Qiulae Wong – Beehive to Business

[Hayley Horan]

Good morning, everybody. Is this mic on? Can you hear me out the back?

Okay. What about now? Great.

Thank you. Tēnā koutou. Tēnā koutou.

Tēnā koutou katoa. Ko Hayley Horan tāku ingoa. I'm a little bit surprised.

I think we're like three or four minutes early, but absolute credit to our guest speaker today because we can't wait to get started. So let's see some boots out there. No, they're not coming in.

My name's Hayley Horan. I am the CEO of Business Central, home of Wellington Chamber of Commerce, and this is, I'm not sure what number it is, but this is part of our leader series, Beehive to Business, so we're pretty excited to kick off today. I also want to thank, just pausing, just talking slow for Jason to come in, who's actually our sponsor, so we'd better be very polite.

Thanks so much. Thank you to all of those that are joining us online today. I think there's about 50, 60 people online, which I think is, again, a credit to our fabulous guests which we'll introduce shortly.

So a little bit about Business Central, the home of Wellington Chamber of Commerce. We represent about 3,600 businesses across Wellington and central New Zealand. When you think about us, I want you to think about us as a place in which where you connect, where you get support, where we're there to advocate for you, where we're there to be able to offer you insights and ways in which you can grow your business.

So just in case you didn't know, and of course there'll be a little slide at the end in case you're not a member and you'd really like to be. So now to the reason you are here, we're very excited to hear from Qiulae Wong, leader of the Opportunity Party shortly, but before we do, of course, I must ensure that we are safe and I'll give you a quick note on housekeeping. In the event of a fire, please use the nearest exit and gather out on Lampton Quay or the car park entrances on Warring Taylor or Johnson Street.

If there's an earthquake, stay inside and move away from the windows. The women's toilets are by the kitchen and the men's are through the lift corridor and to the left. Today's business to be, I don't know why I get this wrong every time, it is, I'm going to change the name to business to beehive, okay?

Beehive to business as part of our election series. And I say this every single time, but I think the quality of having time to hear from our leaders in an uninterrupted way, in which we do get in media, is an absolute privilege and an honour to create this space. Ask the questions, dig in deep, because that's why we have these series.

So it's an absolute pleasure to continue the series with Qiulae Wong, the leader of the Opportunity Party and a sustainable business consultant. Qiulae is also the party's candidate for Mount Albert electorate, I won't hold that against you here in Wellington. And before entering politics, Qiulae worked across sustainability, business and innovation.

Her experience includes leading the B Corp movement in New Zealand, advising businesses on low-carb transition and co-founding a sustainable technology start-up in London during a decade spent overseas. That I'm really interested in, I'm going to talk to you about that later. Now, as we move through the election year, many of our members will be interested to hear more about the Opportunity Party's priorities and focus, and we're looking forward to that discussion today.

So I would also like to say to Jason from the Allen + Clarke team, we cannot do that without you, these series, so thank you so much. And now I'd like to invite you up, please, to welcome our guest in a little more style than I've done.

[Jason Carpenter]

I don't think I'll achieve that, but I'll give it a go. Kia ora koutou and welcome. Thank you all for being here this morning.

This is the fifth event in our Beehive to Business series where we're introducing leaders of the different parties and, as Hayley said, giving an opportunity for business to ask some questions and hear directly from them about their priorities. And so if you've attended any of the earlier ones, there's a little bit of a familiar pattern where we stand up here and introduce an esteemed politician. We rattle off their CV, which normally starts with, elected in 1987, the Minister.

And so today is a little different, and so I think, you know, as Allen + Clarke, I'm Chief Sales Officer here, but we're really interested in hearing, like, what are the vision for the future and how that's going to work. So the person that we're introducing today hasn't been an MP since 1987, and in fact, she hasn't been an MP at all. And so when you're preparing these speeches, there's very little to go on because there's no maiden speech, you know, there's no committee war stories, and there's no decades of Hansard to stroll through.

But I think that's pretty much the point of, you know, why we want you here today. So, as Hayley said, background includes sustainability, systems change, purpose-led organisations, and professional services in New Zealand and internationally working on, you know, things that, like, resonate in this room, innovation, social impact, economic reform, and all things long-term thinking. And so people in the room today, nothing you're building has a three-year cycle, and so really interested to hear from you around some of those longer-term priorities that have sort of been from your career and how that might translate into politics.

