{"id":567211,"date":"2026-08-12T23:46:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T23:46:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/567211\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T23:46:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T23:46:13","slug":"opportunity-party-leader-on-poll-surge-working-with-winston-peters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/567211\/","title":{"rendered":"Opportunity Party leader on poll surge, working with Winston Peters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong believes her party can find “common ground” with Winston Peters and New Zealand First if it were part of future coalition negotiations.<\/p>\n

Wong’s comments come after Opportunity saw a surge in yesterday’s 1News Verian poll<\/a>, rising to 8%. <\/p>\n

The coalition of National (29%), Act (9%) and NZ First (8%) would hold 57 seats \u2013 not enough to retain power. The left bloc, consisting of Labour (30%), the Greens (12%) and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori, who were assumed to retain their six M\u0101ori electorate seats, would also not have the numbers. <\/p>\n

The party would comfortably make it into Parliament, and likely be kingmaker in deciding the next Government. <\/p>\n

\"Electorate<\/p>\n

Electorate seats are assumed to be held by their incumbents. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Opportunity has said it’s willing to work with all parties, including National, despite Prime Minister Christopher Luxon appearing to rule them out<\/a> over tax policy disagreements. <\/p>\n

Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins has said there is “no way” his party would support Opportunity’s tax policy<\/a>, but will make a call on who he would be willing to work with closer to the election.<\/p>\n

On Breakfast this morning, Wong said recent polls showed that “voters are not feeling inspired by either of the major big parties” and wanted “stability”. <\/p>\n

“We are focused on maximising our party vote,” she said. “That gets us in the best position to be a strong and stable coalition partner to either Labour or National.”<\/p>\n

“I think that’s what New Zealand needs right now, is some stability and some focus on moving forward.”<\/p>\n

Asked about Luxon’s call to rule out working with Opportunity, Wong said: “I think nobody really believes they wouldn’t pick up the phone if they didn’t need to talk to us”. <\/p>\n

“We have made it very clear there are multiple things we think we can work with them on.” <\/p>\n

\"Qiulae<\/p>\n

Qiulae Wong (Source: Supplied)<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s poll coincided with dramatic scenes at Parliament, where National MPs were summoned for an urgent meeting amid speculation about Luxon’s leadership. Luxon survived a confidence vote<\/a> and then sacked Cabinet minister Chris Penk<\/a> for launching a challenge against him. <\/p>\n

Asked if she felt less inclined to work with National following this, Wong said: “I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment on the leadership of any of the parties.<\/p>\n

“We can’t control the way that the National Party performs, how they act. <\/p>\n

“The reality is that it’s going to be either Labour or National… So we are going to have to find a way to work with them.” <\/p>\n

Winston Peters could be another sticking point in negotiations, with Opportunity saying it wouldn’t work with any government that has the NZ First leader as Foreign Minister. <\/p>\n

This was in response to comments Peters made in the House directed at Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan<\/a> \u2013 telling the Chinese-born lawmaker to “go back to your own country”. Wong has called the comments “racist”. <\/p>\n

She said that while NZ First is “probably the party that we have the least in common with”, there was a possibility of finding common ground. <\/p>\n

“There are some things that they’ve talked about around tackling supermarkets [and] our energy market that we have some good solutions on.” <\/p>\n

Qiulae Wong spoke to Q+A’s Jack Tame about the Opportunity party. (Source: Q and A)<\/p>\n

A “bottom line” that Opportunity won’t accept was Peters as Foreign Minister<\/a>, Wong said. <\/p>\n

Pressed on whether this applied to any other portfolios, Wong said the call around Foreign Minister was a “specific example” off the back of Peters’ comments in the House. <\/p>\n

“I think we’d have to look at what the offer is on the table for a coalition agreement, and there may be circumstances where we won’t be willing to work with those options as well.<\/p>\n

“He might not be offered any ministerial position, so we, you know, we can’t make that call until we see what the offer is.<\/p>\n

“There’s potential that he could be in a ministerial role. We’re not ruling any of those other roles out at this stage.”<\/p>\n

Newcomer rises to 8% to bring it neck-and-neck with New Zealand First. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

She said details around ministerial roles were not the party’s main focus at the moment, wanting to avoid “tribal politics”. <\/p>\n

“I don’t think it’s useful to play this ruling in and out game in full detail.”<\/p>\n

Asked about David Seymour and ACT, Wong said there were “absolutely” things Opportunity disagreed with but also felt common ground could be found. <\/p>\n

“We have to sit around the table and try to make things work. Because if we continue playing tribal politics, New Zealand will just go backwards.” <\/p>\n

Asked if Opportunity was more likely to side with the left bloc, Wong mentioned the Memorandum of Understanding between National and the Greens in 2009. <\/p>\n

“That kind of cooperation seems absolutely far-fetched these days, and I think we need to remember that MMP is about parties coming together and working together across party lines, and that’s what we’re focused on. <\/p>\n

“I think that’s the shift we need to make in New Zealand politics.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong believes her party can find “common ground” with Winston Peters and New Zealand First…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567212,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69,271022,135,274547,111736,270122],"class_list":["post-567211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opportunity-party","tag-politics","tag-qiulae-wong","tag-verian-poll","tag-vote-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567211"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567211\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}