Double-click on any word and see its definition from Cambridge Dictionaries Online.

"It is high time the government took action."

The expression "It is (high/about) time + past verb test" is used to complain about or criticise something or someone:

			It is time that the government took action.
			It is about time that the government took action.
			It is high time that the government took action.

The words about or high make the criticism even stronger. Note that it is also correct to say:

It is time for the government to take action.

To see examples of the use of these expressions, see the Web Concordancer:

http://www.edict.com.hk/concordance/

When you get to the home page, type It is time, It is about time or It is high time into the 'search string' field. In the 'select corpus' field, choose the SCMP corpus or one of The Times corpuses, click on the 'search for concordances' button, and you will find a number of examples.