So this morning, we're going to hear from Qiulae around the forces shaping New Zealand's future, you know, opportunities, priorities heading into the election, and the role business can play in the changing economic, environmental, and social landscape. And so normally with these, we sort of have politicians learning to talk to businesses. Here, we've got someone from business who's going to ask us to think a little bit different about our politics.

So please join me in welcoming Qiulae.

[Qiulae Wong]

Thank you. Morena, thank you, and yeah, I feel like we could switch around the title of the event because it feels like I am sort of business coming to the beehive, hopefully, in November. To help a bit with, I guess, filling in some of that background on who I am, I'll talk a little bit about what I did before the last eight months, and then go into, yeah, what opportunities, priorities are and where we're hoping to land on November the 7th.

So my background before getting into politics has been in the private sector, and I did study law and politics at university, so I think I've always had this interest in how can we make New Zealand a better place, how can we make society stronger and give more opportunities to more people. But my first job out of university was actually working for a campaign called Be Accessible, which was funded by the Ministry of Social Development. And it was a campaign designed to change attitudes and behaviours towards people with disabilities in New Zealand, because one in four New Zealanders at some point in their life will have a disability of some kind, whether that's a physical disability, neurodiversity, ageing-related, and often our spaces and our businesses aren't open to a lot of those people for various reasons.

And this campaign was hooked around the Rugby World Cup in 2011, so we were sort of trying to advocate to businesses that they could take advantage of this extra 25 per cent of the population if they made their businesses more welcoming to these people, whether that was having a ramp to get into the building or having a braille menu or simply training their staff on customer service for people with different neurodiverse issues. And as a graduate coming out of university, that was really enlightening for me and I think triggered this idea that businesses can be a force for good in society and that they can be part of the solution to a lot of our social and environmental problems.

And so I did that for a couple of years and then really that set the trajectory for the next 15, 16 years of my career. As Hayley mentioned, I went off to London after that and worked in the sustainable fashion space and fashion had actually always been this side hustle passion of mine. I wanted to be a fashion designer, but ended up doing a law degree instead.

So I was able to combine those two things, sustainability and design and creativity. And an industry organisation that was trying to change practices in the fashion sector globally. And that sort of I went from thinking, OK, well, individual businesses can be a force for good to how do we shift behaviours in a whole sector, in a whole industry that is very complex, that works with factories all around the world, impacts human rights and working conditions, but also sourcing practices, farming, how we grow organic cotton, and then you're reaching into different countries in the way that they operate and the settings that enable more sustainable practices to happen. So I sort of started zooming out just from a business focus to an industry focus and looking at how we could drive systems change in the fashion industry. After that, I then ended up in the B Corp movement over in London.

So B Corp is a certification that's been around for about 20 years now and originated in the States. And the idea is that they talk about short term profit incentives being like the source code era of capitalism. It wasn't how capitalism was intended.

And a lot of businesses now, I think, understand that constantly pursuing short term profit and returns to shareholders should not be the only purpose of business. And actually, if you take a longer term view, that is better for prosperity. But the B Corp movement is designed around that idea and trying to make that more mainstream.

And that really helped me zoom out again one step further from industry to business as a whole. And how do we shift the practices of business globally, everywhere, so that we are looking more long term, so that we elevate purpose to the same level as pursuing profit? And not to say that it's more important because we need businesses to be commercially viable as well.

But if we can really incentivise businesses to have that longer term purpose, something that you're really looking at, what are the social benefits that this business is creating for society? We might have fewer social and environmental problems in the first place to have to solve. So as I kind of kept zooming out, I kind of got to this, OK, well, now we're looking at economic systems change in countries and globally.

And then the final step before I got to politics was jumping over to KPMG. And I had never really worked in a big corporate before, but I wanted to take what I had learnt throughout my career and see if maybe big business was the solution to this. When I was working in the B Corp movement, I felt like it was incredibly inspiring.

I got to work with amazing businesses that really were challenging the status quo, businesses like Sharesies that had a real strong purpose but were commercially successful as well. But I thought maybe if big corporates could do this as well, then we could have the economic systems change that we're really looking to achieve. And I was working in the climate reporting at the time that was coming into force and working with some really great business leaders from some of our biggest energy companies, banks, big retailers and manufacturers in New Zealand.

And what I saw was that these business leaders really did understand the need to do these things. And many of you are here in the room. But what I learnt in that process with the change of government in 2023 was really the impact of government and political decisions on the ability for these leaders to make those long term decisions.

