As they hover just above the 5 percent threshold, the party formerly known as TOP (The Opportunities Party), but now just O (Opportunities), has sought to provide potential voters some clarity on what exactly they’ll be very gently asking for.
O’s leader, Q, otherwise known as Qiulae Wong, today laid out a series of five key, non-negotiable polite requests, “one for each percent we’d like to get.”
Wong said O wouldn’t force its coalition partners to do anything, but that it was an absolute “bottom line” that they be allowed to ask.
“We’re not going to make anyone do anything,” she said. “That’s not the kind of politics we’re about. But we will demand the five requests I lay out to you today be considered, heavily, for at least an hour.”
O’s non-negotiable polite requests seemed tailor-made to facilitate an agreement with either Labour or National, by focusing on areas Wong believed should be common ground.
“Today we are asking to ask just five things. We may ask to ask for more, but we must be allowed to ask for these,” said Wong. “Firstly, the Commerce Commission must be allowed to do its job. We must give it real teeth to make really strong recommendations about what the private sector should consider doing.
“Secondly, we must clean up politics, by making it more expensive to buy political influence. Parties are charging far too little for significant policy changes. As a collective, we must raise our rates. If you’re going to be bought, you must not be bought cheap.
“Thirdly, we must fix the health system. No, sorry, actually…”
Q shuffled through a folder labelled “O”, in the process accidentally knocking to the floor another folder labelled “Q’s As for Qs about O”.
“Oh, here it is. No, not fix the health system. We need a plan to fix the health system, a 10-year plan,” she continued.
“Speaking of 10-year plans, we must fourthly recommit to the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, which after 10 years hasn’t really gone to plan, so we need another ten years on that one.”
“And finally, we have to stop tearing up our seabeds with bottom trawling. We must work with industry, iwi, and coastal communities to phase out this practice, but only, only when we find another way to indiscriminately hoover up fishes.”
Wong said she hoped all parties would find something to agree to be asked about doing, and today, the office of Labour leader Chris Hipkins said he saw no reason to object. Hipkins could not go on record himself, as he was in timeout after a big day yesterday.
But the real question was for arguably still Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, who had previously ruled out working with O under any circumstances.
When asked whether he might reconsider after today’s announcement, Luxon held firm, saying that O’s polite requests were “far too extreme” and simply wouldn’t work in a National-led coalition.
“First of all, requests, right?” he said. “That’s basically saying, oh, I’m going to ask you to do something. So that’s a lot of pressure. Then I have to front up to you and say, well, here I am stuck in government, and I might be Prime Minister, but I’ve got a coalition partner who I said no to and now I feel bad. That’s not going to fly. Sorry.”
He also pointed out that O’s request to fix the health system could conflict with ACT’s policy of “smashing the health system to pieces”, and the bottom trawling request may run aground of New Zealand First’s pledge to “scrape the oceans bare.”
But Wong said she remained hopeful that all parties would carefully consider the 5 key requests, and said if they were unable to get buy-in, they’d “try some different ones.”