In The 9th Floor, a landmark new series for RNZ, Guyon Espiner talks to five former NZ Prime Ministers, starting with reforming lawmaker Sir Geoffrey Palmer, who became our 33rd PM in 1989.

NZ's earliest living Prime Minister begins the series reflecting on the revolutionary fourth Labour government and his year as one of its three Prime Ministers.

Watch a video of the interview here.

By Guyon Espiner

Sir Geoffrey Palmer was one of New Zealand's most prolific lawmakers and reformers, but a reluctant politician.

Imagine a country where the Prime Minister set the price of basic goods. Where the Cabinet, without having to even put it to a vote in Parliament, decided the wages you get and the taxes and interest rates you pay.

That was the country Geoffrey Palmer was determined to change when he entered Parliament in 1979. It was an economy, he told The 9th Floor, that no young New Zealander would recognise.

The young woman who helped us transcribe the Palmer interview - we spent most of a day with each Prime Minister and captured many hours of video and audio - proved his point perfectly, if unwittingly.

"We even had a thing called Carl's Days at one point," she wrote, typing it up as she heard it. Palmer actually said Carless Days. But fair enough. Who today could imagine a country where the government regulated which days you could drive a car, or at least forced you to decide which days you would leave it at home?

Palmer, a constitutional lawyer, describes Prime Minister Robert Muldoon as running an elected dictatorship between 1975 and 1984. It's a big claim. Sometimes it's the small stories that illustrate the point. Palmer recalls that when he became deputy Labour leader to David Lange in 1983 they ordered a couch for their offices but the request was denied - not by some bureaucrat but by Muldoon himself. The Prime Minister would decide the level of comfort to which his opponents could become accustomed.

Palmer would change all that. He established the Parliamentary Services Commission, an independent body to provide services to MPs. He introduced regular sitting hours to Parliament. Who cares? Well, the Official Information Act 1982 - supposed to give greater transparency to government actions - was passed just before 4.30am. A lot of legislation -from the important to the self-serving - was passed in the dead of night, when some MPs were asleep, drunk or insanely tired. That is if Parliament sat at all. When Palmer first arrived Parliament would sit for four or five months a year. The rest of the time, well, the Prime Minister ran the country. …

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In part two of The 9th Floor, Guyon Espiner talks to Mike Moore about his short stint as Prime Minister in 1990, followed by his miraculous near-comeback in 1993.

In part two of The 9th Floor, Guyon Espiner talks to Mike Moore about his short stint as Prime Minister in 1990, followed by his miraculous near-comeback in 1993.

Watch a video of the interview here.

By Guyon Espiner

Former Labour Prime Minister Mike Moore worries about his party. Yes his party still. Oh, there is some bitterness and bad blood for sure, but he's still a party member and desperately wants Labour to win office again.

It was an emotional day with Moore. Sadness, laughter, passion, love and regret. It sat at the other end of the spectrum from our interview with Sir Geoffrey Palmer. While Palmer speaks with forensic accuracy, Moore speaks largely from the heart, leaving you with images, forcing you to 'feel' and interpret what he has said.

Moore has made a remarkable recovery from a stroke in 2015, which cut short his time as ambassador in Washington DC. But things aren't easy. Sometimes the right words take a moment to come or hover just out of reach, but talking is largely fine. Walking though is hard. I feel guilty as his wife Yvonne helps him inch across the room to accommodate our photo and video requests. But he loved that day. He loved talking about what he has seen and done and is still doing. He loves his party too. Are you a proud member of Labour, I asked him as we drew to a close late in the afternoon. "Yes I'm proud of what the Labour Party has done for people. And we can do it again," he says. "I hope I live long enough to see another Labour government," he chuckles, in one of many laughs we had that day.

But he has some sharp criticisms too. At one point Moore turns the questions on me, in his typically cryptic and profound way. He's started watching Country Calendar again. "How many of those people on Country Calendar do you think vote Labour now?" I choose the diplomatic route. What do you think the answer is? "None." Why? "Because we're not seen to be on the side of those who are strivers," he says. "I do think we've got trouble."

What sort of trouble? "I think its basis is how you elect your leader," he says. "The caucus is our primary and sitting in that caucus you know what is going on and the idea that someone can not have the support in the caucus and the leader has to speak for that is a terrible idea."

"I hope I live long enough to see another Labour government,"…

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In part three of The 9th Floor, Guyon Espiner talks to Jim Bolger, who steered New Zealand through a turbulent seven years that saw more economic upheaval, a resetting of race relations and the arrival of MMP.

In part three of The 9th Floor, Guyon Espiner talks to Jim Bolger, who steered New Zealand through a turbulent seven years that saw more economic upheaval, a resetting of race relations and the arrival of MMP.

Watch a video of the interview here.

By Guyon Espiner

I think Jim Bolger might be about to spark a debate. Two debates, actually. One on our economic settings and the other on race relations.

He says neo-liberalism has failed and suggests unions should have a stronger voice. He says Treaty of Waitangi settlements may not be full and final and that Māori language tuition should be compulsory in primary schools.

It was striking, sitting in Jim Bolger's Waikanae home for the third episode of The 9th Floor, just how many of the issues he grappled with in the 1990s are still alive and being debated rigorously today.

Adding to that sense of history was the fact that John Key resigned while we were discussing with Bolger what it was like to be a third-term National Prime Minister.

There was a little bit of personal history for me, too, and we'll come to that. But first the policy.

Bolger says neo-liberal economic policies have absolutely failed. It's not uncommon to hear that now; even the IMF says so. But to hear it from a former National Prime Minister who pursued privatisation, labour market deregulation, welfare cuts and tax reductions - well, that's pretty interesting.

"They have failed to produce economic growth and what growth there has been has gone to the few at the top," Bolger says, not of his own policies specifically but of neo-liberalism the world over. He laments the levels of inequality and concludes "that model needs to change."

But hang on. Didn't he, along with Finance Minister Ruth Richardson, embark on that model, or at least enthusiastically pick up from where Roger Douglas and the Fourth Labour Government left off?

Bolger doesn't have a problem calling those policies neo-liberal although he prefers to call them "pragmatic" decisions to respond to the circumstances. It sets us up for the ride we go on with Bolger through the 1990s, a time of radical social and economic change.

"They have failed to produce economic growth and what growth there has been has gone to the few at the top" - Jim Bolger…

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