So they understood the need to make these investments and to shift business models and to have to plan for the next 50 years. Because we were doing climate scenarios that looked out to 2050, 2100, and the impacts that that could have on businesses. But having that rapid change in government that really changed direction, particularly on environmental issues, made it very obvious to me that the role of government is critical if we are going to have this kind of economic systems change that might deliver a better society.

So I guess it's a very roundabout way of explaining why I decided to step up for this role and how I ended up here. When the Opportunity Party put out their open leadership call, it felt like really good timing because I was feeling incredibly frustrated at KPMG at that slow pace of change. And in seeing how much businesses were frustrated as well at the flip flopping and how that was impacting their decision making.

So it was good timing, really. I put my hand up. I went through a bit of a rigorous leadership selection process, a bit unusual in the political world to do that.

But, you know, I decided to go for it because I thought at least it would give me an insight as to what politics might be like if I was to try and step into that space and do things like media testing and presenting to panels of swing voters. And it was, you know, there are lots of hurdles to get through. And it was a really great experience.

And I felt like even if I didn't get the leadership role, it was almost like a mini boot camp in what politics is like. But I was fortunate enough to be offered the role. And I have been doing this now for about eight months and I've learnt a lot in that time.

And I kind of came in thinking, you know, obviously Opportunity is a party that's all about policy. And so that schooling up on all the details of all the policy was going to be the most important thing. And obviously, you know, the first thing I did was go out and meet a bunch of different people in all these different sectors.

And the common thing that I actually heard from all of them was that everybody was struggling with this flip flop and everyone was sick of the pendulum politics, whether that was teachers who are getting pulled in every direction when it comes to curriculum changes or testing changes, classroom changes, whether it's health professionals that are constantly having to re-look at how they fund different mechanisms in the health system.

Infrastructure, obviously a big one. We now know the cost of infrastructure flip flopping. $11.8 billion wasted in the last 25 years because of stop starting on projects. And so that was something that wasn't expected for me when I stepped into this was actually that the main thing that I think Opportunity can offer going forward is to try and slow down that flip flop and try to encourage more of our politicians to think long term. And obviously, we've got some ideas on how we think that we can do things differently when it comes to tax settings and our energy system and innovation, which I'll speak a bit more to in a moment. But really, I think that the biggest thing that we can offer right now to New Zealand politics is a different way to approach politics and lawmaking in general.

And it's been really interesting the last couple of weeks. We've obviously with increased polling and media coverage, fewer people are starting to ask us about the wasted vote. And everyone now wants to know who we're going to go with.

And I constantly get the question. I'm sorry if I'm stealing your question, but I really love what you guys stand for. But I won't vote for you unless I know who you're going to go with.

And I get it all the time from both sides. And it's really hard because on the one hand, I can understand being in a voter's shoes, wanting to know exactly how we will respond after the election. But on the other hand, the reality is if we were to pick a side now, we would simply reinforce the left-right tribalism that is so strong in New Zealand.

And I don't think that that's how MMP is designed to work. We should be allowed to have more cross-fertilisation of ideas because of a system like MMP. And actually, I think back to that first job out of university was around when John Key was the Prime Minister.

And we had the confidence and supply agreement with Te Pati Māori and the Green Party. And that just seems so far-fetched today that we could have a government that operates like that. And the programme that I did, Be Accessible, was an outcome of that government.

And with Tariana Turia leading the charge on it under a John Key government. So I would really like for politics to get back to that. Not that we want to go backwards, but I think that we can make some improvements to evolve MMP to a better system where we can have outcomes like that.

So what is opportunity putting on the table? We, as I mentioned, have been called the policy wonk party. So we have a big repertoire of ideas that we've been working on for over a decade now.

And I think the Opportunity Party was founded to tackle some of our big systemic challenges in New Zealand. And that's what attracted me to the party. Wanting to not just tinker around the edges, but actually what are the underlying economic settings that are going to make New Zealand a stronger and better country for the next generation?

Obviously, tax was central to the founding of the party and the work that the Morgan Foundation did with the tax working group. And that still remains a cornerstone of what we stand for. But I think what's important around tax is that it is a huge change for New Zealand.

Some of the things that we're advocating for are a citizen's income and a land value tax. And the concept around that is to shift some of the burden off work and onto assets. So that we drive more money into our productive economy, less investment in property, and still a huge opportunity for people to grow their wealth and to get ahead and to be successful.

But not to simply rely on our housing market to do that. But some of our other kind of big economic ideas, we've recently announced our breakthrough economy policy. And there's three parts to that, innovation, competition, and backing small and medium sized businesses who are the backbone of New Zealand's economy.

