This may once have been true, but MMP has made a lie of it. The party vote in each has been won by National before, and the Green Party place huge importance on the Dunedin seat in particular as a rich source of party votes. And, as has been traversed in this column before, this election they have ambitions of winning it.
But another party has eyes on those Dunedin party votes - Opportunity.
For the past three elections, Opportunity has been the little party that couldn’t; the party which proved the Royal Commission on Electoral Reform was right when it said that a 5% threshold was too high a bar and that 4% would be better.
In some ways 2023 had felt like the year, if any year, that Opportunity might break through. The tide was turning against the government and it did not feel like a tsunami of support was rushing to the then opposition.
Opportunity’s then leader, Raf Manji, a former Christchurch city councillor, was standing in an Ilam seat where he was well-known and had polled well before as an independent. He was regarded by some, including this columnist, as having a sneaky long-odds chance of winning the electorate.
Except, it turned out that a dark blue wave really was coming - and especially so in Ilam. Although Manji finished second, with more than 10,000 votes, he was far distant from National’s Hamish Campbell - and Opportunity ended up 2.7% short of the 5% threshold.
In 2023, the Opportunity Dunedin candidate, Ben Peters, ran a respectable fourth, just as he had in 2020. Pitching as a young, vibrant party with new ideas, Dunedin was more inclined to listen than most electorates and has twice returned one of Opportunity’s best results.
Overall though, there was no disguising that 2023 was a disappointment for Opportunity, and it seemed like team teal blue’s race might have been run.
However, after a period of flux, which included its leadership being advertised on jobs listing site SEEK, Auckland sustainable business consultant Qiulae Wong became leader and Opportunity rose again.
Since then the party has been on an all-out PR blitz trying to give the 37-year-old Aucklander a profile.
It has also been working assiduously in what it regards as key seats to build on the greenshoots of the past six years. It selected its local candidates early - David Bainbridge-Zafar in Dunedin and Matthew Phillips in Taieri - and Wong spent five days in Dunedin last week doing the rounds.
Apart from the Greens’ Chloe Swarbrick, you would be hard-pressed to find a party leader in Dunedin on five days in any given year, let alone be here for a week.
‘‘Being a university city, I think that naturally there’s an alignment there,’’ she said.
‘‘We tend to attract people working in research. I think we can do more to tap into the young vote as well, although I’m sure those people are probably registered to vote all around the country, not just Dunedin.’’
Essentially, the voters Opportunity feels most in tune with are people just like its leader and many of its candidates: young urban professionals worried about the environment, wanting to honour the Treaty, and concerned whether they or their children will ever own a home.
They want to build infrastructure - so long as it is environmentally friendly and sustainable - and they want to incentivise successful businesses to invest in research and development.
Wikipedia describes the party’s ideology as ‘‘radical centrism’’, which sounds like contradiction in terms but which Wong pitches as meaning Opportunity could work with anyone.
‘‘We think that the left-right spectrum is a bit outdated. It doesn’t accurately represent politics today, but it’s a bit hard to go into that detail when you’re explaining positioning, so that’s why we rely on saying centrist,’’ Wong said.
‘‘I suppose it’s progressive and people associate progress with the left, and so in that sense yes, but I think that our costings and economics of it are more right-leaning.’’
One thing Opportunity does not lack is courage. It has a tax policy which it acknowledges many people are likely to blanch at, but from which it will not resile - introducing a universal ‘‘Citizen’s Income’’ equivalent to the Jobseeker benefit, making KiwiSaver compulsory, and, most controversially of all, bringing in a land value tax.
Applying to unimproved land and aimed to discourage land banking and large rental portfolios, the tax is intended to force down rents and lower house prices - anathema to those who are on the property ladder, but music to the ears of those priced out of it.
‘‘I’m one of those people. I bought my house at one of those peaks around Covid,’’ Wong said.
‘‘ I really don’t want to lose equity in my home, but I also want my kids to be able to afford to buy a house and I want friends that she goes to school with to live in warm, dry, affordable homes as well.’’
