Dave Stewart

When entrepreneurial millionaire Gareth Morgan formed The Opportunities Party in 2016 to contest the 2017 election, he was going well until he engaged far right shock jock Sean Plunket as communications director.

Morgan visited Whakatāne during the election campaign and held a public meeting at the War Memorial Theatre and I was one of about 100 people in attendance.

Morgan stated at the meeting that he was a wealthy man and wanted to keep that wealth and he started TOP to maintain social stability because he saw the danger of extreme right-wing influence on politics.

He stated he was a supporter of Te Tiriti, a fan of Sir John Key, didn’t think he could work with a Labour administration and thought the biggest threat to Aotearoa was the extremism of a party like Act.

Plunket eventually scuttled TOP’s chances with his own extremism and recently TOP had a reset, changed their name and employed a new leader through an advertisement on Seek.

The tone is much milder this time around and the policies are clearer and articulated better and the result has seen The Opportunity Party rise in the polls.

It’s been helped along by a mainstream media narrative that is largely sympathetic and supportive.

It’s no secret that the National-led coalition is in deep trouble and unless something dramatic happens they’ll be toast in November.

The wealthy are pumping millions in donations into the right-wing parties to prop up Luxon’s failing administration and it’s clear The Opportunity Party is part of that strategy.

What has been missing from the media commentary is how divided the right wing of politics is right now.

The wealthy and their parties are all in deep, and at times, bitter conflict about how best to protect the wealthy from paying their share of tax, and in particular of the costs of the post-Covid recovery.

This isn’t new. The right had a massive split in the 80s with the introduction into our political system of neoliberal economics where the wealth was redistributed upwards with tax cuts for the wealthy, taxpayer-funded accommodation supplements as a subsidy to landlords and Working For Families taxpayer funded subsidies for employers.

Since then, the wealthy have become ever more reliant on taxpayer-funded handouts and their appetite is insatiable.

There is a fine line to be walked here, though. When you’re ripping off hard-working people to make the wealthy better off, history is full of examples where that has gone wrong.

And that’s where the right are so bitterly divided.

Labour says they can do it with kindness. National says they can do it with less kindness. New Zealand First says they can do it without Te Tiriti and immigration, Act says they can do it by brute force.

Opportunity says they can do it without Act.

The parties of neoliberalism all say the wealthy can stay wealthy if only they vote for parties who protect the wealthy.

Neoliberalism promised us all aspirational wealth.

It delivered more millionaires and more billionaires and the first trillionaire.

Meanwhile, the working poor crowd hospital emergency departments because they can’t afford to see a doctor and now they’re dying in increasing numbers while waiting.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not voting for more of that this November.

Nice try Opportunity Party, but that’s a NO from me.