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5:30 pm, August 14th, 2026 - 45 comments
Categories: Daily review -
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Daily review is also your post.
This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Don’t forget to be kind to each other …
https://x.com/henrycooke/status/2088137688918704241
https://www.thepost.co.nz/politics/361063024/election-2026-another-poll-puts-opportunity-kingmaker-position
Labour 41
Greens 10
TPM 4
= 55
TOP 6
National 35
Act 8
NZF 16
= 59
I'm ok with this. Want to see the trend though
weird GP number
I wonder if Labour, or the Greens for that matter, would offer an Epsom style deal to the Opportunity Party to make sure their polling numbers would count? After all a number like 5.2 could easily drop to 4.9 and they wouldn't be in the House at all.
Perhaps Labour and the Greens should throw their candidate votes in the Wellington North electorate to the Opportunity Party candidate Jessica Hammond. After all Paul and Verrall are both certain to get in with their List placings. They could call on the electorates' voters to ignore them and to vote for Hammond.
Speaking as a voter in the electorate I wouldn't see Paul not being the member as being something to regret. She hasn't been very obvious in the job and I don't think many people would miss her in that role.
The make up of the electorate would also seem to be the best chance for the Opportunity Party to pick up a seat. The voters here are quite willing to vote for someone outside the standard range of candidates. We even had Prebble from the ACT party as our MP at one stage.
Imagine how the Labour or Green Party voters are going to feel if they don't do this and the Opportunity vote came in on election day at a 4.9% level?
Historically it's a hard no from Labour (apart from Coromandel and Fitzsimons back in the day?), because Labour campaign in all seats.
The Greens don't do deals, they just sometimes quietly don't stand someone in a seat. I can't imaging they would do that with electorates where they currently hold a seat or are planning to campaign hard in one. Electorate campaigning is part of getting the party vote higher.
It's National that does that sneaky sh*t, alwyn, you must know that by now!
All that really matters with these polls is that it continues the overall media narrative, namely that Opportunity are above 5%, so the initial response ("ignore, they'll go away") can't work any more.
Usually it's a legit tactic to deny fringe parties the "oxygen of publicity", as with Colin Craig's Conservatives and the like. But that ship has sailed, thanks largely to Luxon.
This shifting of the narrative from "3 Right versus 3 Left", which it has been for years, benefits the opposition more than the government, I reckon. MMP isn't supposed to be about 2 binary blocs, and it's good that has been shaken up.
I agree, it's a breath of fresh air. Still a risk for the left. And there are serious policy problems, but I'm tending to think now that if they are queenmaker, Labour and the Greens will the experienced parties in the negotiations and my guess is TOP will be happy to get some smaller policy gains, or heading in the right direction stuff.
No Right Turn won’t be voting for TOP and explains why.
https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2026/08/why-im-not-voting-for-opportunity.html
Quite a sensible position, IMO.
Yep, I'm with Idiot/Savant on so many things but especially this.
Imagine providing a new, un-tested, unknown crew with the power to decide, if they chose to, the present coalition to govern for another 3 years.
They could.
They've said they might.
Despite what they claim to believe in, they have NO track-record – voters are voting blind when it comes to what the party might decide.
They have not displayed any certainty at all, especially under any kind of pressure at all and pressure is what they'd come under, were they to be negotiating a partnership with National, ACT and NZF.
Imagine it.
What advantage to the voter could they possibly hope to win??
Any real suggestions from any commenter here?
Love to hear your thoughts (not you, mikesh 🙂
I'm not voting for them. Labour and the Greens can compete for my party vote (Chloe in the electorate, of course).
But I'd rather have them than NZF in the negotiations. Harder to bribe ("here's your bauble, Winston!") but at least you don't have to spend 3 years pretending not to notice all the nastiness.
Yes, I'd be very happy to have them in discussion with Labour, the Greens, and TPM around forming a new coalition government, but very unhappy to see them in discussion with National et. as I don't believe they have experience enough to withstand that process. The pressures that would come upon them would be huge and they have no experience at all in managing those dark processes.
Consolation: watching Luxon grovel. And lie ("What I would say to you, I never ruled them out, I never did …").
As noted before, the decision to keep Luxon on does not mean that National can't win, but that Luxon can't survive the win.
There would be much pleasure in watching Luxon change tack – he'd waste no time explaining, make no apology and move quickly on, leaving those of us who value honesty, once again, frustrated and disappointed.