On innovation, we pride ourselves as a country of innovators. And we have had some amazing success stories, you know, globally successful businesses like Xero, who are in the room, and Rocket Lab, and you know, Sharesies, and all these fantastic innovative ideas. But we could do so much more, and we could grow our GDP and our productivity so much more if we actually invested properly in research and science that are going to unlock these great businesses of the future.

So we want to lift investment in R&D from currently sitting at 1.5% of GDP up to ultimately 3% is where we'd like to get to. 2% is an interim goal in the next 10 years. But going beyond that, if we really want to compete, or, you know, be up there in the top of the OECD table with the likes of Ireland and Denmark and Singapore, who we love to compare ourselves to all the time, we have to invest properly in research and science as the top of the funnel for those exciting businesses for the next generation to build and be a part of.

The other side of that is tackling competition in New Zealand. And this is something that we feel very strongly about as well. Cost of living has continued to persist as an issue in New Zealand election after election.

And there's no silver bullet here, but clearly competition is one of those things that is holding New Zealand's economy back as well. We've had market study after market study into our supermarket sector, our banking sector, construction supplies. And, you know, I don't want to place blame on those businesses, because I think they're doing what the settings encourage them to do, in the same way that we've all invested in housing, because that's what our tax system encourages us to do.

But we do need the Commerce Commission to have stronger teeth when it comes to enforcing some of those recommendations, so that it's not up to the whim of the government of the day. And, you know, I think alongside that, we need to strengthen our lobbying laws so that the voice of the consumer can be as powerful as the voice of some of those corporates. And lobbying won't go away.

It's important to have those voices into Parliament. But I think that greater transparency and rigour around that will be better for everyone in New Zealand. So all of this is really about building a different kind of economy for New Zealand.

And as I mentioned, that's kind of been my path to get here and what I feel really passionate about. And I think the other big part of building the next economy is recognising the role of our environment and of nature in that economy. We have to recognise that the economy exists within the environment and within planetary boundaries.

And if we don't account for nature properly, then we are only hamstringing the next generation of businesses and people that are going to come up through New Zealand. So if you take fisheries, for example, which is another big policy area of ours, we announced our healthy oceans policy back in February. You know, if we only look at the short term extraction of our oceans, that's going to be maybe beneficial for some seafood companies in the short term and iwi who are very heavily invested in this.

But it means that in 50 years time, you know, kids might not be able to catch a snapper in the harbour and those fishing industries will not exist anymore. They won't have the abundance of seafood here in our oceans to export to the rest of the world. So we need to make major changes in some of these industries that rely so heavily on our environment.

And that includes things like tourism as well. So we want to see more investment back into biodiversity and looking after nature from the International Visitor Levy. Energy is another great example of building the next economy in a world in which we have to recognise the boundaries of nature.

And we think there is so much potential in New Zealand to invest more in renewable generation. Our goal is to get to 30 gigawatts of renewable energy generation by 2050. And that's about in line with Transpower's most ambitious energy future scenario when they set out their future scenarios earlier this year.

And to do that, we do need to look at the market. And so there's been there's been actually a few announcements recently around a billion dollars on oil and gas. The Greens have also come out with, you know, a billion dollars almost on setting up a new entity called Kiwi Power.

And obviously, we've had the billion dollars that we could spend on the LNG terminal. What we would like to see, I don't think any of those things are actually going to fix the market. So they might be a short term bandaid and a whole lot of money getting poured into a system that's not actually working for us in New Zealand.

And we know that the energy market needs some reform. So our proposal here is to introduce a capacity investment scheme, which is similar to what exists in Australia and parts of the States, where the government guarantees a price for new renewable generation coming online. And we also, as part of that, only make that available to new entrants into the market.

So we bring new competition into energy generation, and we help to solve the just-in-time model. So at the moment, I'm sure many of you are aware in your businesses of how this works. Our energy gen tailors will only build enough to keep up with the demand that's coming down the pipeline.

But if the government can guarantee that that new generation will get bought, then we encourage more investment into those projects. Many projects that have already been consented and that are ready to go. The other part of that for us is ring-fencing the Crown dividends.

So $500 million a year we approximately make from our stake in the gen tailors. At the moment, that just goes into our general tax pool. And it's a really sort of reliable crutch for the government to fund all of the other kind of services that we need.

But if we really are going to get serious about an electric future for New Zealand, then I think the government needs to put its money where its mouth is as well and ring-fence that money for investing in electrification. So things like enabling more solar on houses, enabling businesses to invest in electric vehicles, enabling more community generation and supporting investment there at the regional level. And so I think that that ring-fencing will really help as well.

