working with National<\/a> in a similar multi-party coalition anyway. She too could not have been clearer when she said:<\/p>\n“We are not here to prop up the current coalition government. If that coalition agreement was put in front of us, we would have walked away.”<\/p>\n
Opportunity is not insisting on its land tax in any coalition agreement. But its five published bottom lines \u2013 including ending bottom-trawling, recommitting to climate action and capping political donations \u2013 are more compatible with a Labour-led administration that would include the Green Party.<\/p>\n
National Party leader Christopher Luxon has ruled out working with Opportunity. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Labour has also sounded its preference for a three-party coalition with the Greens and Opportunity \u2013 enabling it to sideline Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori in coalition negotiations.<\/p>\n
Still, the question remains: if Opportunity makes it over 5%, what happens if National can\u2019t form a government without it? Given all he\u2019s said, Luxon may have to resign to make a reversal politically palatable.<\/p>\n
But there\u2019s another theoretically possible post-election scenario. That\u2019s a National-ACT-New Zealand First coalition reforming itself with renewed agreements and returning to office with a minority of seats \u2013 supported by a confidence-and-supply agreement with Opportunity, positioned on the cross benches.<\/p>\n
Such an agreement would give the coalition the numbers to govern, with some concessions around policy.<\/p>\n
Confidence and supply?<\/p>\n
![\"Christopher](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/luxon-P3UGBRCQKZD53GWHAJJ4PQOIRE.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Christopher Luxon on the campaign trail. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
This kind of arrangement could also make sense for the long-term survival of Opportunity as a centrist party, given none of their candidates yet have parliamentary (let alone cabinet) experience.<\/p>\n
In this scenario, Luxon would have his cake and eat it too. He\u2019d technically rule Opportunity out of his coalition but talk it into supporting his minority government anyway.<\/p>\n
In reality, it seems more likely Luxon doesn\u2019t see this as a viable way forward, and views Opportunity as more like Labour\u2019s Trojan Horse than a genuinely centrist kingmaker.<\/p>\n
From that perspective, Opportunity\u2019s job can be seen as vacuuming up votes in the centre and then supporting a Labour-led government; it might talk to National after the election as a courtesy, but that\u2019s all.<\/p>\n
Taking its bottom-line policies and public statements into account, then, it\u2019s not unreasonable for voters to assume a vote for Opportunity is, in effect, a vote for a change of government.<\/p>\n
Luxon\u2019s refusal to work with Opportunity might seem illogical on the surface, but underneath it sits some valid reasoning. Of course, this may backfire once votes are counted and coalition negotiations are completed. But that\u2019s politics.<\/p>\n
Grant Duncan is a research associate with the Public Policy Institute at the University of Auckland Waipapa Taumata Rau.<\/p>\n
This article was republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons licence. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite not having made it to parliament, the Opportunity Party has already been proclaimed a potential \u201ckingmaker\u201d following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":639024,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11507,111,43,139,69,271022,135],"class_list":["post-639023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-national-party","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-opportunity-party","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639023","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=639023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/639023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/639024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=639023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=639023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=639023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Christopher](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/christopher-luxon-and-the-national-party-on-the-campaign-tra-7VDTKTGA3RGXBHQFTO755OOVZA.jpg\")
<\/p>\n