KEY POINTS:
Roger Douglas fixed me with that familiar squint and wanted to know why the media were ignoring him. I didn't know he had done anything to ignore since the announcement that he would stand for Parliament this year near the top of Act's list.
He spread a brochure on the table. It was a chart of policies that promised to raise our incomes to Australian levels and keep our children here.
It was the platform you would expect from Act: cut public spending, flatten taxes, close needless state agencies, create competitive markets in education, healthcare and insurance for accidents, sickness, unemployment ... Alongside each plank was a figure for its calculated boost to average weekly pay and annual national growth.
I scanned the table and knew why it had been ignored.
"None of this is news," I said.
He accepted the point. In fact that is his point. The chart listed the countries already following each element of Act's prescription, and the whole scheme has been well rehearsed in this country by Douglas himself.
He is a driven character, this crackling dry rationalist who changed the economy at a dizzying pace in the 1980s. I learned long ago you don't interview Douglas about himself, his ambitions or even politics. You get only the policy.
By a fortunate alignment of the planets - Muldoon, Lange, a snap election, currency crisis - he was able to achieve more in four years as Finance Minister than any politician in our lifetime and I wish for his sake he could let it rest there.
He wants to go back into government now because he sees National's likely return as an opportunity to pick up the old programme. This, of course, is music to the ears of Helen Clark and fills John Key with dread.
Blithely unconcerned, Sir Roger makes no secret of the fact that not only does he hope to sit in a National-Act Cabinet but he aims to be its Finance Minister. Act's brochure declares if enough voters give it their party vote it will use that leverage to insist Douglas gets his old job back.
The possibility cannot be entirely dismissed, even if it means a dual finance job such as National previously gave Winston Peters in a coalition Cabinet. And Key, who was not here in the Douglas years, might not know the man's modus operandi.
Douglas was a master of the premature commitment. As Finance Minister he routinely made speeches in advance of decisions that effectively bound the Cabinet to his intended course. He calculated his credibility was too important to the Government for his colleagues to over-rule him.
After a dozen years of MMP Cabinets still operate a strict rule of collective responsibility and steadfastly maintain a united front. Jim Anderton has been a model of solidarity in the Clark Cabinet, Peters was much less trouble in Bolger's coalition than he had been as a National minister.
Possibly Cabinet unity is even more important for public confidence when Governments have to operate in a multi-party system. Douglas has not worked in that system and National plainly doesn't relish discovering whether he can.
It is not making it easy for Rodney Hide to retain the Epsom electorate, which would probably let Douglas in on the party vote. Douglas plans to stand in Hunua, near his home.
Act is about as attractive to Key as the Greens have been to Clark. National, like Labour, would much prefer to govern with those whose support can be bought with a title and some concessions on a pension card.
Half-mischievously, I suggested to Douglas that if Act wants to attract more attention it should slug National every time Key wobbles on a policy that might be contentious.
That would be dangerous because these days Act could do it too passionately. The party founded by Douglas and Derek Quigley has always been a partnership of Labour and National emigres who managed to put aside their tribal differences.
The Nats largely returned to their fold with Don Brash and Act's non-economic policies have changed. The unsavoury stuff on Maori and Treaty issues has gone. The pure economic programme is back on centre-stage.
Act would boost immigration as Australia is doing right now, make schools compete for pupils. It would make it easier for employers to trial-hire and fire, privatise more public services, improve roads, water and power lines and replace user charges with tolls that reward off-peak use.
None of it might be as necessary as the first rounds of economic reform but our living standard is flagging a bit. Our average income is $450 lower than that of Australia and I don't think my son is coming back.
