More than 30 years have passed since they took the first steps, more than 20 years since the "pain" had largely passed. That extraordinary decade, 1984-94, is still waiting for history to do it proud.
The principal actors are probably not waiting. They know the only politicians who get fair recognition are dead. Yet the more time that passes, fewer will remember New Zealand the way it was.
Nobody under the age of 40 will have the slightest conception of import licensing. It probably sounds like a health and safety precaution. In fact it was a fortress against competition, limiting the number of companies permitted to bring in manufactured goods or components for assembly here.
The number was set to avoid "cut-throat competition" and ensured that all of them could set prices that covered whatever costs they met, especially wage rates negotiated by the union their staff had to join.
They were literally licences to make money, to set prices at cost plus a profit. Knowing this, suppliers were able to charge on the same basis. Wages were fixed at the same level for all firms in the same industry and increased in line with national guidelines.
Nevertheless, there were always strikes, usually over a trifling condition or a demarcation issue but really to reinforce an attitude of class struggle. They would end in arbitration where the union would be awarded half its claim.
It was a comfortable little fortress for everyone unless you worried about its sustainability. Britain had joined Europe, exports receipts were not covering imports, inflation was rising with oil prices and unemployment had arrived.
Around 1980 the world was catching on to a new prescription against inflation and sickly economies. Monetarism and competitive markets could be the answer.
There were many in the New Zealand's Treasury and a few in its National Government who agreed. One or two ministers even put some liberal economics into effect. George Gair, Minister of Transport, deregulated long haulage, allowing trucks to compete with the state railway. Trade and Industry Minister Hugh Templeton negotiated "closer economic relations" with Australia.
But it was a struggle. Prime Minister and Finance Minister Sir Robert Muldoon kept Treasury advice to himself as he finally resorted to a total economic freeze.
Business lobbies, reluctant to give up the comforts of licensing and controls, sensed where the wind was blowing. National's would-be liberalisers cheered one day when the Manufacturers Federation issued a statement of tentative support for replacing import licensing with tariff protection "in principle".
That was the pace of progress, and that would have remained the pace of progress -- too slow for the public to notice -- but for a snap election and a run on the currency.
Afterwards, there were some in the press gallery who claimed to have been aware that economic liberals had been stirring in the Labour caucus too, but I wasn't. I remember interviewing Caygill about the likely fate of transport deregulation and other industry reforms if, as was likely, Labour won.
Caygill gently dispelled my assumption that Labour would reverse these things without committing himself to much more.
When the history of all this is properly written we might learn how much, if any, of what happened was premeditated. I suspect very little. The exchange crisis sparked everything that followed. The Treasury presented a young intelligent Cabinet with a coherent reading of the country's economic paralysis and they set about the cure.
The pace they moved was breathtaking for those of us covering it. It is easy now to say it was too fast, too cruel for the sector that lost protection so quickly. Don't ever believe it.
Had they not crashed through we would still be listening to the Manufacturers' Federation "in principle".
They did it.
