This article tells the story of policies relevant to education, ageism and older adults between 1999 and 2005. It follows an article published in a previous "New Zealand Journal of Adult Learning" that described and critiqued policy developments between the 1980s and 2001. The story is located in the context of ongoing historical struggles between competing discourses and the article discusses their impact on tertiary education, ACE and the place of older learners. By way of contrast with the 1990s, during which neoliberalism and pragmatic conservatism held sway, this article suggests that the period from 2000 to 2005 saw the renewal of social democratic and progressive discourses and in particular the rise of a "modernised" or "third way" form of social democracy with its emphasis on managerialism and welfarism. (Contains 1 footnote.) [This article was published in: "New Zealand Journal of Adult Learning," v34 n1 p2-28 May 2006.]