And every year we imagine that $500 million odd could be kind of discussed between government and industry about where the best place is to put that, because it might change years after years and election cycles after election cycles. So those are kind of some of our big ideas around building the next economy. I think our other kind of big, big area that we want to talk about is changing politics.

So I talked a little bit about this and how kind of opportunity itself being in government or in parliament could make a change to that. But we have some ideas here around how we can make democracy more stable, more engaging and restore trust. Because I think with successive governments failing to deliver for New Zealand, New Zealanders are really starting to question whether anyone can solve these big problems.

We kick our big issues like climate change and technology down the road. Because we just want to focus on trying to win some votes in the short term. So we are supportive of ideas like citizens' assemblies.

So our citizens' voice policy was released actually last year. And the idea here is to supplement the role of government with the voice of everyday citizens. And this is a concept that has worked successfully in New Zealand and overseas.

We've had a citizens' assembly in Auckland on the future of our water through Watercare. And all of the recommendations that came out of that were adopted and passed by the Watercare Board unanimously. And I think that really shows the impact of good stakeholder consultation and bringing people into the actual discussion about the trade-offs on some of these issues that citizens' assemblies can achieve.

Which are much stronger than our traditional mechanisms of simply submitting on a piece of legislation at government, which is really the people that have the time and the inclination to sit down and do that, rather than genuinely going out and understanding the everyday experiences of people and how that will affect them. So we could have a citizens' assembly on something like superannuation. Should we lift the age?

Should we means test it? You know, it might be a combination of the two. And I think, as well as the more enduring decisions that come out of that, we actually get citizens talking to and understanding each other a lot more.

And I think, you know, obviously, social media has had a huge part to play in some of that division and polarisation, which is starting to happen in New Zealand. And mechanisms like citizens' assemblies are a way to bring people back together to understand the value of our diversity. That, you know, you have an 18-year-old sitting down with a 65-year-old to talk about what kind of superannuation system is fair for both of them, and understanding that there are trade-offs and that, you know, what might benefit me might be a real detriment to my neighbour.

And so having these stronger mechanisms for people to come together, I think, will bring society closer together in New Zealand as a huge opportunity, not just to strengthen democracy in our decision-making, but to strengthen our culture and communities as well. The result of all of this, I think, is a future where young people will actually want to stay and build their lives in New Zealand. I'm obviously very supportive of people going off to do an OE.

I spent nine years in London, and I think that I brought back greater skills and ideas because of that. But at the moment, that's not an economic choice for young people. When we decided to come back, it was because we wanted to be closer to our family, because we'd had our daughter overseas during COVID, and being back close to her grandparents and cousins was basically the main driver.

But we ended up, you know, earning less, spending more money on a house that we couldn't really afford, being mortgaged up to our eyeballs, and, you know, despite being on good incomes, you know, kind of struggling to get by and not having much left after the bills that we pay. So at the moment, there are, I think, a lot of New Zealanders living overseas because our economy is stalling here, and they don't see greater opportunity to build a career and build businesses here in New Zealand, and I really want to see that change. I think we will also start to see greater investment in New Zealand if we can make some of these longer term decisions and, you know, shift some of that wealth that is tied up in property into that productive economy.

So I guess my ask of you today as business leaders, many of whom I'm sure are already working in some kind of purpose-led space and are very conscious of the role that you play, the social license that you must have to deliver good outcomes for New Zealand. And, you know, I think there's often this debate between, you know, should businesses lead or should government lead when it comes to innovation? And I think it needs to be an upward spiral where we encourage each other.

Businesses can act much faster on some of these things, and certainly my experience in the purpose-led sector is that. There's nothing stopping businesses from, you know, having stricter criteria on themselves around how they treat the environment, how they treat their workers, how they engage with communities, and New Zealand businesses are great at that. But I would encourage you to, I guess, use your voice and your lobbying power to encourage government to legislate in that direction as well.

And obviously, I invite you to back opportunity this year, because I think this could be a historic moment for our economy and for our politics. And that's just not because of us as individuals. You know, I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of many giants of people that have come before, that have built this movement around opportunity.

And we're still a young country, but I think we have a real opportunity here to shift the direction of politics and to show the world that we don't have to go down this populist route to solve some of our problems. We don't have to look far to see where this has taken the US and the UK and Australia and France and many countries that are really seeing populism on the rise. I think we can demonstrate, as we have done many, many times in our history, that things can be done differently, and that we can lead with values and lead with empathy, and actually bring people closer together in our political arena to make better long term decisions.

