In eleven days time we will head to the polls again to participate in the triennial lolly scramble, the 2026 General election. This time round there are 17 parties looking for your vote, one less than last time.
From an unapologetic nationalist NZ European point of view the issues are simple.
Basic sovereignty; the obligation of the government is merely to curate an environment where the people can live and work in the pursuit of happiness and raise our families in peace. That means without having to deal on a daily basis with a government that is in your face obviously manipulating our emotions and prejudices. Telling us we are wrong, bad and vile people if we dare to object to the cultural changes you have no right to inflict on us.
A very simple task should any government ever arrive in office with the courage to try.
Most of the policies important to New Zealand Nationalists that were major issues in 2023 are now nowhere to be seen. Since the days of the covid lockdowns and the Jacinda overreach the pressure seems to have come off and many people have quietly forgotten the clear danger of the unrestrained march of a Marxist government exemplified by Jacida Ardern’s 6th Labour Government.
As a reminder, of some of the issues that became important to Kiwis in 2023 were;
- BCIR Binding Citizens Initiated Referendum. Other countries around the world use this system to keep their governments accountable between elections. In 2023 6 parties presented versions of BCIR in their platforms.
- Entrenching the Bill of Rights. Remember this? The BOR was completely sidelined in favour of hurriedly imposed legislation; COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020.
- Immigration Reform.
- Only Citizens Vote. Very few countries in the world tolerate the ridiculous situation where non citizens are permitted to vote in general elections.
- Treaty of Waitangi. He Puapua. The complete restructuring of New Zealand society on the basis of Co-Governance.
- Banking Reform. The root of the beast, why not borrow from ourselves?
- Electoral Reform. MMP was not the only and was never the best option for New Zealand.
Lets review the current crop of parties to see where they stand on these issues that are just as important today as they were three years ago.
The peculiarities of MMP
After thirty years of operation many New Zealanders are only now coming to grips with the strange behavior of this political beast called Mixed Member Proportional Representation. More than any previous MMP election the 2026 election will see voters intelligently splitting their Part and Electorate Vote between different parties.
The Coattail: The 5% threshold for a party to qualify for seats in parliament, creates the least understood aspect of our version of MMP. ALL the votes cast for minor parties that do not win an electorate AND fail to reach 5% are discarded. In 2023 there were 159,585 votes cast for the 11 parties that failed to get any representation in parliament. All of these votes were discarded. The total number of votes cast was 2,850,527 so the discarded votes amount to about five and a half percent of the votes cast. We can say that these votes were wasted but in actuality its worse than merely wasted,
2,850,527 – 159,585 = 2690942 the total votes cast is reduced by the number that are discarded so that Nationals 38.06 percent is raised to 40.3%.
The Overhang: When the number of electorates won gives a party more seats than it’s total share of the party Vote would allow, thus increasing the number of seats in parliament.
The peculiarities of MMP
After thirty years of operation many New Zealanders are only now in 2026 coming to grips with the strange behavior of this strange political beast called Mixed Member Proportional representation.
More than any previous MMP election, 2026 will see voters intelligently splitting their two votes between parties and candidates. The unfortunate reality of the system is that while many of the best policies can only be found in the minor parties, unless they win an electorate seat or 5% of the Party vote it is actually worse than if you had never voted at all…
The Coattail: The 5% threshold for a party to qualify for seats in parliament creates the least understood aspect of our version of MMP. ALL the votes cast for minor parties that do not win an electorate AND fail to reach 5% are discarded. In 2023 there were 159,585 votes cast for the 11 parties that failed to get any representation in parliament. All of these votes were discarded. The total number of votes cast was 2,850,527 so the discarded votes amount to about five and a half percent of the votes cast. We can say that these votes were wasted but in actuality its worse than merely wasted, (2,850,527 – 159,585 = 2690942) the total votes cast is reduced by the number that are discarded so that Nationals 38.06 percent is raised to 40.3%. Your minor party votes actually end up giving more seats to precisely the party you want the least! This is why STV (Single Transferable Vote) would have been a fairer system.
