Christopher Luxon told about 50 National supporters in Greymouth on Thursday night that he would work with whoever he has to in order to win a second term, a line that landed within hours of his deputy prime minister David Seymour saying he could live with a four-party coalition that includes Opportunity. The National leader has spent three months ruling out the party led by Qiulae Wong, and repeated that position in Wednesday night’s Herald debate. With three weeks until the 7 November election and the polls handing Opportunity the balance of power, the question of who will talk to whom is now the central argument of the campaign.
Luxon made the remark while urging West Coast voters not to split their vote. “I’ll make it work with whoever I have to in order to make sure we win and make it, take the show forward,” he said, in comments reported by The Press and carried in Stuff’s live coverage on Friday morning. “But it is a lot easier when you’ve got a big, active party sitting around 20, 30 seats in that Cabinet to get that job done.” He told the room there was “no value giving it to ACT, there’s no value giving it to New Zealand First, you’re not helping me.”
The Press described the comment as an apparent turnaround. Earlier the same day Luxon had been pressed on exactly this point by a National supporter on Newstalk ZB talkback. The caller, named Andy, told him “I can’t understand why you would close the door on them. For you to get into power you will potentially need them.” Luxon replied that Opportunity’s land tax made it “a very simple rule out because we are not going to deal with parties who want to increase taxes on New Zealand.” The caller’s parting shot was that Luxon was “foolish to close the door right from the get-go.”
Seymour took a different view at a public meeting in Wānaka on Wednesday. Asked how ACT would handle a right-leaning bloc that included Opportunity, he said a “four-headed beast” coalition to keep the Greens and Te Pāti Māori out of government “would be a good outcome,” RNZ reported. He added that Opportunity might not end up as kingmaker at all, “despite the best efforts of the media.” According to the Herald’s account of the meeting, Seymour said he would rather govern alongside Opportunity than sit in opposition under Labour, and that its land tax and universal income policies no longer sit among its bottom lines. “I take the view their really crazy policies have been taken off the table,” he said.
That is a long way from the position Luxon staked out at the end of July, when National first ruled Opportunity out on the grounds that it wanted to raise taxes. After last week’s TVNZ leaders’ debate he said “I have been crystal clear with who we could or couldn’t work with. I’ve laid that out from the very beginning of the year. I’ve been clear about Opportunity.” Wong’s response, delivered on 9 October, was blunt. “I don’t believe him. Because he would rather be in government than in opposition, I assume,” she told RNZ. “There are many things we could work with National on, I think the five bottom lines are realistic for them to commit to.”
Those five bottom lines, set out at the end of September, are a Commerce Commission with more teeth, regulation of lobbying and a cap on political donations, a 10-year plan for the health system drawn up with health professionals, a phase-out of bottom trawling, and a recommitment to Paris Agreement emissions targets alongside protection for the independence of the Climate Change Commission. The land value tax and citizen’s income that defined the party’s founding pitch are not on the list, though Wong has said the party will keep pushing for them with an intensity that depends on its vote.
The numbers explain why the argument matters. The 1News Verian poll released on Tuesday had National and Labour tied on 28 per cent, with ACT and New Zealand First on 10 per cent each, the Greens on 15 per cent and Opportunity on 8 per cent. Translated into seats, National, ACT and New Zealand First would hold 58 between them and Labour, the Greens, Te Pāti Māori and the Te Tai Tokerau Party 57. Opportunity would have 10 MPs, and neither bloc could govern without them. The poll of 1,007 eligible voters was taken from 8 to 12 October and carries a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points.
Labour is doing its own arithmetic. Campaign chair Kieran McAnulty told reporters on Thursday, in remarks reported by Stuff’s political editor Jenna Lynch, that the party would rather form a government with Opportunity than with Te Pāti Māori. “My focus is not really on Te Pāti Māori. We’re on the verge of being able to form a coalition with just the Greens and Opportunity. So that’s my focus and my role,” he said. Asked directly whether he would prefer Opportunity to Te Pāti Māori, he answered “I would, yeah, sure. But you know, at the end of the day, you deal with the cards that are dealt.” He is now pitching a three-party left government as a selling point against a four-party right one. “If you look at recent polls, we’re within a hair’s breadth of being able to form a government with two other parties,” he said.
McAnulty’s comments came in the wake of this week’s Mongrel Mob controversy, in which Green and Te Pāti Māori candidates posed for photographs with patched gang members at a pad south of Auckland. Chris Hipkins has already said no Green or Te Pāti Māori MP would hold the police or corrections portfolios in a government he led. Wong, caught briefly by Stuff on the campaign trail on Thursday, called the visit inappropriate but declined to follow Hipkins in ruling anyone out of particular jobs. “Ultimately, all of those roles will be up for negotiation after the election,” she said. She has previously said she would not accept Winston Peters as foreign minister in any government Opportunity was part of, which she described as a different scenario.
For voters, the practical upshot is that the two major parties are now making opposite bets on the same minor party. Labour is edging towards Opportunity as a preferred partner. National’s leader rules it out in public while telling supporters he will do whatever it takes, and his coalition partner has openly priced in a deal. Wong has said she will call whichever party wins the most votes first. If the final result looks anything like this week’s poll, the campaign’s most repeated rule-out will be tested within days of 7 November. Readers still weighing their vote can compare where each party stands on the issues that matter to them with our voting tool.
Do you believe Luxon’s rule-out of Opportunity will survive election night, and does Seymour’s “four-headed beast” sound like a government you would want? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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