When National was in opposition, one of its favourite topics was that Helen Clark said in 1999 her aim was to raise New Zealand's living standards into the top half of the OECD.

She failed to do this, and was frequently reminded of that in the run-up to the last election.

Over the years, this failure developed into the more easily understood difference between New Zealand and Australia.

The Labour government was blamed for the trans-Tasman brain drain and there were dire predictions of New Zealand sinking to third world status if it continued unchecked.

It was easy to deliver such criticism and it had a sustained impact -- nearly everyone knows someone who has left for Australia, or talks about it, because they can earn much higher wages there.

Now the new government has put its money where its mouth was and created the 2025 Taskforce.

The 2025 is in the title because the aim is to catch up with Australia by that date, to reach a point where wage levels and standard of living are about the same.

To do this New Zealand's productivity has to grow at a much faster rate than it has been over the last decade.

Australian wages are about 30 percent higher than New Zealand's and if it comes out the recession faster, that could rise to 40 percent.

New Zealand's productivity has grown at about 1 percent for the last decade, to catch Australia it will have to grow by more than 3 percent a year.

In a speech on July 15, Prime Minister John Key set out the severity of the problem and said the tradeable sector -- the main exporting industries -- had actually been in recession for five years.

"We like to think of ourselves as a trading nation, yet we export less as a percentage of our GDP than many other small OECD countries," Key said.

"Over 90 percent of our exports come from just under 5 percent of exporters, and these exports are also very concentrated in a few sectors."

That didn't leave much doubt about how difficult it is going to be to catch up with Australia.

The chairman of the 2025 Taskforce is Don Brash, former leader of the National Party and former governor-general of the Reserve Bank.

When he was National's leader in opposition, Brash was one of the most fervent critics of the Labour government.

Now he carries responsibility for finding ways to achieve what he so strenuously denounced as the policy failures of the previous government.

A speech Brash delivered last week was titled New Zealand's Economic Outlook: Can We Ever Catch Australia?

He started it by again recalling Helen Clark's objective and saying New Zealand actually slipped down the OECD ladder during the nine years she was prime minister.

Then he set out what he considered to be misconceptions.

Among them were that Australia is better off because of its mineral wealth. Not so, said Brash. A World Bank report ranked New Zealand second in the world behind Saudi Arabia -- and well ahead of Australia -- in terms of natural wealth per capita.

That was because of the quality of farmland, natural gas, geothermal resources, a huge salt water fishery and large amounts of fresh water.

"Moreover, the entire Australian mining industry contributes only about 5 percent towards Australian GDP and employs not much more than 1 percent of the workforce," Brash said.

Another was that New Zealand is disadvantaged by being so far from world markets.

"Australia suffers from an identical `handicap' so while distance might mean that we can never quite overtake US living standards, there is no earthly reason why we can't overtake Australia," Brash said.

No earthly reason, he said, but does he know how to do it?

"In broad outline, we know what it takes to achieve strong growth and we have a pretty good idea of where New Zealand scores badly," Brash said.

"Some of the choices required to reach Australian living standards by 2025 won't be easy and will require political courage of the highest order."

Political courage "of the highest order" is a way of saying unpopular and painful policies will have to be implemented.

Brash didn't go into details on that, although he mentioned that New Zealanders don't save enough, government spending is too high, taxes are too high and the system is too complex.

Ruth Richardson had political courage of the highest order. She had it in spades. She wrote the mother of all budgets after the 1990 election and National nearly lost the next one.

When the 2025 Taskforce reports before the end of the year it will be interesting to see whether it has come up with anything that doesn't amount to political suicide.

The Government probably expects its formula will be too risky to implement, although it has started to indicate it might not be all that averse to some fundamental changes.

On Saturday, Finance Minister Bill English told the National Party's annual conference the Government had to take tough decisions that members might not like.

The tax system is already under review, and English wouldn't rule out raising GST as a means of raising revenue so income tax could be cut.

He also said he was "more open-minded" about a capital gains tax, something he has previously put in the too hard basket.

When the speeches by John Key and Don Brash are put alongside English's comments, it starts to look as though there could be some radical changes in the pipeline.