Labour MP Greg O’Connor not sure if he will seek list placing as he loses bid for new seat

Monday, 24 November 2025

Greg O’Connor says he isn’t ready to retire yet - but he’s not sure if he will stick to politics.

The Labour MP held the seat of Ōhāriu in north Wellington at the last election, despite a large swing to National seeing the party win the party vote in the constituency.

But the seat has been dismembered ahead of the 2026 election, and on Sunday evening O’Connor lost his chance to represent “Wellington North” - one of its successor seats - to fellow Labour MP Ayesha Verrall.

Speaking to The Post on Monday, O’Connor said he would have been disappointed if his electorate had dumped him after nine years of service, but given it was a brand new seat it didn’t “belong” to anyone.

“If there'd been a contest for Ōhāriu, and I'd lost, I think I probably would justifiably have felt a little aggrieved. But I don't feel aggrieved: There's a new process, new seat, and all bets are off,” O’Connor said.

He said that anyone involved in politics had to respect democratic processes and it was that process that had seen Verrall win out over him.

“Once you start not respecting democratic processes you end up looking like the United States right now,” he said.

O’Connor has another potential route of returning to Parliament - the Labour Party list. But he decided not to stand on the list in 2020 and 2023, saying he wanted to put his entire faith in his local community.

He said he was still deciding whether or not to make a bid for a place on the list at the next election.

“I’m just reflecting on that at the moment. I’ve never had a plan B. You have a plan A, because plan Bs just get in the way of your plan A,” O’Connor said.

He said the decision could be made as soon as this week but he would likely consider it on a holiday around the South Island with his son over the summer.

This list-making process could prove difficult for O’Connor as a Pākehā male.

The Labour Party list is crafted through a complex process involving various regional list conferences, sectoral group, a national moderating committee, and an explicit consideration of whether the list represents a diverse range of New Zealanders, particularly groups “previously under-represented in Parliament”.

The party’s constitution explicitly requires that the list be crafted so that it is likely that at least 50% of the party’s representation in Parliament after each election are women.

Asked if he felt men from union backgrounds were still being represented in the Labour Party, O’Connor pointed to the selection of CTU economist Craig Renney for the new seat of Wellington Bays over the weekend.

While he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to stay on in politics, the 67-year-old said he wasn’t ready for retirement.

“I’m not ready to hang anything up yet.”