What happens if the Opportunity Party gets into Parliament?

Thursday, 25 June 2026

The Opportunity Party has tried for nine years, failing at three elections, to get into Parliament. But the party is now polling at a record high, just shy of the 5% threshold. What happens if it does, asks political reporter Glenn McConnell.

If the Opportunity Party makes it into Parliament after November’s election, it will be the first time a party led by political novices has done so.

The party scored 4.6% support in this week’s 1 News Verian poll - just 0.4 points below the 5% threshold required to enter Parliament. That was its highest ever result in a poll result.

Opportunity’s arrival would cause a huge shake up for the House of Representatives.

In an interview with Stuff, leader Qiulae Wong has outlined how she plans to negotiate a coalition deal if elected. If it happens, she would likely be the kingmaker.

How Opportunity’s arrival would reshape Parliament

Here’s how Parliament would look based on the current results in Stuff’s Poll of Polls, which records averaged results from the country’s main political polls:

• Labour, with 33.3% support, would have 42 seats.

• The Greens, with 11.9% support, would have 15 seats.

• Te Pāti Māori, with 2.4% support, would have a party of electorate MPs. Currently, it has four electorate MPs - but won six electorates in 2023.

That’s 61 seats - just enough to govern for the Opposition bloc - assuming Te Pāti Māori has at least four seats.

The remaining results show:

• National, with 29.3% support, would have 37 seats.

• NZ First, with 11.6% support, would have 14 seats.

• And ACT, with 7% of the vote, would have nine seats.

When a party fails to win an electorate or get more than 5% of the vote, its “wasted vote” is effectively divvied up between the parties that did make it to Parliament.

So if Opportunity breaks the 5% threshold, the make up of Parliament shifts dramatically:

• Labour loses two seats, down to 40.

• The Greens would lose a seat, down to 14.

• ACT would lose a seat, down to eight.

• And National would also lose two seats, down to 35 MPs.

• There would be no change for either Te Pāti Māori (as they only have electorate seats) or NZ First.

That would leave the current coalition parties with just 57 seats.

Combined, Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori would have just 58 seats.

Either side would need to work with the Opportunity Party to govern. Its six seats would hold the balance of power.

Opportunity to choose the Government

Wong has a plan for November 8, the day after the election, if it turns out she is bound for Parliament.

She told Stuff she would pick up the phone to call the leader of the party with the biggest share of the vote.

“We will go to that bigger party. We will push for our key policies which we think are the most important to take into a coalition,” she said.

She said Opportunity would enter into a period of exclusive negotiations with the largest party, about forming the next government. Only if those negotiations look to fail or stall would she then start talking to the other side.

“That’s the right thing to do, to give that first negotiation the genuine space that it requires to see whether some good common ground can be reached,” she said.

Ahead of the election, Wong said she would outline her party’s “bottom lines” for coalition negotiations. These would be policies and “values” which she said the party would demand from negotiations.

Tax reform a long-term goal

The party’s full suite of tax reform was unlikely to feature as one of those bottom lines.

After Tuesday night’s poll, the National Party took aim at the Opportunity Party - saying it sounded like a leftist party.

Both National leader Christopher Luxon and deputy Nicola Willis said “they look like a Labour-Green bunch”, when asked about the party.

Opportunity styles itself as a centrist party that can work with either National or Labour.

Luxon justified his description by pointing to Opportunity’s tax policies.

“They want a land tax, they want to make every New Zealander a beneficiary with a universal basic income,” he said.

Opportunity deputy leader Daniel Eb said the party’s policy for a universal basic income, which it called the Citizen’s Income, had roots in neoliberalism.

“Richard Nixon tried to have a go at sort of a proto version in the US in the 70s and Milton Friedman, like the godfather of neoliberal economics, was actually supportive of a UBI. So it's not as clean cut as it being left or right,” he said.

Wong said the party’s tax policy was built around wanting to give a back pocket boost to workers.

“Our tax reset could be the biggest tax break for working New Zealanders, which I think is something that National would campaign on,” she said.

But she conceded that the party’s tax policies, which included a 1.75% tax on the value of urban land and an income tax exemption for KiwiSaver contributions (which, like National, would be compulsory at 6%) could be hard to get across the line.

“It’s really important for a party like ours to be able to set out our long-term vision for a range of areas, including tax and things like health and education. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we're going to be able to get all of that into a coalition agreement,” she said.

She said she saw policies like that as a starting point for a discussion, rather than a bottom line commitment from the party.

“It’s going to be difficult for us to push something through like tax reform overnight, and honestly, I don’t think we want to. We want to actually bring the New Zealand public along with us,” she said.

Judging by its progress so far, rising from 0.7% support in January, to 4.6% in the latest poll, Wong said the party was “far healthier” than it had hoped to be at this stage of the campaign.