David Harvey
Retired district court judge
The Levellers were a radical political movement active in England during the mid-1640s to 1649, emerging from the parliamentarian side of the Civil War. They were most influential among London artisans, tradesmen, and rank-and-file soldiers of the New Model Army.
The movement peaked in 1647–49 but was crushed when Cromwell suppressed army mutinies at Burford in May 1649 and imprisoned its leaders.
Their opponents associated the Levellers with the “True Levellers” who were also known as “Diggers”. They were a small agrarian communist movement active from 1649 to 1650, led by Gerrard Winstanley and William Everard.
They took their name from their practice of digging and planting common land, most famously at St George’s Hill in Surrey in April 1649, and later at Cobham Heath and a handful of other sites.
Their principles, set out in Winstanley’s pamphlets such as The True Levellers Standard Advanced and The Law of Freedom in a Platform, went well beyond the Levellers.
The earth, they said, was a “common treasury” given by God to all humanity. Private property in land was the root of oppression and had been imposed by conquest, particularly the “Norman Yoke” of 1066. They wanted the commons, wastes, and confiscated Crown and Church lands opened for collective cultivation.
By 1650 the movement had collapsed. The key contrast with the Levellers is that the Levellers wanted political rights within a system of private property, while the Diggers saw property itself as the problem. Does this sound familiar?
Read on.
Introduction
The Opportunity Party presents a conundrum. It presents, on the one hand, as a moderate and pragmatic organization – perhaps a little technocratic. Its leader, Qiulae Wong, talks about evidence, innovation, competition and finding common ground. The party claims it is neither left nor right and advertises itself as a potential bridge between the traditional blocs.
This is a superficial and misleading assessment but one that seems to have appealed to Mainstream Media who all seem to have bent the knee to the Opportunities Party. One exception is Jack Tame who put Ms Wong through the interview hoops in a performance that former PM Ms Helen Clark called a “trainwreck”.
But if we look at the Opportunity economic programme it is anything but centrist.
What Opportunity proposes is a fundamental restructuring of the relationship between the citizen, property and the state.
Its main focus, the “Tax Reset”, combines a substantial annual tax on land with a Universal Citizen’s Income and compulsory retirement saving. Taken together, these policies would redistribute income and wealth on a scale that has been rarely contemplated in modern New Zealand politics.
A Tax Designed to Reduce What People Own
The Land Value Tax is a critical element of Opportunity policy. The income from this tax will fund the Universal Citizens Income – of which more later.
Opportunity proposes an annual tax of 1.75 per cent of urban land value. It explicitly says the purpose is to shift taxation away from work and onto land. More strikingly, the party predicts that the tax will reduce property prices by 10–15 per cent and says plainly of that result: “That’s the point.”
The party itself acknowledges that this is not merely a tax intended to raise revenue. It is deliberately intended to alter asset values and economic behaviour.
Existing property owners are expected to absorb a reduction in the value of an asset acquired under the existing tax system.
Opportunity acknowledges that some older homeowners may respond by downsizing or becoming renters. Farmers may sell part of their holdings or change land use. Owners of substantial property portfolios are expressly intended to receive lower returns.
There is an important distinction between taxing income when it is earned and imposing a recurring liability merely because an asset continues to be owned.
Consider a person who bought a modest Auckland house decades ago. The surrounding land subsequently became extremely valuable through population growth, zoning and urban expansion.
That increase does not necessarily provide the owner with additional cash. Yet Opportunity would impose an annual liability calculated upon that land value.
The answer for someone who cannot afford it is deferral. But deferral does not abolish the tax. It merely postpones collection. The tax liability follows the property into the deceased person’s estate.
In that respect the proposal represents something more significant than tax reform.
Property ownership ceases to be accompanied by the expectation that, once purchased and mortgage obligations are discharged, the owner can simply retain the asset without an annual central-government charge calculated upon its capital value.
Opportunity itself accepts that introducing its LVT is actually intended to depress land values. Treasury has previously made essentially the same economic observation about land taxation: although such taxes can be economically efficient, introduction causes existing landowners to suffer a one-off capital loss as the future tax liability becomes capitalised into land prices.
But that loss is part of the mechanism of Opportunity’s proposal rather than being incidental to it.
Levelling by Taxation
Opportunity’s tax programme emphasises its redistributive aspects. The party’s own submission on the 2026 Budget Policy Statement describes its objective as enhancing the “progressiveness of the tax system” through a comprehensive land-value tax combined with a universal income.
Therefore its “Tax Reset” is explicitly concerned with changing the distribution of economic resources.
I am not suggesting that redistribution is illegitimate, although philosophically I oppose it. But the reality is that every modern tax and welfare system redistributes to some extent. The important question is one of degree and principle.
