It’s time to stop the decline. Let’s innovate.
Opportunity will fund science, stand up for fairness and back small businesses to take a generational leap forward.
Growth is slowing and our wages are stagnating, because our economic system settings haven’t changed in decades. The era of extractive industries and untouchable big business needs to end.
We need space for new: new ideas, new opportunities, new businesses. To build this new economy, let’s invest for breakthroughs in the old one.
Opportunity will properly fund our scientists and innovators to build the industries of tomorrow. We'll empower the Commerce Commission to stand up to the supermarkets and other incumbents who keep new competitors out and prices high. And we’ll back today’s small businesses with the future-focused legal structures, admin support and the research boosts they need.
Meet the Kiwis of Tomorrow crew to find out.
“It’s time to unleash our ingenuity. Let’s build an innovation economy that keeps young Kiwis here.”
To get our innovation system settings right, Opportunity will:
An unfair economy can’t innovate. When uncompetitive sectors, like the supermarkets, are costing the average family $30 every week, it’s time to stand up.
Opportunity will give the Commerce Commission the legal power and funding it needs to fight for Kiwi consumers, including the power to break up duopolies and other uncompetitive markets via the High Court.
To support small businesses to drive the breakthrough economy, Opportunity will properly fund small business budgeting services, speed up access to the R&D tax credit and ensure ACC and the retail payment system are fair.
We’ll also create a new legal structure — the Impact Company — to recognise and encourage investment in businesses that generate profit while doing social and environmental good.
“Opportunity will save Kiwi families $12–$31 per week by increasing competition in the supermarkets, banks and other sectors.”
A breakthrough economy needs an investment of $1.33 billion of additional annual operational funding. This does not include any projections for growth resulting from implementing the package. This figure includes:
| Policy | Annual Cost |
|---|---|
| Restore core science operational funding cut in recent budgets | $125 million |
| Tax credit for technology adoption | $600 million |
| Funding for early and mid career researchers | $100 million |
| Expanded funding to major contestable funds | $175 million |
| Restore Polytech Funding | $80 million |
| Polytech and PRO bulk funding for business support | $20 million |
| Double funding of incubators, accelerators and youth enterprise initiatives | $26.5 million |
| Student Loan Working Overseas Forgiveness | $95 million |
| Commerce Commission Budget Uplift | $20 million |
| Consumer Advocacy Fund | $5 million |
| Expanded FinCap capability to support small business owners | $20 million |
| Widened R&D tax credit | $30 million |
| Tax deductibility for impact company investments | $34 million |
For full assumptions and more information on these figures, see the policy document.
If enacted in full, our Tax Reset plan projects $4 billion in additional annual revenue. Breakthrough Economy investments would be made using this funding. Alternatively, the Breakthrough Economy investment could also be made through new funding as part of a future budget - in collaboration with other political parties. This is realistic given that the entire Breakthrough Economy package cost could sit within one year’s annual operating allowance as set out in Budget 2026.
Predicting growth can be a challenge, but we estimate the Breakthrough Economy policy package could deliver up to 2% additional annual GDP growth after 10 years of implementation. Comparative small economies (like Singapore and Estonia) have sustained similarly high growth rates over multiple decades.
Expert advice from economists, Treasury and OECD supports high-impact, pro-growth reforms like these for New Zealand. Generally, their advice is to invest in the drivers of future growth and productivity — innovation, competition and people’s skills. For more information on how our Breakthrough Economy policy does this, see the policy document.
To support broad economic growth, our Breakthrough Economy policy also sits alongside our Abundant Energy policy to bring energy prices down, our Tax Reset policy to redirect capital from housing into the productive economy and our Affordable Housing policy to improve life and business in our urban spaces.
New Zealand's productivity performance has deteriorated for decades. Real wages have stagnated. Our brightest talent leaves for better opportunities overseas. Our businesses struggle to compete internationally beyond commodity exports.
We feel the cost of our stagnant productivity in the rising cost of living, and widening inequality. We feel it in the hollowing out of our public services, because taxation can’t keep up with the challenges of an ageing population or climate change.
Many New Zealanders are starting to feel that we need to make big reforms to reverse this slow decline. They’re right.
The kinds of industries that Opportunity wants to see emerge in New Zealand: high tech manufacturing, research and technology, high-productivity agriculture and AI are by their nature a lot less environmentally impactful than many of the industries that currently dominate our economy. In many cases they offer the possibility of solutions to help address our climate or environmental impacts.
Yes. We think the current state of competition in many business sectors warrants a shakeup, rather than continued tinkering like the current Commerce Act Amendment Bill before Parliament.
New Zealand’s competition regime lacks the ability to break up monopolies, impose industry-wide conduct obligations or address collusion. This has led directly to our near-unique market concentration and super-profits. Our proposal is modelled on provisions recently introduced in the EU and UK; both regarded as highly effective competition regimes.
Opportunity is open to the concept of structural separation of industries like banking, supermarkets and electricity generation. However structural separation is a blunt instrument that always imposes significant costs and market disruption. We think it should be done on the basis of expert analysis, and supervised by the courts. In some cases structural separation might be imposed, but more importantly, the threat of the Commerce Commission using it will improve market behaviour across the board.
Giving the Commerce Commission the power to fight the monopolies in the High Court means they can also go after the many other highly concentrated sectors that don’t receive much political or media attention, but do impose significant costs on New Zealand consumers.
