I was having a coffee with my mate Gary the other day — a political animal if ever there was one — and I told him something I’d been turning over for weeks. I don’t think I’ll even vote this election. I have no faith in National or Labour to address the issues we face. They have both done a lousy job for decades. I voted for David Seymour and ACT last time out of pure protest, even though I find him a smarmy character and do not even like many of their policies. Gary leaned in. “Come on Steve, you have to vote!” I looked at him. Why vote when you have no faith in any of them?
Then, a few days later, I caught up with former National MP Dr Jackie Blue at a recent bridge tournament. We got talking. And she told me why she had resigned her National Party membership after 50 years. She is now mentoring a political leader most New Zealanders have never heard of — and she thinks this person might change the face of New Zealand politics.
That got my attention. So I did a little digging around and here’s what I found.
Qiulae Wong — pronounced “Kyoo-lay,” goes by Q — is 37, born in Fiji, grew up in One Tree Hill, studied law and politics at the University of Auckland, spent a decade in Britain founding fashion start-ups, then returned in 2022 to lead the B Corp movement and work at KPMG on climate transition for large corporations. She is standing in Mt Albert, a seat Labour held by about 20 votes last time. These are not the usual credentials of someone angling for a spot in Wellington.
She was not looking for this job. The Opportunity Party, known to most as TOP, had been leaderless since 2023, and believe it or not, had advertised the role on Seek. She did not apply. She spotted the vacancy in a party newsletter, thought about it, and put her hand up. That tells you something about the person who steps forward when nobody else will. TOP is fielding over 40 candidates this election, up from 13 in 2023. That is not an organisation going through the motions.
The “doomed minor party” narrative is the obvious one to run, but the numbers deserve a look. Roy Morgan’s May 2026 poll put TOP at six percent — enough for seven seats. That is up from 2.5% in January. The 1News-Verian poll shows 3.3%, the highest of any minor party outside parliament. A near-tripling in five months during an election year is not noise.
The conditions to keep moving are real. National is haemorrhaging support, Labour cannot seem to gain from it, and there is a meaningful block of centrist voters who want neither the current coalition nor a Labour-Green-Te Pāti Māori alternative. Wong is making a direct play for that space.
The centrepiece is three connected reforms: a Land Value Tax, a Citizen’s Income, and compulsory KiwiSaver contributions phased up to 12 percent. These are not fringe ideas. New Zealand had a Land Value Tax from 1878 until the 1980s dismantled it. Denmark, Taiwan, and parts of Australia run versions today.
The Land Value Tax is the most important because it goes to the root of the most damaging distortion in our economy. For forty years we have poured capital into land speculation instead of into businesses and infrastructure. A 1.75% tax on urban land value (0.5% rural) changes that at a structural level. Combined with the Citizen’s Income — $370 a week for every adult citizen earning under $350,000 — it is designed as a system. The party estimates 70% of New Zealanders would be better off, 20% roughly neutral, and 10% paying more.
I’ve written before about how our tax system funnels capital into housing rather than production. The Land Value Tax is the most coherent answer to that problem on offer from any party in this election. That does’t mean it’s politically easy. Whether it survives coalition negotiations intact is a real question.
Jackie Blue is not the only credible name circling TOP. Former Labour minister Iain Lees-Galloway serves as General Manager. Deputy leader Daniel Eb is a Nuffield scholar in the food and fibre sector. Dr Kayla Kingdon-Bebb, CEO of WWF New Zealand with a Cambridge doctorate in land economy, is standing in Wellington Bays. These are not people filling out a list.
Replacing NZ Superannuation with a means-tested Citizen’s Income is the most politically dangerous part of the platform. Current retirees and near-retirees have structured their finances around universal Super.
The Land Value Tax is economically sound but politically explosive. And no new party in the MMP era has entered parliament without a leader who had already served as an MP. Wong is attempting to break that pattern from a standing start.
On democracy reform, TOP’s Citizens’ Assemblies proposal — randomly selected citizens deliberating on structural issues, like jury duty for policy — is a step in the right direction. But it is a weak one. Assemblies can recommend. Governments can ignore. I have spent years arguing for something stronger: a Citizens’ Veto Referendum, where a petition of enough signatures can force a binding public vote on any law before it takes effect. That is real power in citizens’ hands, not just a seat at a talkfest. TOP deserves credit for opening the conversation, but their version does not go nearly far enough.
Former United Future leader Peter Dunne named the problem precisely on RNZ’s The Detail: “People liked what we were saying, liked what we stood for, but didn’t really believe we could win, therefore can’t waste the vote on you. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.” The five percent threshold is a cliff. But that didn’t stop them getting eight seats in Parliament in 2002. A party vote for TOP at 4.8% delivers nothing. Breaking that requires a critical mass of people to move at the same time.
Forty years of Labour and National taking turns has not resolved the structural problems — housing unaffordability, a tax system designed in 1986, and a welfare system with punishing income testing. Neither major party was designed to resolve them. They were designed to manage them just enough to win again.
Wong is not a career politician. If elected, she and her colleagues will need time to adapt to the battle‑weary parliamentary arena. She is a businesswoman who looked at the ideas already on the table to fix a broken system, saw they lacked a credible vehicle, and decided to build one. The polling is shifting. The candidates are credible. And a former National MP walking away after 50 years to mentor her is the kind of cross‑partisan signal serious political watchers do not ignore.
The risk is real. The threshold is high. But if the question is whether New Zealand needs someone like her in parliament pushing for structural change, the answer has not changed. It was always yes. The only question left is whether enough people are willing to act like they mean it.
Steve Baron is a New Zealand-based political commentator and author. He holds a BA with a double major in Economics and Political Science from the University of Waikato and an Honours Degree in Political Science from Victoria University of Wellington. A former businessman in the advertising industry, he founded the political lobby group Better Democracy NZ. https://stevebaron.co.nz