Dear Members, Candidates, Supporters and TOP Voters

Well we’ve arrived, a new government has been announced – congratulations to our new Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. The next relevant event will be what policy has been agreed on. At The Opportunities Party (TOP) all that matters is policy so the outcome of the election is still for us, to be discovered.

It’s incredible when you think of it, all that was required was for TOP to have picked up another 3% of the vote and NZ First to have got 3% less and it would have been us announcing the government and a suite of best practice, progressive policies. That’s not bad for 9 months effort from the folks of TOP. Everyone should appreciate this reality, we were not that far away.

Anyway that’s history now, and all that matters is the policy package that Labour and NZ First have agreed upon. Will it make a difference, will that difference be to improve the economic, social and environmental well-being of all New Zealanders? Will a change of government deliver real change, or simply a change of the colour of the Budget documents? This is how we at TOP will adjudge the success of the new government, not by who fills what positions, what personality traits the various Ministers might exhibit. We’ll leave that trivia to the media.

For the next couple of years expect TOP to be putting the most significant of the new government’s policy under the microscope, awarding bouquets where appropriate and highlighting weaknesses as they arise. We will also talk about how any changes stack up against the 15 policies we put forward at the election, and what TOP would want to do differently if we were at the table. This is what TOP is about – policy, policy, policy.