Watch Waitaki

Damien O’Connor has a unique chance to wrest the safe seat of Waitaki off National’s Miles Anderson.

The last time a seat in the vicinity of Central Otago was not in the safe possession of National was when David Parker won the then-marginal seat of Otago in 2002 for a single term. Mr Parker was a died-in-the-wool Roxburgh and Dunedin guy, a key route to local support. Before that you have to go back to Jim Sutton holding Waitaki for just one term back in 1984. Danien O’Connor reminds me a lot of Jim Sutton, in both character and trade portfolio. 

Outside of those two outlier results, the electoral results speak for themselves. 

2008 National’s Jacqui Dean got 23,000 votes, David Parker 12,000. 

2011 Jaqui Dean again got 23,000 votes. 24,000 in 2017. 19,000 in the Labour super-majority year, again to Jacqui Dean. In 2023 Miles Anderson got 22,000. 

You get the picture. It is a most massive electorate with one of the largest National electorate majorities in the country. 

The only comparable South Island rural longshot Labour electorate win I’ve seen is Jo Luxton winning neighbouring Rangitata in 2020 in the extraordinary Labour blowout that year.

In 2026 enter Michael Laws of NZ First and Damien O’Connor of Labour, some voter makeup changes, and some election issues worth fighting for. 

Michael Laws is a longstanding Councillor for Otago Regional Council with a consistently high vote count. In the 2025 local government election he attracted 7,600 votes. He lives in the boom town of Cromwell. 

Damien O’Connor is the Labour candidate. He was the MP for West Coast for 27 years. He and Kieran McAnulty are perhaps the last two Labour MPs who genuinely talk to rural people and businesses and gain their respect enough to be consistently supported at the ballot, time after time. 

Labour’s support in the Waitaki electorate comes from the coastal towns like Oamaru where the traditional heavy industries have been, and there’s a base of over 10,000-12,000 Labour votes on that. 

20,000 National candidate votes minus 7,000 NZFirst votes puts a 12,000 Labour vote in the frame. It’s not as simple as that but it’s tantalising.

The question is not whether Michael Laws can win the seat from National. The question is whether the popular and populist Michael Laws will draw off enough National voters to make Damien O’Connor support high enough to win.

The elements that have changed from the Labour high of 2020 and low of 2023 are not in the Waitaki valley or coastal northern Otago and South Canterbury. They are in the boom towns of Central Otago: Cromwell has expanded rapidly into the worker and heavy industry capital of Queenstown with 7,500 residents. It has a strong base of support for the proposed open cast gold mine in Tarras going through the Fast Track process. 

Then there’s Hawea and Wanaka which between them have about 16,000 residents, largely well-to-do retiring Dunedinities Cantabrians and Aucklanders, and the tradies and their families who build their houses and retirement villages and look after them, and a transient group who service the ski and tourism sectors. They are far more interested in quality healthcare, both older and recreational, and in general oppose the gold mine. For the first time in living memory in 2024 there was actually a political march in Wanaka, and it was about healthcare. Another electoral secret lies in the perhaps surprisingly large Pasifika population within Oamaru.

Michael Laws excels at exploiting popular white Kiwi opinion no matter how absurd, and has strong media platforms to build on his 7,000 base popularity. Damien has a good electoral machine and a massive trade and export track record to talk up his base of 10-12,000. Miles has a simply massive majority buoyed by strong export prices in meat and wool and dairy. 

The question for Labour is whether Damien O’Connor can persuade enough centrist vote in Wanaka and Hawea, energise enough worker family vote in the coast, and also whether Laws will siphon off enough of Miles’ Cromwell, Clutha and Alexandra vote to see Miles Anderson lose. It is also not unhelpful that there is no Green Party candidate in Waitaki this time, and an active and a popular Opportunities candidate from Wanaka.

This kind of split is going to be a lot more common across New Zealand as the traditional National and Labour support wanes but their candidates remain strong. We’ve seen it with the Greens taking central Wellington and Auckland seats. It could happen in Waitaki.

As always, the party vote matters more. 

But Waitaki is one to watch in 2026.