Chris Trotter
Let’s take to the Opportunity Party with Occam’s Razor and see what’s left – or right.
Named after the 14th century theologian William of Occam, the cut-through principle of his reasoning – his “razor” – is usually summarised like this: When confronted with two competing theories, the simpler explanation is generally to be preferred over the more complex.
Could it be that some people, most of them journalists and politicians, are overthinking the Opportunity “problem”?
To hear its bitterest critics tell the tale, Opportunity is the work of a diabolically clever cabal of left-wing politicians who, despairing of the Greens and repelled by Te Pāti Māori, stealthily occupied the ruins of Gareth Morgan’s $4 million political folly from 2016 – The Opportunities Party (TOP).
Having assumed command, these wily conspirators then advertised for, and got, a young, smart and extremely telegenic frontperson – Qiulae Wong. With her fresh face and a whole new vibe in play, they renamed and relaunched the party. It was accomplished with the skill and panache of seasoned public relations practitioners – which they were.
Opportunity’s selling-point (identical to TOP’s) continues to be that evidence-based clear-sky thinking, cutting through the compounded historical errors of the two major parties, is exactly what a deeply indebted, chronically unproductive, over-administered and generally despondent New Zealand needs.
According to this sales-pitch, Opportunity is equally open to working with either of the major parties. It claims to have escaped the Left/Right dichotomy in which the rest of the country remains imprisoned and is inviting either National or Labour or (if Christopher Luxon and Chris Hipkins are feeling politically polyamorous) both parties to join them in the green fields of ideologically unencumbered thinking.
“That’s the Lord Mayor’s Coach,” warn Opportunity’s critics. “Now check out the shit-cart following along behind.” In said vehicle will be found a suite of policies that would make Vladimir Lenin blush.
A land tax! A universal basic income! A Māori Upper House! ‘Trans-women are women’ carved into tablets of stone! How much more evidence do ordinary Kiwi voters need before they reach the 100%-correct conclusion that Opportunity is a left-wing party?!
Opportunity’s “Q” may say that she is open to working with both major parties, but in making such a claim she is being accused of demonstrating either political naïvety or brazen deceit. No economically liberal or socially conservative political party in its right mind could possibly entertain joining forces with such an obviously left-wing entity.
So say Opportunity’s opponents – and earlier this week the Prime Minister confirmed their conspiratorial analysis by ruling out any sort of accommodation with Opportunity.
A simple, razor-sharp, analysis: William of Occam would be proud.
Or would he?
Radical change
Imputing conspiratorial motives to Opportunity’s re-birthers unnecessarily complicates what is actually a much simpler story.
Let’s begin with its opponents’ strongest charge: that Opportunity’s policies are left-wing.
According to TOP’s founder Gareth Morgan, the left-wing charge is misdirected. Interviewed by The Platform’s Sean Plunket on 28 July (one day after Luxon ruled out Opportunity), Morgan announced that after carefully perusing Opportunity’s suite of policies, he could detect no substantial changes to the prescription he wrote for New Zealand more than a decade ago.
The two defining policies of TOP, the land tax and the universal basic income, were still there, largely unchanged. To accuse Opportunity of being a left-wing party in 2026, one would also have to accuse TOP’s founder of being a left-winger in 2017. Sustaining an accusation of leftism against Morgan would be … difficult.
Morgan’s defence of the two flagship policies of TOP is contained in the cover blurb of his 2014 book The Big Kahuna: Turning Tax and Welfare in New Zealand on its Head:
While they are generally regarded as separate, the tax and welfare systems are fundamentally both methods of […] redistributing income from those who have plenty to those who don’t.
“In a nutshell, The Big Kahuna seeks to show that if the job of redistributing wealth and income is worth doing, it’s worth doing properly, so that the resulting system is fair to all, rich and poor alike.
So far, so Roger Douglas. If the tax and welfare system isn’t working, change it.
But what about all that woke stuff – transgenderism and the treaty?
