ACT version 2.0

Now with a Green update

The latest polls have the Opportunity party sitting at 4.6%, just 0.4% off the magic 5% required to enter parliament under MMP. This result has seen insults by the members of the coalition government, with Christopher Luxon saying that the party want to make “every New Zealander a beneficiary” and that a vote for them “looks like a vote for Labour and the Greens.” Winston Peters has dismissed the party as merely “consultants” and the Greens have accused them of stealing their policies and giving in to National on conservation.

The Opportunity party would love to replace perennial king-maker Winston Peters’ NZ First as the decider in any coalition government. They’ve claimed that they will work with either National or Labour to form a government. When asked whether they have a preference, party leader Quilae Wong (who goes by Q) said “Our first principle is to negotiate first with the party that gets the largest number of votes at the election. I think that's a tradition that enables stable politics, and so that's the approach we would take.”

In fact, the Opportunity party, now abbreviated to Opportunity, having been renamed by Q upon her taking the party leadership (they used to be called the Opportunities party, or just TOP), are leaning into their willingness to play both sides in their politics. They call themselves the “teal” party, a nod to their appeal to both National and Greens voters.

Q was chosen as party leader in November 2025 from a list of candidates. It’s easy to see why. She combines real-life business experience, having served in a number of corporate leadership and advisory positions both in the UK and here in Aotearoa, with a vibrant personality and an infectious optimism. It’s easy to root for her and she feels genuine. In her videos and speeches, she talks often about the future she wants for her two daughters. A New Zealand that is prosperous, internationally competitive in business, and values nature. In fact, the landing page for the party’s website has the tagline “For our future. Unity. Innovation. Nature.” Teal indeed. The party quite literally appears to blend National’s business focus with the Greens’ environmentalism, seemingly offering the best of both the right and the left without being beholden to any particular ideology. They offer instead, pragmatic, evidence-based policy. This best of both worlds, we’re only here to create a better future for everyone idealism is on full display in a recent video with Q and the deputy leader of the party, Daniel Eb. In the video, both mention several times that the problem with politics is the division and that politics is not a question of left or right, it’s a question of working together to find the best solutions.

But look past their optimistic rhetoric and talk of just wanting a better future for everyone, and it’s clear that Opportunity is just another capitalist party who, regardless of their intentions, will function to channel the disillusion with the status quo of National and Labour, but predominantly Labour and the Greens, into a party that seems progressive on the face of it, but in reality will do nothing to threaten the capitalist class. In fact, the avowed centrism of the party, the neither left nor right, should make anyone wary of them. Those who claim centrism do not understand the stakes and actors in modern politics and inevitably end up propping up the right. In addition, because their policies aren’t geared directly towards targeting the wealthiest in society and redistributing wealth, they will inevitably end up hurting those who are struggling. Furthermore, an analysis of their political rhetoric shows they aim to appeal most to disillusioned left voters and a recent study confirms that this is, in fact, where their voters come from.

I want to make clear that although I’m criticizing them here, my point is not to question their intentions in the same way that I think that the ACT party is merely a front for an ideological libertarian corporate agenda, but rather to explain why I think that the politics pursued by Opportunity, as well-intentioned as they may be, misunderstands the fundamental nature of political struggle and therefore cannot beat back the onslaught of the corporate and business interests that continue to erode social relations and conditions in Aotearoa. In fact, regardless of their intentions, in practice Opportunity will serve to siphon votes from the left, strengthening the agenda and position of the right here in New Zealand.

First, we must consider the material and economic landscape here in New Zealand. I recently provided some broad-brush strokes related to the historical evolution of classes and the contours of class struggle in this post. The key to understanding the functioning of any party within New Zealand’s political system is to remember that the liberal democratic state is the result of class struggle and therefore its institutions and political processes necessarily favor the wealthy. Our own two main parties have historically battled it out on behalf of the working and capitalist classes, with both being captured by capital following the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s and 90s. The language around politics, economics, and social relations has developed and been dictated by the capitalist class in order to reinforce the normality and inevitability of the current capitalist system, and to cast doubt on any disruption to the capitalist status quo.

The question then is, where does the Opportunity party’s rhetoric situate them within the current left/right political spectrum. Never mind that they claim to be centrist, what can we learn about them from the way they talk and the things they talk—or don’t talk—about?

Looking at the party’s landing page and at the bios of both Q and the Deputy Leader Daniel Eb, the business credentials and experience are placed front and center. In Q’s State of the Nation speech she made it clear that she was playing for votes on both the left and right. Indeed, the speech is a perfect blend of ACT’s lauding of kiwi values, plans to drive innovation and economic productivity, and the historical legacy of inventiveness and grit and the Greens’ vision of a sustainable future with clean energy and beautiful affordable cities. She couldn’t help amplifying a bit of the rightwing propaganda when she said that Opportunity would keep Labour honest on the economy and National honest on the environment (the line Eb informs us hit hardest for his father). This is, of course, the reputation that National has earned for themselves despite there being no evidence that they are in fact better for the economy. This bit of rhetoric deftly takes advantage of the rightwing spin machine Opportunity claims to oppose in their bid for centrism.