And it is in this regard that Opportunity moves well beyond providing a safety net funded from general taxation. It identifies one class of asset – land – as excessively favoured, deliberately reduces its value, imposes continuing taxation upon its owners, and uses the proceeds to finance payments to virtually the entire adult population.
The claim is that the package will increase the incomes of 70 per cent of New Zealanders while another 20 per cent experience no change.
If those figures are correct, the political economy is obvious: a comparatively small minority becomes the net funding source for benefits distributed across an overwhelming majority.
That is levelling – literally.
Everyone Becomes a Beneficiary
The Universal Citizen’s Income is touted as the payoff.
Almost every adult would receive $370 each week, or $19,400 annually, regardless of whether that person was employed, unemployed or required financial assistance. Most existing benefits would disappear, although supplementary assistance would remain for some groups. An adjustment for inflation is conveniently overlooked.
There are some attractions to universal payments as long as you don’t mind being dependent on the state for a handout. Universal payments eliminate abatement rates, reduce bureaucracy and avoid the stigma associated with welfare.
Opportunity argues that people would always have an incentive to work because earning additional income would no longer cause the withdrawal of a benefit.
The problem is that universality creates a different constitutional and social relationship.
Traditional welfare distinguishes between the taxpayer and the person requiring assistance, while recognising that the same citizen may occupy either position at different stages of life. Opportunity instead makes receipt of government money an ordinary feature of adulthood.
The millionaire receives the Citizen’s Income. So does the professional, the tradesperson, the student and the unemployed person.
Everyone becomes, formally at least, a beneficiary of the state.
There is an extraordinary circularity to such an arrangement.
Government taxes citizens, processes the revenue and then pays money back to virtually everybody.
The 2001 Tax Review identified precisely this ‘churn’ problem with universal basic incomes: people around the middle of the distribution can effectively pay substantial tax only to receive part of it back as a universal payment.
It concluded that universal benefit schemes had theoretical attractions but serious practical problems involving taxation, incentives and redistribution.
The Productivity Commission subsequently reached a similarly sceptical conclusion.
It recognised advantages including reduced poverty traps and greater security, but observed that universal unconditional payments are necessarily expensive if set at meaningful levels and may divert resources from those with the greatest need.
Its conclusion was that the case for a universal benefit in New Zealand was weak.
Opportunity attempts to solve the funding problem through the land tax. That simply completes the redistributive circle: impose a tax on private property annually and distribute part of the proceeds universally as income.
Redistribution Combined With Compulsion
The issue of compulsion and the associated coercive power of the state has been overlooked in much of the commentary about Opportunity.
In addition to the land tax, Opportunity also proposes compulsory KiwiSaver, eventually requiring six per cent contributions from employees and another six per cent from employers.
The party envisages this producing a capital pool approaching $1 trillion that could help finance infrastructure and national development.
Once again, to be fair, there are respectable arguments for compulsory retirement saving. Australia has operated such a system for decades.
But viewed collectively alongside the LVT and Citizen’s Income, a pattern emerges.
Opportunity proposes to determine more extensively how citizens’ economic resources are allocated.
Land ownership attracts a substantial recurring central-government tax.
Almost everyone receives an income payment from government.
Retirement saving becomes compulsory.
The resulting enormous pool of retirement capital is envisaged as contributing to national investment.
Each proposal can be defended individually. Taken together they represent a significant enlargement of collectivist economic arrangements.
And this emphasis on collectivism inevitably begs the question – is Opportunity socialist?
Opportunity does not propose nationalising industry or abolishing private property – well not directly anyway. Under its land tax proposals the attraction of real estate ownership will wither away. In the classical meaning of socialism – state ownership of the means of production – the label therefore fits poorly.
So traditionally socialist it may not be. But collectivist of the left-wing stripe, emphasising the power of state control, it certainly is.
Opportunity is cunning. It combines market rhetoric with a radically redistributive conception of economic citizenship.
Private property remains privately owned – for the time being anyway, but government deliberately reduces the value of one major asset class and extracts an annual payment from it.
Welfare ceases principally to be assistance provided according to need and becomes a universal entitlement. Retirement saving becomes compulsory.
The result is not classical socialism. It is a much more high-level interventionist economic settlement, emphasising the power and control of the state over the economic life of citizens than the party’s reassuring language initially conveys.
Opportunity And the Balance of Power
A party does not need to command 40 per cent of the electorate to influence government policy under MMP. It may need only enough seats to determine which larger party can govern.
That gives particular importance to Opportunity’s declared willingness to work with either side.
A major party seeking office might regard a land tax, Citizen’s Income or compulsory savings scheme as an unacceptable electoral proposition when presented to voters on its own. Coalition negotiations create a different environment.