The Overhang: When the number of electorates won gives a party more seats than it’s total share of the party Vote would allow, thus increasing the number of seats in parliament.
The Parties
On that basis MMP makes it very difficult with the high threshold for new or small parties to get any representation in government. The illusion of choice is shattered by the high threshold and the mathematics of percentages! The practical reality is that baring the possible anomaly of your local minor party candidate winning an electorate seat, your electoral choice is limited to the existing crop of established parties. National, Labour, Act, NZFirst, Greens. Maori Party, and now Opportunity.
ACT
The high point of ACT’s policy portfolio in 2026 is clearly the commitment to disestablish the Waitangi Tribunal. The policy document makes it clear “… a settlement process must eventually settle something.” I agree, the Tribunal is acting far beyond its remit and is no longer fit for purpose. “The answer to weak property rights is stronger property rights, not permanent parallel institutions”, to that end ACT intend to add Property Rights to the Bill Of Rights Act. There position is that everyone’s rights – Maori or not- are protected by regular law, and we all have recourse to the courts to seek redress. Sounds good but I would counter that Maori claimants have for fifty years been paid by the tax payer to make claims against us. If one were to ever have to take the government to court the cost of legal action would be prohibitive.
- Commitment to disestablish the Waitangi Tribunal.
- Add Property rights to the Bill of Rights Act
From my review of the parties in 2020 …“Let’s be clear ACT are not traditional Conservative, they are not Conservative. People who vote for ACT expecting significant change will have an educational experience over the next three years. ACT are pro-abortion and pro-immigration. And have no interest in many of the excellent policies promoted by some of the genuine minor parties, SC, NC and ANZ.”
ACT have matured, but they are still strictly Libertarian, and need to be in parliament if only for their strong stand on the Treaty.
NZ First
81 year old Winston is again pulling the populist levers to get elected, pretending to make a strong stand on Immigration. Only citizens can vote and only citizens can get any kind of benefit, including superannuation. Previously Winston has stood on a policy of capping immigration at 15000. Now he merely suggests a referendum on weather we should cap it at 20000. Also crucially this time he has insisted that NZF hold the immigration portfolio. Winston was the first to sound the alarm on immigration back in 2016 when we had 124000 in one year.
He knows immigration is a vote catcher, but can he be trusted ? We had 6 years of Labour ‘kindness’ that we will be paying for for years to come, all courtesy of Winston. Personally I’ve voted Winny before and lived to regret it. Winston is a political survivor, he plays the game like a hand of poker currently matching ACT’s Tribunal policy and raising the stakes with a policy to abolish the Waitangi Tribunal imediately.
- Only citizens can vote.
- A range of other reforms that are designed to place a high value on legal citizenship. Only citizens get Super, banning birthright citizenship, Increasing the cost and time to get citizenship. preventing student visa holders from also working here or using one visa as a stepping stone to another.
- Resident Visa cap of 20,000. Prior to John Key opening the borders in 2013 our average immigration was 15000 pa.
- Withdraw from the Paris Accords
- Referendum on the Maori seats. The rational for the existence of these seats disappeared a long time ago.
Oportunitiy Party. TOP
Previously known as TOP, The Opportunities Party.
A range of largely vanilla policies that do not threaten to touch the underlying malaise in politics is why TOP has by accident or deliberate subversive design been elevated to the position of King Maker in the 2026 election. One would never know by looking at the narrative presented by the main stream media that there was anything other than the seven “main” parties to vote for in 2026.
Opportunity is expected to break the 5% barrier and enter parliament, suddenly they are afforded coverage because there votes are no longer wasted.
Main policies:
- Citizens Income $19,400.00. Citizens Income will replace NZ Superannuation
- Land Value Tax; 1.75 %. Income tax brackets 28%, 34% and 39%.
- Various tinkering to ‘clean up politics’ lobbying controls, caps on Party donations, independent policy costing unit
- Citizens Assemblies. With a Parliamentary Commissioner. Their recomendations are not binding on the government.