As Morgan wryly explained to Plunket, the new-look Opportunity is quite obviously pitching its programme at a demographic much younger than the “old fogies” on The Platform. Some issues just don’t make it across the generational divide. Let them go.
In a nutshell, then, Opportunity is what it has always been – a party established and still dedicated to making radical economic and social changes.
Does that make it left-wing? No more than ACT’s equal dedication to the cause of radical economic and social change makes it left-wing.
National’s happy to work with ACT’s radicals, so why not Opportunity’s?
Once again, the simpler explanation is the more persuasive.
Heeding the warning?
National’s not ruling out Opportunity on account of its “left-wing” beliefs; it’s ruling them out in a desperate attempt to halt the slide in National’s party vote.
Opportunity has been attracting the support of disgruntled and disillusioned young liberals. Qiulae Wong is offering them something the current leadership has struggled to provide: a new story, told in a new way.
The Prime Minister is hoping that young New Zealanders will heed his warning that Opportunity is actually a ravening revolutionary wolf in fashionably reformist sheep’s clothing.
“A vote for Qiulae Wong is a vote for Chris Hipkins, Chloe Swarbrick and Rawiri Waititi. Don’t do it!” That is Luxon’s message, delivered in the almost certainly mistaken belief that disgruntled and disillusioned young voters can still be brought into line by exhortations from the very same old fogies from whom they are turning away!
Luxon would have a much better chance of being heeded if it were clear that Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori were eager to welcome Opportunity into their “Left bloc”. But he must be able to see that the Left fears Opportunity as much, if not more, than the Right.
The last thing Hipkins needs is a bunch of young and articulate idealists brimming with ideas big enough to transform New Zealand every bit as thoroughly as Rogernomics and Ruthanasia burst through the centre-Left’s turnstiles. A party held together by a fragile spider’s web of unholy factional alliances needs the competition of plausible revolutionaries like it needs a hole in its head.
The Greens, meanwhile, are contemplating Opportunity with all the Wildean horror of deeply compromised individuals seeing themselves as they used to be. How terrified Marama Davidson and Chlöe Swarbrick must be that their voters will take a closer look at Opportunity and see Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald.
No, the Greens in Parliament want no part of Opportunity. What the Greens outside of Parliament want, God alone knows.
What Te Pāti Māori knows for certain, however, is that the moment Opportunity MPs enter Parliament, any political leverage it may once have possessed will instantly evaporate.
Labour will have no need of the “overhang” seats it is proffering. Indeed, Hipkins may be tempted to rack up electoral brownie points by putting the boot into Te Pāti Māori’s rorting of the MMP system. What’s more, Labour’s Māori caucus, it eyes firmly fixed on the Māori seats, may be happy to lend him their Doc Martens.
The National Party’s decision to rule out any accommodation with Opportunity is even more difficult to fathom when a straightforward cost/benefit analysis suggests that Qiulae Wong has far more to gain by throwing in her lot with the Right than the Left.
The guide here should be Winston Peters and the first MMP election. In 1996 there was a widespread assumption that NZ First would align itself with the Left (in those days Labour and Jim Anderton’s Alliance) but Peters grasped the deep unwisdom of doing the expected.
If NZ First allowed itself to be written off as just another left-wing party, then its future would be determined entirely by the speed at which Labour rebuilt the electorate’s trust. Far better to act as a handbrake on National’s baser instincts and reap the electoral reward. Had Peters selected a more loyal caucus, and the National Party possessed more honourable members, the plan might have worked.
Certainly the logic of Peters’ plan remains as compelling now as it was in 1996. If Opportunity crosses the 5% threshold and throws in its lot with Labour, then all it will have done is confirm its critics’ central charge: that Opportunity is – and was set up to be – a left-wing party.
But a National Party freed by Opportunity from the tutelage of ACT’s extremism, NZ First’s arthritic populism – and from the position of safety afforded it by Opportunity’s numbers – might find the courage to write a new story and tell it in a new way, guided by the virtues of Occam’s Razor.
Chris Trotter
Chris Trotter has more than 30 years’ experience as a political commentator and analyst. He is the author of the Bowalley Rd blog
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