Back in Government after grabbing some much-needed rest, Terry Lister is hoping for some time to get to grips with his new portfolio of Energy, Telecommunications and E-Commerce.

It's an understandable statement after being moved from pillar to post in a Cabinet career which spanned five jobs in his first five years.

And he believes his party can start planning long-term too after coming through the firestorm of the general election with a renewed mandate.

He said: "I believe, following the outcome of the last election, that we would have to really fall asleep at the wheel not to win the next election.

"I am trying to look through the next election in the time span of planning for my own ministry, and on a Tuesday sitting at the Cabinet table planning for the country, in looking down the next six to eight years to what we need to do.

"I really don't think there is any need to be looking at the next three to four years. I would be very disappointed if we were unable to return at the next election."

He said the UBP had gambled wrongly on running an attack based on the years-old BHC scandal before the election, even though the matter had emerged before the 2003 election. Voters rejected the approach.

"I believe the Opposition will have to work really hard to turn the people away from us. They have given us a mandate and a blessing in a way that we had really never had before."

Asked if it meant the PLP would now be pushing for independence Mr. Lister said the issue could be raised again. But he cautioned: "You cannot take people screaming and kicking to independence in the 21st century.

"When a survey you trust says 19 percent of people are in favour of it you have to walk away, you can't push something through with that sort of support. I have to accept that. It's a tremendous disappointment. I really thought we would have been independent ten or 20 years ago."

But there is much to celebrate. Mr. Lister is glad to be back in the inner circle after just over a year on the backbenches.

"It's a good time in that Dr. Brown is a very decisive leader, he has a vision of where he wants to go with the country. He's not a dabbler, he's going to get on with things. That's good, anyone who acts that way will get eight things right and two things wrong.

"That will probably happen to us as a government, we will get a few black eyes because we are decisively moving forward but I would rather get two black eyes and five or six things brilliantly done and two things done well than getting only a few things done."

The first PLP years were naturally cautious as the party won people's confidence after years of people questioning whether they were up to running the country, said Mr. Lister.

"We have done things that indicate where our heart is - take the money poured into sport."

Sports Minister is one of the few jobs Mr. Lister hasn't done. In 1998, at the beginning of the PLP's first term in Government, he was appointed Minister of Development, Opportunity and Government Services.

Always serving as a full-time minister while other colleagues juggled Cabinet posts with other jobs, Mr. Lister then moved to Environment before landing his first big post – as Minister of Labour, Home Affairs and Public Safety in October 2001.

He became Works and Engineering and Housing Minister after the July 2003 general election and just six months later was moved to Education - he resigned from Cabinet three years later.

Despite a wealth of experience Mr. Lister has no ambitions for the top job, despite standing several times for the leadership of his party.

"I am past all that. I have accomplished all my goals. I just want to do a good job as a minister and some day ride off into the sunset. I really don't have any interest in serving in any other capacity."

But he's not about to saddle up that horse just yet. After being moved around from job to job in various reshuffles he would welcome the chance to stay in his current post for a longer stint and he doesn't intend to bow out at the next election.

He is pleased with his efforts at Education but said he would have liked to have seen more changes in personnel. "Dr. Brown jokingly says he's never seen a flow chart that didn't work. It's true. It's the people that don't work.

"Sometimes you have the wrong person in the wrong spot and sometimes you need to move them around.

"I think we are seeing some of that now in education and I think you are going to see a lot more of it before the minister puts his hands up and says we are home."

He said there was a lot of talk about curriculum, but success came down to students having a stable home life and teachers being empathetic.

When he was growing up, bright black men were expected to aspire to being either a doctor, a lawyer or a teacher, said Mr. Lister.

"Today, if you are a bright black child you can say (do) anything. The result is the school teaching body may not be as sharp as they once were because the really, really sharp people they had – and I am not knocking them as a group, that's not my point – now have teaching as one of 50 choices."

Mr. Lister preaches a self discipline message, recalling how he bought a slow bike when he was a youngster to avoid speeding and the trouble that comes with it.

"I had a vision for myself, a lot of youngsters don't have that vision."

Asked whether the Government was doing enough to put out the message that times had changed, the racial barriers were diminished and opportunity abounded Mr. Lister said not all was well as Bermuda was still counting firsts.

"It's too late to be counting firsts – the first black person to do this, the first black person to do that. We are 30 years out of date. We shouldn't have any firsts."

He said competent white businessmen who retired early were snapped up by other companies in the private sector.

"If you have a black person of equal calibre who says (does) the same thing, he will be allowed to retire. That's the reality. I can only attribute that to race, I have nothing else to attribute it to. That may be simplified and people who oppose me saying that will give you 50 good reasons."

But Mr. Lister said he experienced the same thing when he resigned as a partner at Deloitte and Touche for full-time politics. He wasn't worried about the massive loss in earnings because he knew under the previous Government, UBP ministers had been poached up to serve on boards.