So thank you for coming out this morning. And I'm very happy to answer any questions you might have.

[Hayley Horan]

Thank you so much. I think we're all sitting here with our minds full with some great questions. Out to the audience now, what questions do you have?

[Audience member]

Where does the party stand on taxation? Can you go into your policies on that a little bit?

[Qiulae Wong]

Yeah, I'll go into the detail there. So as I mentioned, there's three parts to our tax policy, citizens income, land value tax, and KiwiSaver 2.0, so a compulsory KiwiSaver scheme, which that one can be done separately. So that could be enacted and is quite similar to what the National Party and New Zealand First are actually advocating for.

We're really supportive of that. The citizens income and land tax are the kind of two big new ideas. And at a high level, this is about shifting some of the burden off work and onto property instead.

The citizens income is a $370 a week payment made to all adults over the age of 18. So essentially extending superannuation to everyone because we kind of do have a universal basic income for those over 65 already. And part of the problem that we're solving here is an overly complex welfare system that actually costs us a lot of money and time and administration to administer, as well as this idea of the poverty trap, which we talk about.

So for people who are on a benefit at the moment, they're going out and trying to get work. And the clawback on that benefit is so extreme that they're effectively being taxed up to 90 cents on the dollar for what they go out and try and earn. And there's been a lot of talk about incentives and disincentives to get people off a benefit.

And to me, that is the biggest disincentive at the moment is that, of course, if you're on a benefit and you could spend time at home with your kids instead of going out and doing a job that you really want to do, why would you not stay on the benefit? So the citizens income helps with that. It helps to simplify the system.

It actually helps people who are getting out and trying to work, earn more money that they can take home. We estimate that 70% of New Zealanders will be better off under the system. 20% would be about neutral because of the land tax, and then 10% would pay more.

I think the citizens income is also really important with the looming potential threat of AI joblessness. And we're already starting to see that in other countries. There's been a few stories recently in Australia where companies are deliberately cutting hundreds of jobs because of AI.

And our system is just currently not set up to support 10% or more unemployment, suddenly having to go on to the JobSeeker benefit because of that. And so I think this shift towards something like a citizens income can help to smooth some of those economic shocks. And it's not just AI joblessness, but I'm sure many of you will know people who have had to take time out to look after sick loved ones or children, for people who don't have good parental leave schemes.

A citizens income helps with those kinds of things as well. And actually overseas in India, there is a universal basic income for women, recognising the unpaid role that they play in society. And Ireland have one for creatives for a similar reason.

And so that's sort of the justification for citizens income. On the land tax side, we're solving some other problems around overinvestment in property. And when I bought my house in 2020, which was sort of during one of those COVID spikes, that was about seven times our household income compared to three times what it was for my parents' generation.

And then I look at my kids and think if that could be 10 to 15 times by the time they're able to buy a home. It's just an unsustainable trajectory that we are on. And we know that we need to do something about that in New Zealand.

And we feel that a land value tax is the best solution. If you compare it to a capital gains tax, when we look at things like land banking, or people that will just buy land purely for the goal of making the capital gains on it, a capital gains tax doesn't really solve that. It actually encourages them to hold on to it for longer because they'll avoid paying the tax.

Whereas a land tax makes it immediately more painful for those people and encourages them to develop or to sell their property to someone that will. We've designed it in a way, so there's a tax calculator on our website. So you can go in and put in your income and your land value.

So it's just the value of the land itself, not on the property and improvements. And you can look at what potentially more or less you might be paying in tax as an outcome of that. But for someone like myself, who's on a median income with my partner, we're paying about $2,000 more a year in tax.

And I think that that's about right. We're above the median in terms of earning. And I would much rather pay more as a result of shifting our tax settings and broadening the tax base than simply ratcheting up the income tax brackets for what I earn through work.

[Audience member]

No, that was great. That was great. Thank you.

I would like to know about the funding of the party. Yes. Not only where it's coming from, but how your strategy is different to previous iterations of the party, because I think that's made a huge difference in my experience of having been part of the party last election.

Funding was a huge hurdle, and it is for all parties. And it's very difficult to influence. But I feel you guys have cracked it in a way.

And I'm sure it still doesn't feel like enough. But can you speak a little bit about that?

[Qiulae Wong]

Yeah. I don't think that there was a clear strategy at the start, but it was definitely one of the first things that I did when I started in November was look at where we can get that funding from. And thankfully, I had been part of doing fundraising for businesses in the past.

