In July, Luxon first ruled out working with Opportunity in a future government: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to do business with parties who want to increase taxes,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
National leader Christopher Luxon, seen here with campaign chairman Simeon Brown, says he won’t talk to Opportunity. Photo \/ Michael Craig<\/p>\n
At the time, several polls had placed Opportunity close to, but not above, the 5% threshold to enter Parliament without an electorate seat. Wong is seeking the candidate vote in Auckland\u2019s Mt Albert seat but trails three more popular candidates, according to current polling. <\/p>\n
Since August, at least eight mainstream public polls have Opportunity registering between 5-8%. Yesterday\u2019s Taxpayers\u2019 Union-Curia poll had Opportunity on 4.8% but the pollster acknowledged the 3.1% margin of error meant there was 42% chance Opportunity was above the threshold. <\/p>\n
While yesterday\u2019s poll showed National, New Zealand First and Act could form a government without Opportunity, this week\u2019s 1News Verian and RNZ Reid Research polls put Opportunity in the kingmaker position as neither bloc had enough for a majority in the House without Opportunity. <\/p>\n
Last week, Opportunity published five bottom line policies it would demand in any post-election negotiations. However, they did not include its land tax or citizen\u2019s income, Wong saying her party didn\u2019t \u201cexpect tax reform to happen overnight\u201d. <\/p>\n
Labour leader Chris Hipkins eventually confirmed in August his party\u2019s \u201cdoor is open\u201d, while also reiterating his position that a Labour-led coalition would introduce only a capital gains tax.<\/p>\n
Labour leader Chris Hipkins says his party’s door is open to Opportunity. Photo \/ Cameron Pitney<\/p>\n
However, Luxon has continued to insist he would not work with Wong because of Opportunity\u2019s land tax policy, despite it not being a bottom line. <\/p>\n
That was reiterated on Tuesday\u2019s TVNZ leaders\u2019 debate: \u201cWith respect to the Opportunity party, they still have tax and land tax as a key policy, I\u2019m a party that\u2019s about no new taxes and I want to have friends that [agree],\u201d Luxon said.<\/p>\n
Asked by host Jack Tame if he\u2019d be open to talking with Opportunity, Luxon replied: \u201cAs I\u2019ve said, we\u2019ve ruled them out and as I\u2019ve said, we also do not want to work with parties that want to impose more taxes and costs on New Zealand.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pressed by Tame as to whether he was ruling out Opportunity from \u201cany support deal no matter what\u201d, the National leader said: \u201cI have been crystal clear of who we could or couldn\u2019t work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opportunity has confirmed it would approach the party with the largest vote share for post-election talks if it breached the 5% threshold; something the party leadership agreed to earlier this year. <\/p>\n
Speaking to the Herald, Wong said that commitment would be honoured if National\u2019s vote was larger than Labour\u2019s after November 7, even if Luxon\u2019s position hadn\u2019t changed. <\/p>\n
Wong reiterated it was unrealistic for a party new to Parliament to demand tax reform within its first term but indicated progress could be achieved. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s potential for ways that we could work towards that in a first term, but I think for us to pre-determine what any of that is before we\u2019re sitting around the table is not helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong unveiled the party’s bottom-line policies last week. Photo \/ Dean Purcell <\/p>\n
Asked how she would respond to the prospect of National requiring a commitment not to advance tax reform in the next term ahead of any negotiations beginning, Wong said she was \u201cnot going to commit either way to that right now\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf they make some statement like that, we\u2019ll have to have a discussion internally and respond, but it\u2019s not something we\u2019ve had a discussion about yet as a team.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, if [National is] in a position where the choice is to have a conversation with us \u2026 or to sit in Opposition and they don\u2019t even want to have an open conversation about our policy platform, then it\u2019s pretty difficult for us to negotiate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked how she would feel about National in potential negotiations demanding no progress on Opportunity\u2019s tax reform in the next term, Wong said it would depend on what else was being offered. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to kind of hypothesise all the potential permutations, but it is a give and take, and if we are getting a lot else, then maybe it\u2019s worth considering.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wong acknowledged Luxon\u2019s focus on the land tax in his comments ruling out Opportunity could be signalling that dropping the policy could change his position. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe, I think a lot of it is tribal politics and trying to put us into a box, and we don\u2019t fit neatly into a box because we do say we can work across the political spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald\u2019s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whang\u0101rei and the Herald in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In July, Luxon first ruled out working with Opportunity in a future government: \u201cWe don\u2019t want to do…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11157,193093,7230,40570,71,78,13489,203265,25900,111,43,139,1536,69,6452,193,5202,7254,6046,13194,93584,16860,312,5257,7496,1335,684,3608,6202,93585,19985,6730],"class_list":["post-624741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-abandoning","tag-agreeing","tag-coalition","tag-considering","tag-from","tag-in","tag-leader","tag-nationalled","tag-negotiations","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-next","tag-nz","tag-opportunity","tag-other","tag-part","tag-policy","tag-potential","tag-progress","tag-qiulae","tag-reform","tag-says","tag-significant","tag-tax","tag-term","tag-there","tag-were","tag-wins","tag-wong","tag-worth","tag-would"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624741","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=624741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}