A DECISION to fast-track a States debate to next week on whether to try to lock into the existing system any changes to improving the way the island runs itself has a curious feel to it.

No matter what the Assembly decides on the 27th, it will not handcuff the Public Accounts Committee into any particular report on how to meet the criticisms levelled by the Wales Audit Committee.

Neither, come to that, will it bind the States itself, should members subsequently feel that more radical action is needed to ensure good governance and value for money for islanders.

Therefore, if the Fallaize requete has any value at all it is in triggering a debate in which deputies can discuss the need to adhere to the six principles of good governance.

Where it falls down, however, is that it provides no opportunity to consider what needs to be done to make things better.

Because a number of deputies have chosen to regard the WAO report as signalling a choice between consensus or executive government, the requete is aimed at how change might be implemented rather than what change is needed.

When PAC reports back to the States, its recommendations for ticking all six governance boxes may well be made within the existing structure. That would certainly be simpler and quicker and, as it says in the emergency Billet d’Etat rushing through the requete, the political ramifications of the various forms of government are outside its mandate.

The point missed – or perhaps reinforced by those signing the requete – is that the problems reported by the WAO are not directly attributable to the island’s system of government but by the way those within the system operate and themselves behave.

In other words, if members voluntarily accepted majority decision-making rather than regarding ‘consensus’ as an opportunity to get their own way at a later date, and embraced the self-discipline of collective responsibility, the present system can no doubt be made to work.

The PAC report is likely to spell that out – and explain the changes required if deputies won’t pull together.