When the National Audit Office issued a damning report on Gozo Channel last May, the public response was tepid.

There should have been furious letters in the media, calls for heads to roll, embarrassed promises to ensure this never happened again.

How sad that as a nation we have become so used to unacceptable governance that we cannot bother to protest, that our expectations for public officials never rise higher than mediocre.

The NAO report, which filled 130 pages, highlighted staggering shortcomings, ranging from thousands of hours of overtime to missing data on both fuel dispensed and fuel received. The scale of the issues beggars belief. Where were the executives who should have been on the look-out for just this sort of abuse? Where were the directors who should have held the executives to task? Where was the minister who should have been checking that taxpayers’ money was being well spent?

That is the greatest worry: not that there was abuse but that it was systematically ignored.

It was no surprise that Gozo Channel lost €1.3 million in 2013 ­– and lurking in its accounts was a festering wound: Gozo Ferries, which owns the ferries operated by Gozo Channel, owes €8 million, which it is unlikely to ever be able to pay. The auditors had warned that this threatened the future of the company as a going concern – which has massive implications when you consider that the ferries are the only link between the two islands. Had the company been declared insolvent… Well, it does not bear thinking about.

When Joe Cordina stepped in two-and-a-half years ago as chairman, there was little optimism that he – or any government-appointee – would do anything different. And yet, like his counterpart Frederick Azzopardi at Enemalta, he seems to have been willing to roll his sleeves up and at least try to tackle the rot.

Doing this – whether at Gozo Channel, Enemalta or even Mater Dei Hospital, means breaking through decades-old silos, systems set up deliberately to facilitate pilfering, to create little pockets of power, to invert the executive hierarchy.

The amazing thing about any corporate turnaround is, however, how quickly it can be achieved once the message goes out that the new kid in town means business. In 2014, Gozo Channel showed a minimal profit but this year, Mr Cordina claims it could be as high as €500,000, a turnaround of nearly €2 million in two years.

It could not have come soon enough. If Malta really does go ahead with the tunnel, the role of Gozo Channel will have to be completely reassessed, from how many new ferries to order once the current ones reach the end of their economic life in 15-18 years’ time, to what schedule it should offer.

At the moment, it has to balance the commercial reality of its operations with the need to provide a service for those who commute between the islands, something a purely profit-driven company would not have to do. That is why it receives a public service obligation (PSO) payment from the government. But the PSO runs out in 2017 and if there really is going to be a tunnel, then it needs to be rethought. Gozo Channel will no longer need to put the social aspect of its operations ahead of its sustainability.

Only time will tell whether the changes and internal controls being made will last or whether the rot has only been papered over. One thing is clear, however. Unless Gozo Channel is financially sustainable, it may find it hard to argue for its future once the tunnel is open.