A chronic tendency in many areas of policy in the past in new Zealand was to respond to 'crises' or 'threats' by establishing national 'strategies' or 'plans'. Thus, in the 1970s, concerns about energy supplies led to 'energy plans' and ultimately to the Think Big programme. The essence of these was an attempt by the government to determine national requirements in a centrally-planned way and control the allocation of resources to meet them. The abysmal failure of such strategies gave way to approaches based on harnessing the power of markets and private incentives to facilitate decentralised decisions over the use and conservation of resources.