By Michael Swanson
Should Labour extend an olive branch to The Opportunity Party? There’s a pretty strong case for such a deal, but who wins from such an arrangement?
Six months out from the election, Labour finds itself in a familiar but uncomfortable position. Every poll shows Labour can’t govern without both the Greens and Te Pāti Māori. That’s a knife-edge coalition that requires three parties to stay disciplined, to avoid internal implosion, and to present a unified enough front to win over a sceptical “middle” New Zealand. If any one of those three legs wobbles, the whole table collapses.
But what if there was another option? As I previously wrote, The Opportunity Party has never won a seat in Parliament since its founding in 2016, with its best result being 2.4% in 2017. Under new leader Qiulae Wong, the party is chasing the 5% MMP threshold and has set a target of 150,000 votes for 2026. In recent polling, it is the only minor party outside Parliament to register support, sitting at around 3%. That is still below the threshold, but it is not nothing and it is trending upward.
Here is the problem Labour faces. Te Pāti Māori and the Greens have spent much of the past year in various states of turmoil. The Greens are recovering, but Te Pāti Māori has been riddled with internal conflict, MP expulsions, and court proceedings. Chris Hipkins has had periods where he has been incredibly critical of Te Pāti Māori, saying the party was clearly not ready for government. Despite this, Winston Peters’ refusal (at this point in time…) to work with Labour means Labour may become reliant on the Greens and Te Pāti Māori to form a government after the election. Labour is caught in a bind of its own making: unwilling to fully embrace its existing partners, yet refusing to look elsewhere.
An electorate deal with The Opportunity Party, where Labour stands aside in a chosen seat to give Wong (or another TOP candidate) a path into Parliament, would not solve everything. But it would give Labour options, and in MMP politics, options are oxygen.
The Case For
The most compelling argument is the maths. Every poll shows that both National and Labour will need two partner parties to govern. At the moment, National/ACT/NZ First and Labour/Greens/Te Pāti Māori are the only credible blocs with enough seats to make 61 (and even that might not be enough if there is an overhang of seats). But that is based on the current configuration. If TOP clears the threshold, the maths changes entirely (for both sides), potentially allowing Labour to govern without full reliance on Te Pāti Māori.
Wong herself hopes TOP can be seen as an alternative to New Zealand First, which has held a strong position in coalition negotiations with both major parties in the past. That is not a small pitch. Winston Peters has once again made himself the kingmaker of the right, with NZ First hitting its highest polling result since August 2017. The left has no equivalent centrist wildcard – Labour has had to try and fill that space itself.
The policy overlap is also real, even if imperfect (for me, there is no such thing as perfect policy alignment). TOP’s previous central platform includes a land value tax to lower house prices, a citizen’s income to replace welfare and eliminate the poverty trap, and a long-term infrastructure plan to break the cycle of pork-barrel politics – while they are yet to give confirmation of these policies this time around, it’s a fair assumption that most of this will feature in some way, shape or form. These are not Green policies. They are not Labour policies either, but they are policies that exist in a broadly progressive, evidence-based tradition. Wong has described TOP’s citizen’s income as an alternative to Labour’s capital gains tax, proposing a land value tax as simpler to administer. There is room for negotiation there, not incompatibility.
The optics matter too. Donors to TOP have included both left- and right-leaning political philanthropists, reflecting the party’s genuinely centrist position. A Labour-TOP arrangement would signal to middle New Zealand voters (the ones who are persuadable but uneasy about a government too dependent on Te Pāti Māori) that there is a more moderate path to change. That signal could be worth as much as the seats themselves. For me, this is the biggest reason for Labour to do a deal – there are still a bunch of voters somewhere in the mythical middle that are uneasy with some of the approaches by Te Pāti Māori. A deal with TOP gives a clear alternative.
There is also a campaign benefit for Labour – the current coalition parties have been all too willing to use Labour’s reliance on the Greens and Te Pāti Māori as a central component of their attack against the left. While there is clearly hypocrisy here from National, it does sow seeds of doubt (and maybe even fear in some minds) in those undecided or mythical middle voters I mentioned above. The inclusion of TOP into this mix makes such attacks more difficult, not impossible, but more difficult.
The Case Against
There are real risks, and Labour’s caution is not entirely without basis. An electorate deal requires Labour to ask one of its own candidates to stand aside, or at least to pull their resources, in a seat that may have local significance. That breeds resentment at the grassroots level, particularly if TOP then fails to clear the threshold anyway and the seat is lost.
In this instance, if Labour were to step aside to let Wong try and win the Mt Albert Electorate, they’d be asking incumbent MP Helen White to stand aside, which sounds straight-forward, however the Labour electorate vote was wafer thin in 2023, and there was also strong Green vote for Ricardo Menéndez March (Greens List MP). There is a strong chance such a move could backfire, and result in the electorate vote in Mt Albert being divided between TOP, Labour, and the Greens.
There is also the ideological tension. TOP’s land value tax is a significant policy intervention that Labour has so far declined to adopt. Labour has instead proposed a capital gains tax based on property transactions. Signaling a willingness to work with TOP could be read as an implicit endorsement of the land value tax, a line Labour may not want to cross before the election.
And there is the credibility question. TOP has failed to enter Parliament at every election since its founding, receiving 2.4% in 2017, 1.5% in 2020, and 2.2% in 2023. Three attempts, three failures. Is it rational for Labour to expend political capital on a party that has never delivered? The counterargument is that circumstances are different now (new leader, new name, new momentum) but that argument could have been made in 2020 too.
The Verdict
Weirdly, as I worked through all of this, I came to a strange conclusion. This is a great idea for Labour, but a bad idea for TOP.
There is a clear benefit in such an approach for Labour. Even with some of the questions around compatibility and credibility, the potential for another option could be a significant benefit to them. Labour doesn’t even need to throw it wide open, and it certainly doesn’t need to make a formal deal before the campaign proper begins. But given Hipkins’ own acknowledgement that “under MMP, you do need to work with other parties” and that “you’ve also got to make sure there’s some compatibility there,” the groundwork for a quiet conversation surely exists.
There is much less incentive to do this for TOP. The problem for TOP is that their foundations are built on being evidence-based centrists who can work with both sides to achieve what needs to be achieved. A deal with Labour to win a seat actually could hurt that approach. An arrangement such of this almost traps them into being labeled as signing up to work with Labour no matter what, reducing any chances that National might see them as a viable partner. TOP have also already made it clear that 5% is their focus, and a sudden deal with Labour undermines credibility if they have committed to that approach.
The fundamental challenge at this election will be which bloc can present the best plan to take the economy forward. A Labour-led government that includes a centrist, evidence-driven party with bold ideas on tax and housing could make a more compelling pitch to undecided voters than one that leans entirely on the Greens and a fractured Te Pāti Māori. Politics is ultimately a game of insurance. An electorate deal with TOP might not win Labour the election, but it could stop Labour from losing it.