"They came from varied backgrounds. I am a chartered accountant. I made my living looking at financial statements and advising people on how to run a business so I became a full-time politician expecting that salary would be a minor portion of my family income and the major portion would be director's fees. It's ten years later and I sit on no boards.

"There isn't a company out there that considers me worthy of sitting on their board. Now, I am sorry but that is a great personal insult, there has got to be a word that explains it - you can pick the word. I know what I think it is."

He said being a minister wasn't an excuse. "The others were ministers. There was a year and a bit when I wasn't a minister and my phone didn't ring either."

It was Mr. Lister who pushed race reporting in the workplace through in the early years of the PLP and now the party has promised the Workforce Equity Act – to fine companies which don't put plans in place to ensure black Bermudians are represented at all levels of a company in proportion to their numbers in the wider workforce.

The numbers of blacks in management in international companies was tiny when Mr. Lister got involved with the Commission for Unity and Racial Equality.

Gains were made, only for the numbers to fall back recently. "This is not possible! This cannot happen!"

Some blamed it on declining education standards but it's not an excuse Mr. Lister will accept.

He understands no country will produce only top flight people but he said Bermuda had produced more than 250 chartered accountants.

"That is outrageously high. People don't understand that. We have done an incredible job as the Institute of Chartered Accountants to have so many born Bermudians who are accountants."

But he said they were not filtering through to top management.

"How can you have a 100 jobs and only two of them be filled by black people? You can't call that right.

"People say 'when are you guys going to stop talking about race, it's a great country.' Well this is why we produce the CURE stats so we wouldn't just be blowing smoke. Two percent is not acceptable at all."

He said people were now concerned Bermudians had a 'sense of entitlement' but he argues it was management's job to handle people's expectations and give them a sense of what they needed to do to succeed through training, development and attitudes.

But with a growing white collar sector, blacks should be getting more of the action said Mr. Lister - provided they do the work.

"I am not interested in free passes. I know what it takes to get to the top. You have to work hard, work smart and be willing to work when other people are sleeping. If our people are doing it they ought to be rewarded with the spots."

Assessing the political scene he said the party in power had done a fairly good job of being the party its founders had wanted in 1963.

"The one thing I would like to see if I could snap my fingers and make it happen is for us to stop being regarded as the black party.

"If we were to be the labour party representing people of labour and labour roots and beliefs - you could be president of the Bank of Butterfield and still be PLP if your roots and ideology was labour. Those people don't have to black, they just have to be people."

He said there were 21,000 white Bermudians in the 1991 census - 11,000 of which weren't born in Bermuda and mostly came from Britain. But he said those with labour backgrounds back home became UBP supporters here.

"That I don't understand. I have asked people that and they tell me straight up we can't support your party because you are all into race. I say 'not a good enough answer, we are a labour party. We discuss the race issue because it is our responsibility to'."

Mr. Lister said he would love to get input from a substantial contingent of white PLP members.

"If there is a weakness in the PLP it is that we have to 'perceive' how whites feel about things. We can't do that sitting in our meetings. I would like those whites in Bermuda of labour background to come and join us."

To the perception that they might feel hostility Mr. Lister said business people used to be asked: "Why are you here? You're not labour because you have a business'."

He went on: "That's one black person to another black person.

"So if someone black says something uncomplimentary to someone white, don't worry about it. It's really a person talking to another person and for every person saying something you don't like there are probably ten saying something you do like."

Asked if the PLP did a good enough job toning down its extremists to allow whites to feel comfortable Mr. Lister said: "If whites find two, three, four of our group hard to swallow they might find ten,12 others easier to swallow - attend their meetings, build relationships. There will always be things that you hear and don't like.

"I believe our policies really are all embracing.

"This is something I will personally continue to explore. I can't speak for the party. If the day I retire a PLP meeting has 20 percent white people in the room and they are not tourists but are there because they belong, they contribute, I will leave a happy man because that is ultimately lead to success for the country.

"You can't have success as a country if we go to parliament week after week carrying the views and opinions of only black people, we have to have views and opinions of white people who we trust.

"If someone is in the room and fighting the battle with us, shoulder to shoulder with us that's someone you trust.

"It's fine for me to have a meeting in my office with five white businessmen and they come and tell me how their work permits are a problem, but they are not comrades in arms, it's not the same thing, it really isn't."

Asked if whites were being morally judged simply on whether they would join the PLP Mr. Lister said: "No, I am saying the opposite. Everybody gets more credence when we are in the room together fighting the battle together, that's all.

"We have to have people in the room, on a regular basis, working with us out of the country's good, not self interest.

"When businessman number three comes and says 'we need a couple of you Government byes to come on a BIBA trip' - OK, that's to help you make a few more dollars later on, that's fine, that's good.

"That is not the same thing as sitting down and putting our shoulders to the plough, trying to solve some Bermuda issues."