Gareth Morgan seeks registration for Opportunities Party in anticipation of early election

  • 10/01/2017
Opportunities Party founder Gareth Morgan (Newshub.)
Gareth Morgan (Newshub. / file)

Gareth Morgan has taken the next big step to get his Opportunities Party into Parliament, launching a bid for registration.

It's an eight-week process, and Mr Morgan had originally planned to wait until all the party's policies were revealed in March.

However, he suspects there will be an early election so it's full steam ahead.

"My advice is the chances of an early election are higher now that John Key has resigned, and I don't really want us caught in an election and we're not even registered," he told Newshub.

"In a way that sort of forced our hand, in terms of the timing."

Mr Morgan says people have displayed interest in the Opportunities Party and so far it has around 2500 members.

"We are quite radical I guess, but that's in comparison to the status quo of establishment parties which their policies move at glacial pace - so it's not hard to be radical compared to that."

Mr Morgan says the next step will be to put out the rest of their policies before hitting the road to talk to the public.

Political parties need a number of things to register, including having 500 or more paid-up members, a "name that's not likely to cause offence or confusion", refers to a title or honour of is "too long", the Electoral Act says.

Newshub.