As per before antis: zero experience in local bodies, ie large-scale governance and budgetting plus consensus politiking; no depth to policy except their headliners (eg their leader had NO foreign policy when interviewed on BHN a month or so ago), opaque on their true political position (I smell a trojan horse).
What can they bring to their voters? a lucky-dip protest vote, popcorn-watching government fights, voters get to see a new party learn the ropes while Rome crashes and burns when they go rw. Despair to the rest of us.
Luxon’s no-OP position will be weaselled to ‘I didn’t rule out confidence-and-supply’.
An offer of just one seat at the caucus table would buy TOP as they'd see that as an investment for the future; that is, getting back for another round by winning the constituent seat held by that lucky TOP MP.
One caucus seat is a very small price for National to pay for another term.
To one-up Peters: "One Wong will make the government Right".
Thats the selling point! They have no baggage, they aren't career politicians, they are new voices, They aren't apart of this disgrace of a government, and they didn't support the previous Labour government which was a total waste of time.
They are to the left of labour whilst being in the center because labour is a right wing party and TOP are just dead center.
And I'm sorry about the long rants but hey atleast peters isn't kingmaker anymore
The Greens or Labour would usually get my vote but Labour party aren't the party of workers they are the party of HR and managers and they are stuck in 2002. I've tuned them out like they've tuned out their traditional base.
While I'm giving GP my electorate vote, that caucus has been a circus this term, a revolving door, I can't get over the bad behavior, zero background checks, and for a party that used to clean up with young male voters, the lack of a male co-leader, a co-leader who said only white men are violent, and have no males in their top ten, there's a reason young male Lefty's are fleeing the greens to TOP, The Greens need to get off this idpol nonsense and get more nandors and Russel normans in their caucus.
I think the left should be happy young males are going to TOP instead of ACT or NZF, at least TOP is open to working with the Greens and "Labour" party, and it means that the left hasn't totally lost males under 40 like in other countrys, if the greens ditch the idpol, get rid of that silly new rule and ditch marama and get a charismatic young male co-leader for 2029 they could win young males back.
The people voting TOP have tuned out Labour, it's a mix of males who like the greens and are debating TOP or Green, and urban liberal National voters, second generation kiwis, people who hate this govt but hated the last govt too and people who want something new.
No amount of hang wringing from the left will convince them to vote Labour or Greens.
As weka said, they aren't perfect but policy wise? If labour and the greens can negotiate a good arrangement with good policy wins they are more likely than not to go with Lab/Green (especially since they have lots of policy cross over with the greens, very little with labour cos labour is a right wing party)
If they go with national I'll be furious, but id rather they be in the mix blocking the extremes of nats NZf and act than just the trio of them running roughshod again
tbf, the Greens did review and change their selection process.
I'm not sure young white men have voted much for the GP, other than the committed GP voters. Would love to see some research on that. The policies are good, but it's not a good cultural fit.
Out of curiosity did you vote for them when Shaw was co-leader?
I once infamously said the Maori party wouldn't go with National. Oops.
TOP are a wild card. NRT's post is good, and people will vote for who they vote for. But it's looking like TOP are now a contender, and that tells us a lot about the electorate. I bet that like the Greens, TOP have more people that support them than will vote for them when it comes down to it.
The biggest argument against TOP atm is that they may cost the left the election. I know people will say that the election is for the left to win, which is true, but another term of NACTF is stuff we're not going to recover from.
I’ve put this in because OP’s UBI seems dodgy to me. This reddit post from an economist dissects the OP UBI policy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nzpolitics/comments/1vnt66r/comment/p3lym04/
" A well designed UBI pumps money into the hands of consumers. And then taxes away an equivalent amount of money from those consumers.
With no net changes to the consumer money base, inflation should be minimal. But redistribution and efficiency gains of a UBI are present. BIG WIN! UBI is a big win for society!
TOP's UBI: pumps money into the hands of consumers. Then taxes it away from land instead of the consumers. As a result, landlords will see that consumers all suddenly have a lot more money AND they're facing an increased cost. They'll jump rents up significantly (see what happens when Student Allowance goes up – in student areas rent goes up by a similar amount).
Redistribution gains are largely killed off by inflation (or for people on the benefit, they are now WORSE off than they were before the change). FAIL"
The poster claims OP mashed two good economic policies together to make one bad one.
