The Auditor-General’s recently released report on the consolidated fund of the Government of Bermuda for the financial years of 2010, 2011 and 2012 should be required reading for every Bermudian. The report goes behind the curtain, revealing the mindset and conduct of the Progressive Labour Party when it was the steward of the public purse during those years.

It is also a damning account that goes to the heart of political choices that Bermudians are going to have to make at the next election. The public need to be constantly reminded of just how badly the PLP performed in its duty to manage the public’s money wisely and well when it was in government. The public need to understand just how careless control of the public purse was under the PLP government, and how vast sums of money belonging to the people of this country were wasted and lost.

Page 18 of the report states: “As in the past, the issue is not whether controls exist, but, rather, that the controls are ignored or overridden, with those responsible seemingly immune to the imposition of penalties and sanctions built into financial instructions”.

The auditor’s report is, in short, an indictment of the PLP’s mismanagement of the people’s money — a forensic analysis of a financial train wreck that continues to haunt government finances to this day. Indeed, this latest report marked the fifth straight year the financial statements of the PLP government garnered a “qualified opinion”, meaning the auditor could not sign off on its integrity.

Those who are familiar with the production of reports to shareholders in private industry will know that any auditor’s report, which contained findings such as those the Auditor-General included in hers, would be followed swiftly by the wholesale firing of the officers of the company concerned.

The report details failures of control and accountability within the Civil Service, but its examination of the country’s accounts is not an isolated event. It is part of a continuum of reports that make it as plain as can be that PLP ministers were part and parcel of what was going on.

In 2009, for example, a Special Report of the Auditor-General documented a high level of unsupported payments, as well as an override of controls at the highest level of management in the construction of the Magistrates’ Court building and the Hamilton Police Station.

In that special report, Larry Dennis, then the Auditor-General, wrote that he and his team “were denied the right to audit material expenditures related to this capital project ... These matters led me to question the propriety of certain transactions ...”

The Minister of Public Works at that time is a sitting Opposition MP, and in this latest auditor’s report, it is revealed that his oversight of the project caused staff at his ministry, as well as finance ministry staff, to criticise the inappropriateness of his actions.

If anyone has forgotten, Mr Dennis, for his continuing audit work, was jailed, placed under house arrest, accused of theft and given 24 hours’ notice to move his department, lock, stock and barrel, out of its office — an outrageous event that remains an embarrassment to the good name of Bermuda.

Subsequent accusations that Mr Dennis was targeted because of his comments about government accounts made it certain that his reports were a topic discussed at Cabinet.

The failure to correct the serious accounting faults pinpointed in Mr Dennis’s reports is an issue that lies at the heart of Ms Matthews’s latest report. In the face of the auditors’ common findings, questions need to be asked: did PLP government ministers not care about better governance? Or did the system, such as it was, work for them?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Ms Matthews’s latest report exposes an almost complete failure of the system to check widespread misbehaviour by the former government. Attempts by PLP politicians and their supporters to evade responsibility by pointing fingers solely at civil servants is a revealing and pathetic cop-out. However, it has become quite apparent since the report was made public on November 13 that this is the tactic certain PLP MPs and their surrogates are using to defend the indefensible.

They are now throwing civil servants under the bus by spouting the party line that civil servants negotiated the contracts, that ministers do not sign contracts and that those of us who are rightfully outraged at the misdeeds of the former government do not understand how government works. They need to sit down and rethink the meaning of accountability, responsibility and good governance.

The One Bermuda Alliance is engaged in a massive effort to get this country’s finances back on track. We are having success in turning around Bermuda’s economy while working to end the bad habits that flourished under the PLP government.

• Sylvan Richards is the Junior Minister of Home Affairs and the MP for Hamilton South (Constituency 7)