Innovation, fairness and small business: Opportunity’s Breakthrough Economy policy

Opportunity will raise R&D funding, empower the Commerce Commission to tackle uncompetitive sectors and enable small business innovation.  

Opportunity has released its Breakthrough Economy policy — a reform package designed to fund New Zealand’s innovators, stand up to uncompetitive market sectors, and back small businesses to take a generational leap forward.

“Growth is slowing and wages are stagnating because our economic settings haven’t changed in decades,” says leader Qiulae Wong. “This is a long-term plan to enable a new kind of economy – where breakthroughs, new ideas and new business are the new normal.”

The Breakthrough Economy policy rests on three pillars:

•       Build NZ’s innovation engine. Lifting research & development spending to at least 2% of GDP, introducing new technology investment tax credits, doubling funding for proven accelerator programmes, forgiving student loan interest for returning Kiwis, turning polytechs into regional innovation hubs and developing a cross-party population strategy.
•     Stand up for consumers. Giving the Commerce Commission the legal power and funding to fight for Kiwi consumers, including the power to break up duopolies through the High Court.
•       Power up small business. Increasing funding for small business budgeting services, speeding up access to the R&D tax credit, ensuring ACC and the retail payment system are fair, and creating a new legal structure – the Impact Company.

“We have to move on from locking out talent, locking up profit and losing our most talented people off-shore,” says Wong. “That requires certainty for investors and business owners, and a long-term commitment to solving our productivity challenge.”

The party projects that its competition reforms will save Kiwi families $12 to $31 a week by lowering prices in the supermarkets, banks and other low-competition sectors.

“Besides placing an unfair cost-of-living burden on Kiwi families, an unfair economy can’t innovate” says Wong. “That’s why competition reform via a strengthened Commerce Commission is a key pillar of the Breakthrough Economy” says Wong.

The party projects that the $1.33 billion per year package could deliver up to 2% of additional annual GDP growth after 10 years – in line with comparable, high-growth small economies like Singapore and Estonia.

Opportunity says the Breakthrough Economy policy sits alongside its Abundant Energy, Tax Reset and other policies as part of a wider plan to build New Zealand’s ‘next economy’.