Opportunity’s subtle bid to the centre-right with a tinge of green

The bottom lines are:

Who are these speaking to?

The two top issues this election are the cost of living, which more competition would help ease, and health, which is especially vulnerable to government flip-flopping every three years.

Many voters would find both agreeable. Some might also like National’s intention to force a structural separation among the supermarket giants. That’s something an empowered Commerce Commission could enforce.

The latter two are less about broad appeal, but subtle barbs at Act and NZ First. They both want to take New Zealand out of the Paris Agreement and are not opposed – or even outwardly supportive, in Shane Jones’ case – to bottom trawling.

Say you’re a National supporter and you like Christopher Luxon’s comments about staying in the Paris Agreement. But you’re not happy with the coalition Government’s general direction on the environment and climate change, in particular the influence of Act and NZ First.

You might also like the policy to clean up lobbying and donations, as many voters see a link – always plausibly deniable – between who gives money and what policies are later implemented.

This is probably the most problematic of the five, because it’s not something Act, NZ First, or National would support. A common criticism is that capping donations amounts to censorship: “It’s my money and I should be able to use it as I please.”

But that doesn’t mean a National Party voter wouldn’t like it.

And Opportunity is not in danger of locking itself out of a right-leaning government by making this a bottom line; Luxon has already ruled it out (on the basis of Opportunity’s tax policies that are not bottom lines).

So the bottom lines are not about what parties Opportunity could cosy up to, but voter appeal – including soft National supporters who dislike the influence of Act or NZ First.

These voters are more likely to be classic swing voters: Pākehā women who own their own home, according to some of the voting data, who liked Sir John Key in the late 2000s to mid-2010s, when support for National was in the mid- to high-40s.

Another difference between National under Key and National under Luxon is race relations. Key even told the Luxon-led crew to calm the temperature in the race-relations room.

This isn’t necessarily a difference Luxon would choose if National’s numbers were higher. Nicola Willis even pointed the finger at coalition partners for pushing National into Māori-related issues it would have otherwise avoided, such as the Treaty Principles Bill.

So Opportunity could have had a non-negotiable in the Māori-Crown relations space, appealing to the same cohort of National voters who don’t like the influence of Act or NZ First.

Wong herself has railed against what she calls “divisive” politics, and Opportunity has policies to restore Chris Finlayson’s foreshore and seabed law, and increase the role of Te Tiriti in lawmaking.

None of these are bottom lines, however, and any multi-party governing arrangement invariably entails some swallowing of dead rats. So the door is open for Opportunity supporting a future governing arrangement that continued the path of the past three years, even one that axed the Waitangi Tribunal.

The absence of any race-relations bottom line is also probably about being careful not to come across as too demanding, or getting too far ahead of itself. The party might not even make it into Parliament, after all.

It’s also arguable that Opportunity shouldn’t have bottom lines. Winston Peters always plays his cards close to his chest, which maximises leverage and flexibility in any post-election talks.

But Peters is a known quantity, meaning voters already have a sense of what he’ll fight for on the negotiating table (whether this is at all knowable is a different matter).

Opportunity is an unknown quantity. The only person in the party with any parliamentary experience, Iain Lees-Galloway, isn’t a candidate.

So having bottom lines makes strategic sense, also because of what’s missing. There’s no land tax/universal income, for example, and while Wong has said it wouldn’t be something that would happen overnight, this is reinforced by its clear absence among the party’s non-negotiables.

The five items that made it give voters a better sense of the role it would play in the next Parliament.

If it makes it.

And keeps its word.

Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.