So I was comfortable with the idea of going in to meet wealthy individuals and try and pitch an idea. But it's bloody hard doing it for a political party because there's no return on investment in terms of monetary value. And even if you classify return on investment as impact, it's so far fetched that we could even get into Parliament, let alone have the impact that we say we're going to.

So it was pretty hard having some of those conversations. And it does take a certain kind of individual, I think, that is willing to put some of their money into a very much an unknown. And I'd say through those, what's been interesting is we have funders who have typically funded right wing parties like Act in New Zealand First, interestingly.

And we've got funders who have funded the likes of Labour and the Greens. But the commonality between them and the conversations that I've had is that they're sort of, yeah, extremely frustrated at the lack of big ideas for New Zealand. And I think that's what they see in us.

And they are happy with us going with either a left or a right wing government because they see that if we can be a voice that can disrupt and bring change and a new approach to politics, that's what they want to see more than any particular left or right wing policy. But it's challenging because with that comes some scrutiny. And we've obviously had that from both the left and right commentators as well, saying that because we've been funded by the likes of Brian Cartmell on the right or Philip Mills on the left, that that must mean we are automatically in one of those camps.

So that's challenging. But I think also good to recognise that a large bulk of our funding also just comes from everyday people who are putting in $20, $50, $100, smaller donations. And so I think at the start of the year anyway, I don't know if it's still the case now, we had like the largest number of funders proportionately to the amount that we raise.

So we are the kind of the most kind of grassroots, I suppose, of all the parties and the number of people that put in small amounts.

[Hayley Horan]

I'm just going to go to one question online, if that's okay, then I'm going to come back to you. Morning.

[Audience member]

You touched on AI before. Can you talk a bit more about the Opportunity Party's view of AI?

[Qiulae Wong]

Yes. Yeah, great question. We are in the process of pulling together an AI policy.

So there will be a whole lot more detail to come on that. We see it as an opportunity and it needs to be, but like any technology, I think needs to be grappled with and harnessed for good. We can't just let it happen.

And we can't just let it happen to us here in New Zealand. And so at the moment, I think we're seeing AI used in business and in government largely as a cost cutting exercise rather than a way to grow productivity and find new opportunities for potential growth and new markets and ways of doing things. So we would like to build a framework that encourages more of that to encourage more innovation in New Zealand.

Data centres are obviously the other big part of that. And while it's absolutely true that they are a threat in terms of environmental impact, energy and water use, the reality is that if we want to have data sovereignty here in New Zealand, and I don't think we're going to be able to compete with the big likes of the big AI monsters overseas, but if we want things like data sovereignty around our sensitive information, our government work, then I think investing in data centres is a good thing for New Zealand with some parameters. And I think that's why an energy strategy for New Zealand is so important, because if we don't plan for these things, that's when we'll see unintended consequences, potential strain on our energy system. But if we can build data centres and encourage, get them to invest in growing our renewable generation capacity, that could be a good thing for energy in New Zealand.

[Audience member]

Thank you. Kia ora. Thanks, Kere. Really interesting presentation. A couple of questions are sort of related, I hope. Which current MP do you most admire and why?

And we're hearing lots from you, you know, you're beating around the traps and doing these presentations. Can you tell us a bit more about your fellow candidates, who they are, what they offer, and maybe how can we connect Yeah, sure.

[Qiulae Wong]

Favourite MP currently? Most admired. Oh, gosh.

I don't know all of them, obviously, very super well. I have gotten to know Arana Williams a bit, as we actually went to school together. We didn't know each other very well back then.

But she does a lot of work in the commerce space. And on the few panels that I've been to, she comes very well prepared, and I think has got a good perspective on some of the competition issues and how we can enable more support for small, medium sized businesses. So really admire her as a, you know, backbencher, younger MP coming through.

On other candidates, yes, we have 42 candidates across the country, which is more than we've ever had before. Natalia's wincing because she probably knows just how, you know, it's an opportunity, but it's also a challenge for us to wrangle that many people everywhere. We are actually, we'll be announcing our list very shortly.

So you'll get to see, you know, who are the people that will likely be entering Parliament, should we breach the 5%. I guess some of our key ones locally, Kayla Kingdon-Bemp is the current, well, she's actually just stepped down the CEO of WWF. She's also previously been a policy director at DOC, and has done a lot of work in indigenous communities globally.

