The Opportunities Party (Top) is surging in the polls! Relatively speaking. Founded in late 2016 by the economist Gareth Morgan, Top failed to reach MMP’s 5% threshold in 2017, winning just 2.4% of the party vote. It failed again in 2020 (1.5%) under the leadership of Geoff Simmons, Morgan’s former chief of staff, and again last year (2.2%) led by former Christchurch city councillor Raf Manji.
But in the publicly available polls released since the last election, an average of 2.81% of voters would give their party vote to Top. Which is impressive for a party that has no seats in Parliament, no presence in the media, no leader, no deputy leader and no money.
They’re working on all of these things. When Morgan launched the party seven years ago, it was presented as a “radical centrist” movement. All of its policies would be evidence based and it could enter into coalition with either National or Labour. Once in Parliament, Top would use this leverage to radically transform New Zealand’s economy.
For years, political pundits had speculated about the viability of a centrist environmental party, and climate and decarbonisation were central to Morgan’s policy platform. Top’s key policies were a universal basic income for families with young children and a massive tax switch, lowering income taxes while imposing an unrealised capital-gains tax on all assets, including houses – both ideas beloved of policy nerds and technocrats.
The long-prophesied messiah of progressive centrism had entered New Zealand politics.
Unfortunately for Top, Morgan wasn’t interested in winning the votes of policy nerds and environment-focused progressive centrists. He saw himself as a populist in Donald Trump’s mould, trying to attract working-class voters, and he went about this by launching attacks on Labour’s new leader, Jacinda Ardern.
When Ardern announced the death of her beloved cat, Paddles, Morgan celebrated the animal’s demise. This prompted a revolt inside Top, and Morgan sacked a prominent candidate.
The leader’s abrasive personality and hatred of cats, as well as Top’s infighting, came to define it going into the campaign. Morgan resigned after the election, seething with rage at the stupidity of the electorate. He attempted to shut down the party but it was saved by its members, including Simmons.
Unfortunately, Morgan was the primary source of funding. He’d invested millions of dollars into his party and this ended with his exit. Since then, Top has struggled to keep its nose above water.
Last year, Top focused most of its resources on Manji’s bid to capture the Ilam electorate seat. No political party has ever entered Parliament without an electorate, so Manji resolved to capture the National-leaning Christchurch seat and use MMP’s notorious electorate loophole as a base to grow his caucus – the strategy adopted by Act in Epsom.
The former councillor with a finance and social enterprise background ran a strong campaign, beating Sarah Pallett, the incumbent Labour MP, but still finished nearly 8000 votes behind National’s Hamish Campbell. He stood down from the leadership in December and is enjoying a post-campaign sabbatical.
“Their high poll numbers are a bit of a mystery,” political blogger and market researcher David Farrar says. “Normally, a small party needs three things to do well: a leader who can get media, a prominent issue to differentiate themselves and money to run the party. Top doesn’t have any of those things.”
Centrist leaning
Farrar’s clients include the National Party and he’s intrigued by Top’s enduring level of support. He wonders if it’s because it is the only centrist party left in our political ecosystem. New Zealand First used to present itself as centrist, but in its current incarnation it’s clearly conservative. Top is now the only option for anyone who might want a centrist handbrake on either a left- or right-wing government. “But they need to find an issue that’s coherent to the average voter and three policies [they went into the last election with more than 30] ordinary people can understand,” says Farrar.
Jessica Hammond has been a Top candidate in all three of the elections the party has contested, standing in Ōhāriu, a left-leaning Wellington electorate. Hammond’s candidate vote has always been significantly higher than Top’s party vote and she is still dedicated to the cause but disinclined to take on the leadership. “I want to be in whatever role is most useful for the party, but the realities of my life outside politics mean it’s probably not practical right now,” she says.
For her, the central issue for her party should be housing, which has links to so many problems, including poverty, health, the cost of living and low productivity. It’s the issue the other parties pay lip service to but fail to deliver on.
Of course, Top is not in a great position to deliver, either. Hammond says the party has just selected a new governance board, and it intends to amend the constitution, which was written during the Morgan era and concentrates an enormous amount of power in a position designated “the initial party leader”.
Once there’s a robust constitution, Top can hold a leadership contest. A number of party insiders cited former Green Party co-leader James Shaw as their ideal leader (contacted by the Listener about this possibility, Shaw expressed horror at the notion, saying nearly a decade leading one political party was more than enough).
There’s clearly an enduring constituency for Top but it seems to sit at about 60,000 voters, roughly half the number it needs to enter Parliament without an electorate seat.
Shaw’s popularity within the party reflects its success in electorates with high levels of Green support – both parties seem to fish in the same voter pool.
Hammond says many volunteers within Top “have run screaming from the Greens” after getting involved with that party and encountering its internal activists. Shaw’s planned departure from Parliament might signal an opportunity for Top if it can pick itself up to meet it.
Morgan invested millions of dollars into Top in its early days but this is an insignificant amount of money compared with the rivers of cash flowing into the main parliamentary parties.
Taxpayers spend about $50 million a year on parliamentary support funding, which is allocated to Labour, National, the Greens, New Zealand First, Act and Te Pāti Māori, and excludes the salaries paid to MPs and their perks. The parties top this up with millions more in donations. There’s a very deep moat around Parliament filled with money, and it makes it almost impossible for new parties to enter.
But Farrar wonders if the stars could align for Top. “Voters are moving away from the main parties. The centre is open and they could have a strong case that they’d be a moderating environmental force on a right-wing government.”
All Top needs is a leader, a strong campaign and an awful lot of money.
