One of these days, it might be possible to have a debate on the long-term issues facing the economy without it turning into a re-litigation of the events of 1984-92. 

One day. 

It could happen. 

Hell, it has to happen.  Enough people will die. Or migrate to Australia. And young people will come on for whom the debates of that time are as distant as the arguments over prohibition were to those of us who were around for the reforms.   

There just won’t be enough people around to recall what began shortly after the night Sir Robert Muldoon swayed onto our television screens and slurred “you can have ..hic!! My lot… or Hic!...the other lot!” 

In the meantime though… well.  Don Brash unveiled his 2025 commission’s ideas for catching up with Australia to a packed room of journalists this afternoon and the questions were immediately about New Zealand’s last period of sustained economic reform. 

In a telling slip, a number of questions were about the commission’s recommendation for a flat tax – a recommendation actually not made at all by the report, but it was, of course, a key policy of then finance minister Roger Douglas in 1987, and one which led to his expulsion from the finance minister’s role at the time. 

The report recommends cutting government spending by $7 billion a year, and Dr Brash was keen to emphasise this only takes spending back to the level it was back in 2005. 

“Some have said this  [report] is Roger Douglas: we would say this is Michael Cullen.” 

Michael Cullen, that is, before the post-2005 surge in government spending. 

For that is pretty much where the target of the report lies:  the way in which the last government took a one-off, debt-fuelled asset boom as a long term shift, and bulked up government spending in response to that boom. 

“Were there substantiation issues which required an increase of government spending from 29% to 36% of GDP?  It's not obvious to me…” 

Dr Brash, meanwhile, maintained his usual courtly demeanour but managed one pointed comment at the current government. 

Noting the government’s ambition to close the gap with Australia by 2025, the thrust of his message is “you will not achieve that on the present track.” 

“There may be some other cunning plan.  But I’m not sure what it is.”