Six months out from the election, Labour finds itself in a familiar but uncomfortable position.\u00a0Every poll shows Labour can\u2019t govern without both the Greens and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori.\u00a0That\u2019s 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 \u201cmiddle\u201d New Zealand. If any one of those three legs wobbles, the whole table collapses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But what if there was another option? As I previously wrote,\u00a0The Opportunity Party\u00a0has 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is the problem Labour faces. Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori and the Greens have spent much of the past year in\u00a0various states of turmoil. The Greens are recovering, but Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori has been riddled with internal conflict, MP expulsions, and court proceedings. Chris Hipkins has had periods where he has been incredibly critical of Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, saying the party was clearly not ready for government. Despite this, Winston Peters\u2019 refusal (at this point in time\u2026) to work with Labour means Labour may become reliant on the Greens and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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 P\u0101ti M\u0101ori 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 P\u0101ti M\u0101ori.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The policy overlap is also real, even if imperfect (for me, there is no such thing as perfect policy alignment). TOP\u2019s previous central platform includes a land value tax to lower house prices, a citizen\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s citizen\u2019s income as an alternative to Labour\u2019s capital gains tax, proposing a land value tax as simpler to administer. There is room for negotiation there, not incompatibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The optics matter too. Donors to TOP have included both left- and right-leaning political philanthropists, reflecting the party\u2019s 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 P\u0101ti M\u0101ori) 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 P\u0101ti M\u0101ori. A deal with TOP gives a clear alternative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is also a campaign benefit for Labour – the current coalition parties have been all too willing to use Labour\u2019s reliance on the Greens and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are real risks, and Labour\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In this instance, if Labour were to step aside to let Wong try and win the Mt Albert Electorate, they\u2019d 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 Men\u00e9ndez 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is also the ideological tension. TOP\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!YYDX!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe7120fc5-a037-4791-ab8b-c5e34ff9e15c_956x488.png\")
<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Case For<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Case Against<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>The Verdict<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n