And, as far as I can make out, UBI would include pensions, meaning a drop for NZers on it now. Boo.
what's the point of a UBI if you then tax recipients to get it back again?
Not quite.
TOP would top up Super to that no-one currently would be worse off.
The problem is the land tax, which would be a hefty bill for some. TOP say it can be deferred. Land taxes are regressive.
Yes, ok weka, NZ should test an economic system tried at nation, or even state level by no other country, and have it overseen by novice politicians. What could possibly go wrong?
In the 80s slump me and all the young people around were on the dole, because there were simply no jobs, except for subsidised short-term ones on the PEP scheme.
The dole was enough to survive comfortably enough, and go out to the pub once a week, because rent was cheap, and didn't consume 50% of the total.
Some people called the dole their 'government arts fund' and created. Most people sat round drinking tea and gas-bagging, or hitched round the country seeing the sights.
It's a fantasy that new enterprise will burgeon under such a scheme. It may bolster existing community networks by freeing up people to volunteer, but as anyone involved in a community group knows, 20% of people will inevitably do 80% of the work.
Known ways to foster innovation and creativity:
Liveable wages so you can save, and can take time out to create.
Targetted arts and science and technology funds, such as are being dismantled by the day because, 'ai'.
Vibrant, creative, broad-ranging free education from kindergarten to tertiary, such as is being swapped out for narrow rote-learning by Stanford and Key's contractor buddies.
Local investment capital that isn’t sunk into overseas shares or rental housing, but into local businesses.
Job creation by government to employ new workers and teach skills. Those jobs can be community enhancing.
Not a UBI.
Vapourware, OP's vapourware. OP disturbs me so profoundly because my gut tells me there's nothing of substance there, only hype, hype and novelty.
It may have earnest people as the face, but they’re just earnest marketers, literally employed by the party for that job.
As always, the essential point is not hypothetical post-election moves. That's cart before horse. It's about how perceptions take hold and therefore influence the real election (before any post-election moves).
These headlines are going to keep coming …
Poll: National down and out of Government in new Talbot Mills poll – NZ Herald
Luxon caused that headline when he ruled them out. Previously it was "coalition ahead, Opportunity in play, all up for grabs".
Enjoy watching the pressure increase on Blusterman.
I don't understand why so many people are getting so worked up about TOP having the temerity to exist, argue its case, and win over enough of the electorate to win some seats in Parliament.
If they prop up National, that's their choice. Neither TOP nor its voters owe Labour or the Greens a government.
The best way to manage that risk is to make a Labour-led government the more attractive proposition. Or, if Labour thinks a significant proportion of TOP's support comes from disaffected former Labour voters, give those people a reason to come back.
If TOP gets over 5%, those seats haven't been stolen from anybody. Voters chose to give them to them. And if that leaves them holding the balance of power, they're entitled to use the leverage the electorate has given them.
That's why people are getting so worked up 😉
Agree that TOP aren't stealing votes. Might still cost the left the election though.
Sure, and I completely understand being worried about that. I’m worried about it too. What I don’t understand is directing that frustration at TOP.
If TOP costs the left the election by winning votes from people who might otherwise have voted Labour or Green, then the answer is the same as it has always been in democratic politics: work out why those voters preferred someone else, and get better at winning them.
sure. But there are things that work against that conceptual fairness eg party donations, polling, media coverage.
I'm also not sure it's as simple as you make out. People vote for a range of reasons. Some people are deeply informed, some vote based on feels, some vote for cultural fit, or who they like, protest votes.
That's not an argument for hating on TOP (they've got policy to hate instead 😅). It's just the idea of getting better at winning is true, but isn't going to serve us (mostly because we have a low form of democracy).
But if that's the standard, why bother with voting at all?
No democracy has ever been perfectly fair, balanced, or populated entirely by well-informed voters carefully comparing policy platforms. People have always voted for a mixture of material interests, ideology, identity, cultural fit, personalities, protest, habit and vibes.
To me, democracy isn't a mechanism for discovering the objectively correct answer. It's a system for negotiating policy by aggregating people's preferences.
Of course money, polling, media coverage and institutional design affect how those preferences are formed and expressed. We should absolutely care about those things and try to improve them.
But ultimately political parties still have to persuade the electorate they actually have, not some ideal electorate we'd prefer to have.
