THERE are a few ways to describe last week’s ministerial elections. ‘Long’ is a good place to start, followed by ‘not entirely un-dull’ and ‘fairly predictable’.

At least one States Member described them as ‘a complete waste of time’, which I think is a bit strong. It put all the ministers bar the unchallenged Environment Minister ‘on the record’ about their proposed policies and what they wanted to do with the departments over the next three years.

The best way to describe last week’s two-day sitting is to say that it was an opportunity missed by the new Chief Minister. I don’t doubt for a minute that Terry Le Sueur is serious when he says that he wants a new, more inclusive States Assembly. It’s something that any incoming Chief Minister is going to say anyway — but it would be hard to look at the last three years and say that it was all it could have been.

The ministerial system is based, predicated and founded on a division within the States between the ministerial executive and the policy review of Scrutiny. But States Members on both sides of that divide have too often gone for easy point-scoring, followed old personal agendas and become embroiled in the kind of adversarial tactics that would embarrass feuding 14-year-olds.

That’s not to say that there shouldn’t be debate, arguments, division and hostility. All those things are good and necessary in politics. But the nominations for ministerial positions represented the perfect opportunity for Senator Le Sueur to start the next three years on the front foot.

It was a chance to bring in more ministers from the centre, instead of from the old crew, and to engage new ideas and policies. But that didn’t happen with Senator Le Sueur’s nominations. Mending relationships and bridging gaps requires more than good intentions and soft language.

It requires an act of faith: you need to be able to demonstrate that you’re committed to doing more than talking. If Senator Le Sueur had nominated someone from the centre or the left, such as Senator Alan Breckon, or Deputies Judy Martin or Carolyn Labey, or St Law-rence Constable Deidre Mezbourian, he could have backed up his first promise to the Island.

As it is, he starts on the back foot, particularly given the late dropping of James Reed for the Education job in favour of Senator Paul Routier after the Senator lost out on Health. And while I don’t doubt Senator Le Sueur’s commitment to being more open and inclusive, and listening to different viewpoints instead of marginalising them, he’s going to have to actually do something about it, or it will end up sounding like empty promises and spin.

WHat is it about the States coffee room? I must have missed it. Are there dancing girls in there? Slot machines? Whatever it is, it has to be good. Really good. Brilliant even. Why else would the States end up being inquorate during one of the most important sessions of the next three-year term? Why else would more than half of them find something more pressing to do than pick who’s going to be running the States departments?

There’s good news, though. There is evidence that fewer States Members seem be avoiding the States Chamber. The 14 new Members were not among the absentees. In fact, throughout the two-day sitting, most of them stayed rooted in their seats. And throughout most of the ministerial question sessions, they led from the front.

A new States Assembly, a new term, a new Privileges and Procedures Committee — it’s all pointing to another debate about States reform.

This is not an area in which the States have covered themselves in glory. In fact, the sole reform instituted since the publication of the Clothier Report eight years ago was the scarcely revolutionary move to allow the Constables to bring their election dates in line with Constables (if they wanted to).

But after the last elections and the still dismal turnout — even in the wake of public outcry over GST, the Waterfront development and the incinerator — the case for changing the way things are arranged has become even stronger.

You’d be pressed to find too many Members now who are against the idea of a general election to be held in the summer. But it’s the details around those two key changes that will throw up the problems.
And one of them is this: the idea that the term of most Members should go from three to four years.

The new Privileges chairman, St Mary Constable Juliette Gallichan, was one of a number of Members to mention this, on the basis that learning how the system works at the start of the term, and campaigning at the end of it, somehow cut too deep into the three-year cycle. But it’s nonsense.

States Members, whether we ad-mit it or not, are mostly intelligent and capable people, and the business of being a States Member is not rocket science. The idea that in return for meaningful electoral reform we have to give Members a ‘pay-off’ in the form of less frequent elections is nonsense of the very highest calibre.