TOP unveils its business policy

Wellington — The Opportunities Party (TOP) today unveiled a detailed business prescription for the country that it describes as a significant departure from the “business-as-usual” policies promoted on both sides of the political aisle over the past quarter-century.

Announcing the TOP policy, leader Gareth Morgan said the country’s economy was increasingly a depressing tale of two New Zealands — one superficially doing fine, the other increasingly beset by problems of inequality, urban poverty, housing affordability and an environment in which innovation is not fostered.

“If we look at GDP or even GDP per capita, things look okay — and possibly more than okay for a relative few,” he said. “But the actual majority doesn’t live in the same economic place.”

Dr Morgan, a noted businessman and investor, singled out two policies in particular for the current state of economic affairs.

“The National government’s Mother of All Budgets in 1991 delivered honey-drenched tax cuts for the rich, an acid-doused withdrawal of a meaningful welfare net for the poor, and huge challenges for those now looking to find their way in a technologically challenging global business environment.

“The effects of this have only been compounded by successive governments underwriting an insane housing market with their refusal to withdraw the tax loophole that favours this investment. Of late, it’s the obscenity of that policy negligence that has ramped the inequality of wealth so much higher under the current government.”

TOP’s innovative policy prescription includes detailed plans for reforming competition law, rewarding hard work with lower income tax rates, increasing markedly the supply of capital for businesses, boosting investment in infrastructure, protecting the environment and ensuring all young people enjoy the best educational start.

It introduces practical policy prescriptions for better emulating more successful similar-sized economies by boosting R&D investment in both the public and private spheres.

“These are the most dramatic improvements in the business environment New Zealand has seen in living memory. We’re offering new business policies — not old business-as-usual policies — and with them much-needed new opportunities for New Zealand.”

ENDS

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