How to close the 35% income gap with Australia by 2025?  An ambitious goal like that calls for some fresh ideas. But that’s not what the Government has got from the 2025 Taskforce, headed by Don Brash.

Instead of looking forward 15 years to 2025, the Taskforce’s report, released today, seems to be looking back 15 years and beyond to when New Zealand’s  productivity relative to Australia plummeted.

Practically all of the recommendations look like a wish list of neo-liberal policies which have been tried and only increased the wealth of the very few at the expense of the many and the national interest.

Most of the recommendations have been made many times before. Treasury, Roger Douglas, the Business Roundtable and Ruth Richardson have all pushed the same old “cut taxes, cut regulation, cut the public sector” recipe for every challenge the country meets. It doesn’t matter what the question is, the answer is always the same from these people.

Just as in Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men, Brash is again the leader of a group of New Zealanders who have nothing to offer but more misery for the poor and the vulnerable. There is no chance that this wish list of failed policies will help us catch Australia unless Australia experiences an unmitigated disaster sometime soon.

Surely addressing productivity requires a serious attempt to encourage high performance workplaces and a culture of continuous improvement. If Brash and co really want to improve public sector performance they could start by calling on the central agencies – the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the State Services Commission and the Treasury – to work with the PSA in developing the leadership and skills required for transforming the workplace into a high performance culture.

Productivity is partly about eliminating waste – ironically this whole 2025 exercise has so far been one big waste.