only a question of "when'' the Progressive Labour Party assumes the mantle of Government.

Telling a luncheon meeting of the Chartered Institute of Bankers (CIB) that the "PLP is a party in transition, from opposition to Government,'' Ms Smith yesterday moved to quiet the financial community's traditional insecurity with her party, telling about 200 bankers at the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club that for too long people have held unfair opinions of the PLP based on what outsiders or the media have said.

Reality indicated otherwise, she said.

Largely through the efforts of the late A. Freddie Wade and shadow Finance Minister Eugene Cox, the PLP has been engaged in "a constructive engagement'' with the financial community, a dialogue Ms Smith pledged to carry forward with even bolder steps.

If elected the PLP would move to create a Ministry of International Business whose task it would be to ensure Bermuda's business climate continues to flourish and adapt to the rapidly changing global marketplace.

Another PLP priority would be to carry out a review of the entire tax structure she said, striving to create more fairness in the current "ad hoc'' system.

In addition a PLP government would draw on the financial community's "deep reservoir'' of expertise and information to help in the turnaround of the Island's ailing tourism industry.

Underpinning the PLP's reform agenda however is a commitment to education, said Ms Smith, "because education is the kingpin, the first domino that impacts all others''.

The 21st-century work-force is now in pre-school, primary and middle school, noted Ms Smith, who told the bankers that under the PLP the public school system would provide the students with "those skills your industry requires.

"Our prosperity depends on a highly educated, highly skilled work-force.'' Ms Smith also pledged an inclusive educational system which would appeal to and reclaim school drop-outs -- "our lost economic resources'' -- as well as the academically gifted.

She called for a public and private partnership to restore a sense of opportunity and adventure to the school system, to help skill train and retrain not only the youth, but the Island's work-force as well.

The financial industry and groups such as the CIB, she noted, had been in the forefront of educating its workers.

"In the long run, you will find, it is cheaper to teach them than to convict them. To train them than to sustain them. To employ local talent than to import it,'' she said.

"We want to work to create a climate of opportunity, of responsibility, where everyone contributes and which contributes to everyone.''