according to a Government Senator.

Sen. Michael Scott (PLP) told the Upper House yesterday that the PLP Government also had a chance to make Bermuda a world leader in electronic commerce.

But he said the real focus was on tourism, as Senators debated the PLP's first Budget.

"People will see Bermuda as a model destination,'' said Sen. Scott. "Bermuda is a very remarkable place in the sun. It's very much alive and it will prosper.

"It is being kept alive by Tourism Minister David Allen who has taken the message to the US, to Europe, to the hills of Stuttgart, the valleys of Tuscany and the streets of Paris and London.

"We have an opportunity to become a model for the world -- for the global village -- in e-commerce, in tourism and in international business.'' Sen. Kim Swan (UBP) had already urged Government to take new measures to improve tourism, the environment and sports clubs for young people.

He also said Bermuda's sewage should be treated in effluent plants to make the Island greener.

And he said the Club Med site in St. George's, where he stood for a House of Assembly seat, should now be declared a "national disaster zone'', with cash being pumped in to revive it.

"That would save those retailers who are hanging on, waiting for the cruise ship season,'' he said. "We need hotel beds in St. George's.'' He also appealed for more funding for young people's sports clubs, often attacked for being a hotbed of alcohol abuse.

The golf professional added: "Sport builds character, sport teaches discipline and if a child is involved in a sport, their parents know where they are for a certain period of time.'' Sen. Swan also had words of praise for the work of the hospice, which once treated his father, and appealed for cash help for rest homes.

"In your last days it's a peaceful and a caring place to be,'' he said. "It provides for a dying person something that would be hard to provide at home.

Bermuda seniors need additional attention paid to their rest homes.'' Sen. Calvin Smith (PLP) said Bermuda's tourist trade would only revolutionise once jobs were based on "ability, not colour''.

He said Bermuda prided itself on achievements from the 1930s, a decade when one famous quote said: "We are not a democracy and we are proud of it.'' Sen. Smith added: "Because production and management was based on colour and not ability, we set the trend in Bermuda that people should not be chosen according to their ability to get the job done.

"If we are going to drag up tourism, that's got to be done. We have got to change the mind set. I bring up the past simply because it's the only way we can set the benchmark for the way we move into the future.'' He insisted tourism had declined "under the UBP's watch'', adding: "Performance in the tourism industry has a tremendous effect on everything else in Bermuda.

"We have got to be in a continued position to put out first-class services.

The hotel rescue mission has been misnamed -- it's a Bermuda rescue mission.'' And he called on all of Bermuda to pull together to boost tourism.

"Our Opposition had 45 percent of the election vote,'' he said. "That's not lost on me. We must encourage everybody to help us get this going.'' Senate President Alf Oughton , closing the debate, said the PLP's first Budget had been "well received...there's no doubt about that.

"Now we have both parties saying the economy of Bermuda is sound but the one thing we cannot be is complacent.''