And despite all those structural constraints, I still think political actors and voters have agency. Otherwise we're left treating electoral outcomes as things that simply happen to us, rather than things we can influence through persuasion, organisation and political choices.
I think you misunderstood my (rather ineptly expressed) point. I was just pointing out that the idea that parties must just try harder is both true and a bit abstract.
I think we can do better than that. Rather than aggregating preferences, we could find ways to create acceptable policy that comes from the people eg citizens assemblies.
Obviously that has to be balanced with the pragmatics of managing a country, but I wasn't suggesting there is an objectively correct answer. I'm in favour of breaking the oppositional binary politics and having people involved in more democracy rather then the limited thing we have now where we get to vote every 3 years and then trust this small number of people not to fuck things up.
Top are offering something different with tax and spending, they arnt big enough to get what they want but they are a natural allies of the other tax reform parties so they can help drag nz to real change, real redistribution, real progress on failing infrastructure.
QFT. Probably the most pertinent thing that has been said about them.
Their proposals indicate that " they are a natural allies of the other tax reform parties " but their political positioning, "we could work with the parties that oppose our ideas on tax", is the problem here. Tax reform should be their bottom line, but it isn't, so far as I've been able to see.
They aren't staunch and are therefore vulnerable to political leverage well beyond their skill level.
Wong said recently they haven't said their bottom lines yet. From memory they will do so closer to the election as they release more policy. Might have been the Bridge interview on TV
I think I heard that on RNZ.
It's fine … but a bit dishonest to refrain from declaring a major position, such as not going into coalition with parties that will, without doubt, smash your tax policies out of the park, which is what National and its dags WILL do. Luxon cites that very aspect as the reason he will not go into coalition with them. If he had to, he would, but National couldn't change their approach to tax, for fear of completely losing their support base. That means, TOP tax dreams are just that. They must know this.
no-one is going to change their approach to tax for TOP in coalition negotiations.
What b said is spot on. It's how the Greens have effected good change without even being fully in government: influencing the culture and shifting the Overton Window.
If TOP become a minor party or a C/S party in/to a Centre left government, Labour and the Greens aren't going to agree to bullshit policy.
TOP haven't said their bottom lines yet. Have other parties?
"no-one is going to change their approach to tax for TOP in coalition negotiations."
A Left-wing coalition could, claiming to the public that it was necessary for the sake of becoming the Government and it might be that there are aspects of TOP's tax policy that such a coalition would want but are held back because of the lever that would have given to the Right around election time. The public, or at least the majority of the public, might regard such an adjustment as favourable. The Right did exactly this in their negotiations – allowed hard-Right policy through, claiming it was "necessary" to secure power.
of course. Where there is position and policy overlap, minor parties make gains and influence the Overton Window.
That's not the same as Labour suddenly announcing post-election that it will implement a UBI and land tax.
If you think Labour might do that, tell me how that would work. It's such a major policy suite that would require a lot of work to implement. Then there are the things the Greens want.
I think it's more likely that the parties will negotiate like adults, and TOP will accept what every other party bar Peters First has, that they can progress their aims over time. In fact I think Wong said that recently, I will go look that up.
Between the three parties, they may come up with tax reform that makes good change that they can all live with. Labour did all that work before the last election.
What Labour can't do is institute massive change that they didn't campaign on. They could say something like 'we'd like to explore tax reform this term with the idea' with the idea that they would bring it to the next election.
Or, the oil crisis/el nino/polycrisis may force their hand.In which case we are much better off with L/G/T (and TPM), than L/NZF +G c/s
"Change their approach to tax" does not equal "implement a UBI and land tax.".
'If you think Labour might do that, tell me how that would work. "
So, no, I don't think that. they could however, make some concessions, whereas National et al, wouldn't.
Knowing that, TOP is misleading the public, in order to harvest votes from people who can't know for sure what the party will do. That's politics, for sure.
again, TOP haven't published their bottom lines yet. Have any other parties?
If you can see that Labour won't make major consessions, why do you think rw voters can't make an assessment about NACT?
Voters don't need to see the bottom lines of other parties – they already know them! No-one is in any doubt of ACT's, NZF's, TPM's, Greens, because none are saying, we could go either way; TOP are saying that, therefore, their bottom line counts and hiding it from the public is deceptive.