Damien Grant: The maths behind TOP’s biggest promise falls apart

Sunday, 5 July 2026

The Opportunity Party, led by Qiulae Wong, has aspirations of being the “kingmaker” after November’s election.

Damien Grant is an Auckland business owner and a regular opinion contributor for Stuff, writing from a libertarian perspective.

OPINION: It had been my optimistic belief that I could ignore The Opportunities Party. Like Scientology, Aromatherapy and anything to do with Gwyneth Paltrow, some things are so ridiculous no commentary is necessary.

Sadly; it seems some of you have been telling pollsters you intend to vote for a party that was so moribund they advertised for their current leader by posting in the Situations Vacant section of the internet.

I’d assumed this was trolling but I caught my wife looking at the TOP tax calculator and knew there was no escaping the grim task of lifting the lid on this boiling pot of contradictions and seeing what was brewing.

So. Here we are.

Let’s go back to where this started; noted penguin-lover Gareth Morgan and his book The Big Kahuna. This heavily researched and detailed publication debuted in 2011. Morgan proposed paying every citizen $11,000 annually; paid for by a capital tax.

I wrote a contemporaneous review and described his plan as simple, dramatic, and wrong. The solution to a broken welfare system isn’t to make everyone a beneficiary.

Gareth Morgan proposed paying every citizen $11,000 annually; paid for by a capital tax in his book The Big Kahuna.

Morgan and fellow author Susan Guthrie responded that the thrust of their proposed changes was to change how people invest their wealth and ensure “…that we deliver on the existing commitment to redistribute wealth within the community.”

His idea didn’t get traction so Morgan did what any super-rich frustrated policy wonk should do; start their own political party. The Opportunities Party.

Morgan proposed a Universal Basic Income of $11,000 in 2011. TOP 2.0 proposed $19,400. The Reserve Bank Calculator estimates 11,000 in 2011 is 16,000 today.

The policy has not even been implemented and is being inflated.

Here is the idea. TOP will charge a tax on urban land at 1.75% and 0.5% on rural land. If you own a million-dollar house in New Plymouth, with the land being worth $500,000, you will be paying $8250 a year. 1.75% of the $500k land value. This is on top of your rates bill. Perhaps that is why they call it TOP?

According to the party’s policy document this will raise 24 billion dollars. This assumes land values of 1.4 trillion. I do not understand how they calculated this because I could find no central register of the value of land in these islands. The closest was the Reserve Bank estimate of 1.6 trillion for total residential and this includes buildings.

Gareth Morgan and fellow author Susan Guthrie responded that the thrust of their proposed changes was to change how people invest their wealth and ensure “…that we deliver on the existing commitment to redistribute wealth within the community.”

Residential land value is roughly half land and half building; meaning a land-value-tax on residential land would bring in, perhaps, 12 billion. For TOPs numbers to work, given the lower rate charged on farmland, commercial and rural land must be worth two or three times the total value of residential land.

It isn’t. An acre in Herne Bay is worth more than a hectare in Rosedale and there are far more of the former than the later.

Compounding TOPs revenue estimate is allowing retirees to defer their Land Value Tax until they die; meaning billions of uncollected tax and the Commissioner of Inland Revenue scanning the death notices. The party, correctly, anticipates that their policy will reduce land values, and thus the level of revenue earned.

The costing fudge was easier. TOP estimates that paying 19,400 for every adult over 18 amounts to 69.6 billion. According to these numbers there are just 3.66 million adults over 18 in New Zealand. There are, in fact, about 4.1 million according to the Department of Statistics.

Did they assume no one would check?

The cost of TOPs plan is eighty billion. Not the 70 billion in their projection. They also propose billions more to families with children, 18,250 for the first year, top-up for pensioners, 10,500 on top of the 19,400 for housing support.

New leader of the Opportunities Party, Qiulae Wong.

TOP then estimates they can re-deploy 2000 staff and, in their budget, allocate 3.8 billion in ‘administration’ savings. Not reduced welfare. Overhead. 3.8 billion is about 30,000 public servants.

It is as if Barbie and Ken were doodling on a chalkboard. Dreaming we can pay people to find their true selves while ‘the economy’ and, of course, the rich, pay for everything. This is what happens when we raise a generation on YouTube reels and certificates of participation.

Dr Morgan and Susan Guthrie produced a thoughtful and economically literate program that, while I disagreed with it, deserved serious discussion. His creation has devolved into a social-media party chasing likes.

Their policy documents looks like a high-school civics project. The numbers do not add up and the images are probably AI. TOP 2.0 is not a serious enterprise. It is vibe coding and feels. The party should recede into the margins of relevance.

To paraphrase Dr Morgan, they applied an Instagram filter on an aging hog and are presenting as Babe. This is not a serious party and it has lingered long past its Best Before date. They do not have the institutional memory, resilience or depth to withstand the rigours of an election. This is their last goodbye.

That’ll do TOP. That’ll do.