Hundreds join Gareth’s party

Gareth Morgan is gaining supporters for his The Opportunities Party.

Hundreds of people are joining Gareth Morgan's political party.

The Opportunities Party, founded last November, is going through the registration process with already more than 2500 members signed up. The Electoral Commission posted notice of the registration application on January 21.

'I'm told by the guys who work with other parties that 2500 members already is big,” says Gareth. 'They just go to the website and sign up and pay their twenty bucks.”

So far the party has released policy statements on immigration, tax and the environment.

Gareth has identified property as one of the biggest election issues this year.

'Property has driven a massive wedge between the ‘haves' and the ‘haves not',” says Gareth. 'If you look at some of the lower paid jobs, their wages haven't gone down but actually their discretionary income has gone down through the floor.”

'The reason the obsession about property is there is because it's the easiest way to make money,” says Gareth.

'Wages is just a mug's game. You only earn yourself enough wages to get yourself on the property ladder and that's where you make your money.

'I know people who have never paid tax in their lives after that first job. So they earned enough money to get on the property ladder and ever since then they've basically done up houses. Lived in them. And then used them to go again. And go again. And again.

'And those, of course, are the people who are most stridently opposed to what I'm talking about. I have friends like this, I've said to them: ‘But you've made that on the back of other people. You've had a tax break but the other people haven't'.”

'We will work with whoever the party in power is,” says Gareth. 'We don't care who they are, it's the policies we want to see in place.”

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