She's originally from Canada, but has been in New Zealand for a long time. So she obviously brings a lot of experience in the environmental conservation and entity space. Jessica Hammond has been a candidate at every single election since the very beginning, and I'm stoked that she is still part of the team, because I think it's really nice to have that legacy, and someone who has, you know, been part of building this since the very beginning.

Daniel Ebb is our deputy leader. He is based up near me, out in Kaipara-ki-Mahurangi, Riverhead, so north of Auckland. His background, so he comes from a farming family, and he sort of straddles this world of innovation, farming, kind of the new gen farmer agriculture.

He's really into food forests and regenerative farming, which some people roll their eyes at, but I think there is a portion of our farming community that is really passionate about that. So he's another kind of big name as well. We do have a few people who have had experience in local government.

So Dave Bainbridge-Zafar is our Dunedin candidate. He's currently the acting chief exec at Gore District Council, and has worked on things like the Dunedin Hospital, big infrastructure projects. So I feel like we've, we don't have anyone who's been an MP before, but we've got a lot of people who understand the mechanism of government, both at a local and central level.

And I think that it's an advantage that we are bringing a bunch of new perspectives to disrupt the status quo.

[Hayley Horan]

We've got time for one more. I'm sorry, Lance, I think it was you first.

[Audience member]

Thanks very much. Thanks for your presentation. Should you find yourself in the rough and tumble of a coalition negotiation?

Which of the policies you've outlined to us are non-negotiable, a red line that you're going to hold?

[Qiulae Wong]

We're going to announce these properly closer to the election. So we will be very clear about bottom lines. I can give you a flavour of what we're thinking, I guess.

I mean, it's not groundbreaking because it's the stuff we talk about the most. I think energy will be one. And actually, I guess an insight into how we think about these things.

It's not just the stuff that we're really passionate about, but I think it has to be things that we believe are achievable. Something like tax, for example, it's pretty unrealistic for a new entering Parliament for the first time to go into a coalition negotiation and get tax reform as part of that agreement. And we only get one shot at our first term in Parliament.

So we need to deliver some stuff that can actually show that we're good operators, that we can get things done. And so I think energy is a really good example there of a policy area where we're pushing the boundaries a bit. We would push both Labour and National to go further than what they've said they would.

But I do think that what we've proposed is something that they would be interested in and achieves the objectives that they are looking to achieve. So I think energy will be one. Obviously, it's the economic stuff.

So I think stuff around innovation and competition as well is going to be really important. And then I would like to see something around strengthening democracy, whether that's citizens assemblies, lobbying or donation reform, and because I think that that's also a unique perspective that we bring, particularly as an outsider into Parliament, trying to change the way we operate as well.

[Hayley Horan]

Okay, thank you so much. I am going to hold because Lance, I'm going to give you the mic, okay, since you are a great member of ours. Yeah, Lance can pick up.

[Audience member]

Hi, I'd like your thoughts around government programmes such as Green Sector Rebate, Game Development Sector Rebate, which of course, support and leverage university.

[Qiulae Wong]

Yeah, I mean, I think that we need more investment in these emerging industries. And we've seen the payback with the growth of the gaming industry. I believe you hit the target some years early in terms of revenue brought in.

I don't think it always needs to be through rebates. I think that there are other mechanisms that we can use to get more funding into those sectors. I disagree with the idea of government shouldn't back winners.

I think if you look at some of those successful countries overseas that we like to compare ourselves to, it's not about backing individual businesses, but being clear about what are the industries that can do well here in New Zealand and things like gaming, and clean energy or deep tech are some of those that the government should put their money into.

[Hayley Horan]

Thank you very much. Thank you so much. It was incredible.

Thank you again to Qiulae Wong, the leader of the Opportunity Party. I think you've given us some deep insights and the systems thinking that's gone inside of everything you've said is clicking in my brain. I really appreciate it.

So we could not answer all the questions online and we couldn't answer all the questions in the room. But I love the fact that those questions are there. And it feels like there's a place to go in terms of whether it's online.

And I have a feeling this won't be the last time you come along and have a chat with our audience. So thank you so much. Thank you to Jason and the team from Allen + Clarke for supporting us.

Again, these opportunities are brought together, no pun intended, with our sponsors and our members and those that care for the community and want to come along. So this does conclude the event this morning, but I want to thank you so much for coming along. Grab the croissant, take a scone, and I do need to say, jump online, QR code here if you are not a member, why not?

And we have this gentleman coming up next month, which you may know. So thank you so much, ladies and gentlemen. Have a wonderful day.