Analysis by Keith Rankin.
Role: Economic historian.
Keith Rankin, 14 August 2026 – As I see it, the Opportunity Party represents the ‘radical centre’ of politics; distinct from the stale ‘establishment centre’. Indeed the true and original meaning of ‘radical’ was ‘innovative’, and not extreme. Thus the Liberal Party of Balance, Seddon, Reeves and Ward was understood in its time – in the 1890s – as a radical political movement.
In its American adoption – much of it inspired by New Zealand – 1890s’ liberal radicalism became 1900s’ progressivism. The word ‘progressive’, these days has been adopted by the ‘establishment Left’, which is importantly different from the radical centre. So ‘radical centrism’ is the phrase which best fits the new conceptualisation.
Universal Income
The important departure from establishment politics – a departure, embraced by Opportunity, whose time is overdue – is the Universal Income. In embracing this departure, Opportunity have created an unnecessarily fearful response within the halls of establishment politics.
My suggestion is for Opportunity to acknowledge this fear, and to present twenty-first century radicalism in a cautious way. In the mid-1960s, young men wearing long hair created a fearful response in post-war society. By the early 1970s, such hair was normalised, and had become largely non-threatening.
Universal Basic Income
In this regard, Opportunity presents its particular policy for a universal basic income (UBI, or ‘Citizens Income’ as they call it) as an aspiration; as a basis for public discussion and not as a scheme to be imposed on those people who push-back from engagement with the concept.
We may not have many available years for this discussion, because if AI (artificial intelligence) achieves anything like that anticipated by its backers, our liberal economies will collapse under the strain of so much income being redistributed from the owners of labour (the majority; the 75 percenters) to owners of new capital (presently, the minority five percenters already at the steepening apex of the wealth distribution). As with any prospective tsunami, we should at least make an effort to be prepared.
‘We are all Beneficiaries’; the basis for a bottom-line policy
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon – an intellectual barnacle impeding social and economic progress – expresses the fear of the people he represents as ‘Opportunity wants to make us all beneficiaries’.
Opportunity’s approach should be to emphasise that we are already ‘all beneficiaries’; in part by pointing out the obvious, and in part by some judicious, sensible, and inexpensive reframing.
And to note that receiving a benefit is literally a ‘good’ thing, not a bad thing. The essential meaning of the word ‘beneficiary’ is a recipient of financial benefits deriving from ownership of shares or membership of a trust or a Friendly Society or a Building Society, and the like. The use of the word ‘beneficiary’ – over the word ‘pension’ still widely used in Australia – resulted from a deliberate modernisation of thinking in New Zealand in the late 1930s, making social financial benefits a simple extension of private financial benefits.
Almost everybody with an active KiwiSaver account receives an annual benefit of $260 from the government. That’s enough to sustain the claim that ‘we are already all beneficiaries’.
New Zealanders aged over 65 receive a universal basic income as a social financial benefit (New Zealand Superannuation, formerly National Superannuation); from 1940 to 1974, in the time of its predecessor, a basic universal retirement income was known as Universal Superannuation. US, NS, and NZS have been a core part of the centre-right political programme in New Zealand since the first National government in 1949. They are present and longstanding benefits, payable to poor and rich alike; though those rich people who disagree with the idea of universal benefitdom are free to opt out.
A specific ‘bottom-line’ suggestion
Opportunity could propose, as an interim measure pending a wider societal discussion (comparable to the recent discussion about the Treaty of Waitangi), that the government replaces the present 10.5% and 17.5% concessionary tax rates with a ‘personal tax credit’ which for everyone receiving more than $53,500 of annual taxable income would be $150 per week. The tax credit payable for people receiving less than $53,500 of annual taxable income would be less than $150 per week.
The net ‘dollars-in the-pocket’ effect would be a 39 cents per year gain for people receiving more than $53,500 per year, and a zero gain/loss for everybody else. The total annual fiscal cost would be about one million dollars.
Why do it if there is no significant change in after-tax incomes?
The important change is conceptual; and the power of conceptual changes should never be underestimated. The personal tax credit would be fully understood as a ‘benefit’ – in the very best sense of that word – and there would be no doubting the truth that every taxpayer is also a beneficiary. So this policy would lay to rest Luxon’s rhetorical bogey.
Next, this reconceptualisation of what we have at present does two other important things.
First, it would give governments a new policy lever; and we sure are short of policy levers at present. The $150 personal tax credit could be raised (or lowered) in future Budgets. (I heard the statement “there are limited levers that governments can pull” 11 minutes into last night’s TVNZ’s One News.)
Second, the policy would beg the question: Why deny people receiving less than $53,500 the full personal tax credit? Thus Opportunity could offer an interim non-bottom-line policy – interim relative to its Citizens Income policy which depends on the separate matter of new forms of taxation – to extend the $150 personal tax credit from higher-earning adults to all adults, whatever their levels of annual taxable income.
Thus, the $150 personal tax credit would become a Basic Universal Income (BUI).
If properly understood, such a BUI would not be expensive to implement. For people already receiving Jobseeker Benefits, Assisted Living Benefits, New Zealand Superannuation, Student Allowance, there would be no change in ‘disposable income’; no change in the amount of money in those peoples pockets, wallets, or bank accounts.
There would be a little more disposable income for adults – other than the above-mentioned beneficiaries – on lowannual wages; and for adults (such as many students presently not receiving Allowances) on no annual wages. (Such a BUI would have zero impact on the present Working for Families programme of benefits/credits.)
The extension of the $150 personal tax credit – the present status quo, albeit re-imagined – to a $150 basic universal income would target extra social spending to where it is most needed; to young people and to caregivers.
(The mantra of economic liberalism since 1984 – known as neoconservatism in the United States – is that all benefits should be bureaucratically targeted; indeed Roger Douglas did in the 1980s convert Superannuation into a ‘clawed-back’ benefit called Guaranteed Retirement Income, reversed by Winston Peters as Treasurer in 1997.)
There is one other important favourable consequence of extending the present effective personal tax credit (PTC) to a BUI; that is that, for people who lose some or all of their current incomes, the core payment (currently $150 per week; strictly $149.61 per week) is retained. That money becomes a reliable provision which can at least put food on the table for persons in transition, or in distress arising from a sudden change of circumstances. A basic universal income, while far from generous, serves as an immediate bridging payment receivable as of right, and not granted through a successful application to a government or charitable bureaucracy.
2027
The PTC could be legislated for early in 2027, soon after the next government is formed. (In 2020, acting quickly, the Labour Government removed the entitlement of [mainly] women to gain a superannuation benefit as a ‘non-qualifying spouse’ [ie a partner aged under 65 of a superannuitant aged over 65], in a matter of weeks after the formation of the new government.)
The suggested PTC is just a rebranding of what we already have in 2026. And the BUI as suggested could easily be implemented in the 2027 Budget; it’s a matter of political will and imagination, not at all a fiscal risk to the nation. We are, already, all beneficiaries.
Then, from later in 2027, we could have a sensible discussion about having a universal basic income – and new taxes – in line with or alternative to Opportunity’s present fiscal philosophy.
If there is anything wrong with my suggestions, please tell me.
About the writer:
Keith Rankin (keith at rankin dot nz), trained as an economic historian, is a retired lecturer in Economics and Statistics. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand.