because it had been given to a person with connections to BLDC employees.That may have been so, but how could giving the contract to Mr Saunders’ son, after Mr Saunders and Pastor Bean had already hired themselves on as consultants to their own board, not be seen as a conflict of interest?And in the end, the project ended up costing more than twice what it should have. It is impossible to fathom.Similarly, it is impossible to understand how Mr Burgess could not see that giving operational instructions to the BLDC and giving them verbally when the legislation governing the BLDC required that such instructions in writing was wrong?Ms Cox has gone to pains to state that the problems revealed in the report were dealt with within Government long before they became public knowledge.She’s right that the whole process of audits and PAC reports is cumbersome and slow.But she cannot claim that Government was able to handle these issues adequately.The fact is that she was only able to deal with the BLDC problems by moving the BLDC to a different Ministry and then replacing the board. Until then, Mr Burgess simply refused to do anything, and it seemed there was nothing Ms Cox could do about it.Similarly, Mr Bean was left with no choice but to resign and take his rightly generous severance package because there was no one in Government to stand up for him. And there are no guarantees that a civil servant now or in the future can feel any more secure.