Also telling is that in Q’s speech she calls out National, Labour, NZ First, and the Greens but the tone and content of the criticism aims to appeal more to left than to right voters. She criticizes National on the environment and NZ First on immigration and trans policy. These are obvious low-hanging fruit for appeal to progressives and the argument could be made that any centrist party will criticize the right from its left. But she also, as discussed above, criticizes Labour on economics, a decidedly right critique. Besides being factually inaccurate, it could also be argued that a centrist party would obviously criticize Labour from their right. But, and this is the main point, Q criticizes the Greens from their left, claiming that their divisiveness and partisanship has resulted in negative outcomes for the environment. This framing positions Opportunity as more progressive than the Greens on the Greens’ own flagship priority. Also telling is that ACT appears nowhere in Q’s speech. It’s easy to see why when in substance you could substitute much of the content from David Seymour’s own speeches over the years for Q’s here, right down to bemoaning the red tape that holds back innovation and productivity, and deters investment of foreign capital. Consider these sentences from her first statement after becoming party leader.

We are a nation of innovators. It’s in our DNA. We built world-first technologies from the shearing shed to the rocket launchpad. We’ve created globally competitive companies from a tiny domestic market. We’ve been early movers on renewable energy, biotech, digital services, and advanced manufacturing.

But somewhere along the way, we stopped backing ourselves. We became reactive instead of visionary. We became risk-averse instead of bold. We fell into the habit of tinkering at the edges rather than building something bigger.

Q positions the party as the progressive alternative for those who think Labour is economically irresponsible and the Greens too divisive in strategy to accomplish their progressive goals, while championing the need for economic growth and business expansion. The party also tempers their potentially-worrisome-to-the-right tax policy and citizens’ income by stating that it will replace most forms of benefits. Their policies in general, including their positions on the environment, are much more appealing to the progressive voter base, while offering some palliatives for the right in order to not be written off as merely a Greens clone. In a recent interview with Guyon Espiner on RNZ, Q asserted that the Greens have leaned too hard into social justice issues and a confrontational political strategy, thereby alienating voters. As I discussed here and here, this position is a direct takeaway from the rightwing spin machine, not reflective of the Greens’ actual politics. It’s disappointing to see Q amplifying the dishonesty and disingenuous criticism.

In their campaigning and public statements, Opportunity reserve most of their fire for NZ First, while criticizing the coalition government in general, but very rarely ACT in particular. I argue that this is because ACT is their most comfortable ideological bedfellow and the party with whom they share the most explicit affinity. The constant talk of innovation and driving business productivity and competitiveness indicates that they are a business-first party. The heavy emphasis on the environment and Q’s own background in sustainable business is a clear play for Green voters. Thus, in almost all rhetorical and political respects, the Opportunity party aims to court the voters of the left bloc while superficially criticizing the right by calling out the divisiveness of New Zealand politics. Aside from general divisiveness and a poor track record on the environment, Opportunity seldom criticize the right on specific policy, only stating they have failed to deliver for New Zealand. Thus, reading the tea leaves and with a healthy bit of skepticism, the party could be seen as a rightwing party masquerading as a progressive alternative to the Greens.

Whether a conscious strategy or not, a recent article on where Opportunity voters come from confirms that since 2017, there has been a decisive shift in where the party is drawing most of its voters from, with most in 2023 coming from the Labour/Greens bloc. Do read the whole article but some of the results can be summarized by the following quote:

What’s fascinating is that all three charts are telling a coherent story that in different ways points toward a “leftward shift”:

Chart 1.1 (Previous Party Vote) – TOP’s composition shifted from blue-green in 2017 to centre-left dominant by 2023.

Chart 1.2 (Desired Coalition Partners) – National became progressively less desired as a coalition partner.

Chart 1.3 (Ideological Self-Placement) – 2020 appears relatively balanced, but 2023 shifts decisively toward the centre-left.

The story this rather academic analysis is telling, as I noted when the article came out, should be a five-alarm fire to anyone on the left. What is happening is that Opportunity is grabbing a larger share of the votes on the left while leaving the right intact. As with any centrist party in a system where the status quo is capitalist preservation, calls for unity and centrism only serve to stabilize the right.

Despite their believable good intentions, Opportunity will only prop up the right because the party fails to understand the nature of political struggle. While the Greens and Labour discuss wealth inequality as being a key to the issues facing New Zealand society, Q is very cagey when asked to explicitly address this. She instead focuses her comments on the party’s tax reset policy and about how it will address social problems. For Q, the problem is not that a fraction of New Zealanders own a majority of wealth, it is that too much wealth is tied up in land. The party’s land tax, in reality, will do little to address wealth inequality because the very richest are gaining more and more of their wealth through financial assets, not land. In fact, the party admits that their land tax will force some people out of their homes, an outcome the party claims will prompt people to be innovative. I guess that’s one way to think about not being able to afford your tax bill. These are the foregone ends of a political strategy that attempts to solve social problems while refusing to do anything to threaten or discipline capital.

In its rejection of a left/right ideological binary, Opportunity views society as a technocratic problem to be solved, prioritizing broadly-agreeable reforms over addressing the root causes of problems it hopes to fix through an amoral politics. At the end of the day, Opportunity is a business-first party that appeals to progressive voters with environmental, green-capitalist policies and technocratic fixes for social problems. In failing to do anything to truly reform the capitalist foundations of Aotearoa’s problems, it only becomes more ballast for the rightwing wealth accumulation and expropriation machine. Those interested in progressive politics should not be fooled. The Greens are the only credible progressive political alternative this election.