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The latest poll showing the Opportunity Party hovering around 5% has generated some fascinating reactions.
The Greens say a vote for Opportunity is really a vote for the coalition, while the coalition argues that a vote for Opportunity is really a vote for the left.
Some commentators have dismissed it as a flash in the pan because it has no political history. Others have gone further, questioning why a minor party is getting so much media attention at all.
I think they're all missing the point. Opportunity’s story isn't really about Opportunity: it's about a growing number of New Zealanders looking at our political system and wondering whether it still works for them.
That was the position I found myself in at the last election when I had to decide where to put my vote for the next three years.
For most of my adult life, I had been a centre-left voter. Labour was my political home.
But by the time the election came around, two things had fundamentally changed my thinking.
The first was watching a government with an unprecedented majority squander what looked like a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reshape New Zealand's future.
The second was the growing sense during Covid that the government had stopped listening. Increasingly, it felt as though the message had become: We know what's right. Do as you're told.
There seemed little appetite to look beyond a chosen circle of advisers or entertain alternative ideas.
It was during that time that I found National politicians who were prepared to listen, ask questions and have conversations about New Zealand's future.
I didn't agree with all of their answers and they almost certainly didn't agree with all of mine.
But I liked the fact that they were prepared to have the conversation, so I gave both my votes to National.
I wasn't looking for a conservative government. I was looking for a government prepared to listen, think differently and have a bigger conversation about New Zealand's future.
That hope lasted until the coalition negotiations began.
Suddenly, two minor parties, with a fraction of the vote between them, held the balance of power and were negotiating for the baubles of office itself. We ended up with the country's first job-sharing Deputy Prime Ministers.
Then came the policies.
Act's Treaty Principles Bill, despite both coalition partners saying they didn't support it, was allowed to consume millions of dollars and months of national debate. It felt less like a genuine attempt at policy and more like the opening act for the legislation Act
really wanted to pass, the Regulatory Standards Bill.
Next came school lunches, the winding back of pay equity legislation, ‘‘drill baby drill’’, the Fast Track legislation and the steady dismantling of climate and environmental protections. None of these aligned remotely with the reasons I had given National both of my votes.
I wasn't expecting to get everything I wanted. That's not how MMP works, nor should it.
But I did expect that the government I helped elect would broadly reflect the values and priorities that led me to vote for it.
Instead, I was left with the uncomfortable realisation that my vote had helped create a coalition increasingly shaped by minority-party ideologies that ran directly against many of the things I believed in.
And here I am again. Three years later, I'm back wondering where my vote goes.
On the right, the politics has become increasingly divisive, highlighted most recently by Winston Peters telling a fellow New Zealander to ‘‘go back to your own country — where you lie like flatfish’’.
On the left, we have the politics of blame; blame farmers, foresters, business, wealthy New Zealanders and the white colonialists.
We have reached a strange place with MMP. A system designed to broaden representation seems to be deepening the divide between left and right, as smaller parties pull the major parties towards their respective ideological edges.
And somewhere in between are voters like me who feel increasingly unrepresented. Perhaps that's why Opportunity is suddenly finding oxygen.
Opportunity’s leader says she wants to move beyond the tribalism that has come to dominate our politics. If that means bringing people to the table rather than arriving with another set of ideological bottom lines, then Opportunity will be a serious contender for my vote.
Pita Sharples and John Key once demonstrated what can happen when two political leaders with very different views are prepared to sit at the same table. Neither abandoned the people or principles they represented: they listened to each other, found common ground where they could and worked together to make progress on things that mattered.
Today we need those conversations more than ever. Conversations about what New Zealand could look like in 20 or 30 years? Where our next generation of wealth will come from? How we become a richer country so we can afford the health system, education, infrastructure and social support we all say we want?
There are the difficult questions as well. Is our tax system still fit for the future? If new technologies replace significant numbers of jobs, will we eventually need some form of universal income? What new industries will replace the jobs that disappear?
And what about the opportunities already in front of us? The world is moving towards sustainability, clean technology and climate solutions. New Zealand has expertise in renewable energy, agricultural science, environmental technology and software. How do we turn those advantages into the next generation of wealth?
I don't pretend to know all the answers. That's why I want to hear the conversations.
My vote is the most important democratic tool I have. I only get to use it once every three years, and this time I want to understand every credible option before I decide where it goes.
Which brings me back to Opportunity.
I don't know yet whether they have the answers, or whether I will agree with all the answers they eventually offer. That's why I want to hear more.
Opportunity has the opportunity to become the voice for those of us somewhere in between who feel increasingly unrepresented. A voice that doesn't simply add another set of demands to the coalition table, but asks a much bigger question of everyone already sitting there:
Are you prepared to join the conversation? If that's what Opportunity is offering, then I want to hear what they have to say.
And I suspect I'm not alone.
- Dunedin businessman Sir Ian Taylor is the founder and managing director of Animation Research.