The problem is that policies rejected by the overwhelming majority of voters can nevertheless become bargaining chips in negotiations necessary to assemble a parliamentary majority.
And let us face it – the left is slaveringly hungry for power. Given the paucity of policy that Labour has released it is highly likely that they could – hand on what passes for a heart – strike a Faustian bargain with Opportunity simply to get their feet on the ninth floor of the Beehive.
Then there is the approach to MMP negotiations.
Asked which side she would back, Ms Wong says the party is “neutral and happy to go either way”.
She means it as a virtue – open-minded, non-tribal, above the fray.
There is another reading to this, as there is with all Opportunity statements that at first blush seem to be sensible. A party with no fixed allegiance and no settled principle is not above the contest but is available to the highest bidder.
Opportunity intends to publish ‘bottom lines’ and hand them first to the largest party, then, if that fails, to the second. That is not statesmanship. That is an auction, and the prize is the direction of the country.
The real question surrounding Opportunity is therefore not whether its representatives are intelligent, sincere or well intentioned. There is every reason to assume that they are – but intelligence, sincerity and intention does not automatically equate with commonsense or principle.
Opportunity’s approach to MMP negotiations evidences a distinct absence of principle in the pursuit of power, especially when ideology drives the process.
The question is whether the soothing vocabulary of pragmatism adequately describes what they propose.
It does not.
The danger with Opportunity – and there is a danger - is not that Opportunity will win. It will not. But because of our system it will lose the election but may still shape the government.
A party polling in the low single digits, with no clear allegiance, proposing to tax the roof over your head and turn every New Zealander into a beneficiary, should not be handed the casting vote over who governs and on what terms.
Opportunity’s programme would deliberately transfer economic advantage from landowners to non-landowners.
It would deliberately reduce property values.
It would make almost every adult a beneficiary – the recipient of a government payment replace much of the targeted welfare system with universal entitlement.
And it would compel substantially greater retirement saving.
Those are not minor adjustments to New Zealand’s economic structure.
They amount to a proposed redistribution of property, income and economic responsibility between citizen and state. Opportunity may call that a “Tax Reset”.
Others might reasonably call it an experiment in economic levelling, bringing the dreams of the 17th-century idealists to life in the 21st.
Either way, “centrist” is an inadequate description of Opportunity’s economic ambition.
A party proposing change on this scale deserves to have those proposals examined with considerably greater care before its apparently moderate political positioning is confused with moderation of policy.
So by all means listen to Opportunity’s arguments. Weigh the land tax and the universal payment on their merits. My view is that they should be rejected. I didn’t work all my life – and continue to do so – to have the fruits of my labour and the property I own taxed to oblivion.
But most importantly do not reward a strategy that treats the balance of power as leverage to be sold. On November 7, the surest way to keep these ideas away from the cabinet table is to keep their authors well away from the levers of power.
Afterword
The technological magic of present times casts something of a pall over writing and commentary. What is called the “liars dividend” in evidence law is invoked. Rather than establish that a piece has been “written” by AI, the author has to prove a negative – that it was not.
It is not my usual practice to provide sources for my pieces. Occasionally I may footnote a piece. But such is the climate of the times that I list below the various sources that I have used in this article.
Audrey Young and Chris Knox, “Your ultimate guide to Opportunity Party – as Qiulae Wong eyes potential balance-of-power role” NZ Herald 29 August 2026
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/your-ultimate-guide-to-opportunity-party-as-qiulae-wong-eyes-potential-balance-of-power-role/premium/NBNHFI3IZBCHHLNR2CQNNY37TE/
Michelle Duff, “So hacked off: as election nears, New Zealanders despair at the main parties – and Opportunity knocks” the Guardian 26 August 2026
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/aug/26/new-zealand-election-voters-despair-main-parties-and-opportunity-knocks?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The Opportunity Party, “Tax Reset – Lets Invest in People. Not Property”
https://www.opportunity.org.nz/tax-reset?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The Opportunity Party, “Clean Up Politics”
https://www.opportunity.org.nz/clean_up_politics
NZ Treasury, “Affording Our Future: Statement on New Zealand’s Long-term Fiscal Position (2013)”
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/publications/ltfp/affording-our-future-statement-new-zealands-long-term-fiscal-position-2013?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The Opportunity Party, “Submission on the Budget Policy Statement 2026” https://www.opportunity.org.nz/submission_on_the_budget_policy_statement_2026?utm_source=chatgpt.com
NZ Treasury Tax Review 2001
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2007-11/taxreview2001-report.pdf
NZ Productivity Commission, “Employment, labour markets and income” 2019
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2024-05/pc-inq-tcfw-draft-report-2-employment-labour-markets-and-income-v3.pdf
This article was originally published by A Halfling’s View.
