But before I do that I want to say that I sometimes wonder whether we New Zealanders are not congenitally prone to wild swings in mood: we are either riding high in self esteem, confident that we can take on the world and win, as we were in the mid-eighties and mid-nineties, or we are utterly gloomy, convinced that a cyclical downturn in net immigration represents the end of civilisation as we know it, with our only hope being to plead with Australia to take us on as a distant Tasmania.
As Doug Myers mentioned in a speech a week ago, “we have developed a cottage industry of pessimism”.1 I do not propose to assess why we have this tendency to wild swings in mood, nor even to offer a comprehensive assessment of the economic reforms of the last 15 years. That can not be done in 15 minutes.