- Education curriculum. The Future-Fit Education policy is to be decided by a supposedly Independent Curriculum and Assessment Council with the stated intent to get politics out of education. In reality; unelected bureaucrats. And Treaty based education. “more te reo Māori learning”.
On Treaty Issues Opportunity support a national constitutional conversation. This is already well advanced, Matiki Mai as the successor to He Puapua has already established “constitutional transformation” (newspeak for Co-Governance) as the baseline proposition for Maori engagement.
Commitment to reinstate the Marine and Coastal Area framework. Under that framework almost all of New Zealand’s coast was subject to one or another tribal claim. Naïve when it comes to their expectations for negotiating with the now extraordinarily wealthy Maori Iwi and Treaty claims industry. They assume Maori are always in the right and always negotiate in good faith. One can be certain the aggressive and massively funded Maori elite will run rings around these well meaning liberal idiots if they ever get into power.
The LVT intentionally encourages high density housing developments. Communally-owned Māori land and Treaty settlement land is exempt from the LVT. But ”For superannuitants, all LVT will be deferrable until the property is sold.” As one might expect to have 20 years of retirement this will be a good portion of the kids inheritance gone.
In summary; Opportunity have set themselves the unenviable task of attempting to convince the public that the greatest tax cut in history can be achieved by increasing tax. Lets be honest, it’s the classic call of the Bolshevik left, wealth redistribution. Not that we do not need tax reform, we do, we are overly taxed to support a bloated government and bureaucratic sector. It’s a clever enough ruse for sure, give everyone a basic income which will absolutely help those in the lower bracket the most, and then place a tax on everyone else’s property to pay for it. The LVT is clearly going to impact those who have worked hard to establish an asset base designed to take care of themselves and their family in retirement. This is the party of lower income earners in rented accommodation not those who have worked hard to put themselves in a position where they are not reliant on the government in retirement.
I am reminded of the adage that nobody is more confident than the person that does not know what they don’t know. They speak with the certainty of the naïve and uninformed. On balance my feeling is TOP is inexperienced and dangerously naive and idealistic.
Te Pati Maori
The party of radical Māori separatism. All policies are based on the principle that sovereignty was not seeded to the crown by the Treaty of Waitangi. It operates as if there is an identifiable exclusively Māori ethnic block set against everyone else. Rather than the contemporary mix of part Māori and numerous other ethnicities and mixtures, Whites being now only about 55%.
- End Crown-Only control of water allocation and management.
- Uphold Te Tiriti guarantees of tino rangatiratanga.
- Make Waitangi Tribunal recommendations binding. (In effect making the WT an upper house in government.)
- Implement UNDRIP.
- Compulsory Maori Language training across the education system
The party is a trojan horse, they are openly in opposition to government. The extent of the radicalism is shocking to the average New Zealander who generally does not take the time to read their policy positions, which are more broadly fleshed out in the He Puapua and Matiki Mai report.
The Iwi chairs forum formed in 2005, seeks Maori control over things affecting Maori. Sounds reasonable enough, “issues such as water use and management, the environment,
housing, education, welfare, and treaty settlement policy.” But every New Zealander has an interest in the control of these things, the items listed are important aspects of the government of our country. The control of which ought not to be cornered by one special interest group for its own interests.
Talk of Co-Governance seems to have been replaced now with the drive towards ‘Constitutional Transformation’. What this means is a complete overturning of the Westminster style of government to be replaced with a constitution derived from “tikanga” and “kawa”. The intent of this so called Party is quite obvious and subversive. Not that I feel necessarily obligated to defend the Westminster parliamentary system, the English ruling elites appear to have have hated the common English people for hundreds of years, and any system of government can be corrupted of course but why would we dispense with what we have in favor of a system that left Maori civilization at the point of catastrophic self destruction by the 1830’s.
So why does the idea of a return to tikanga have currency in contemporary New Zealand? This is a story with deep roots (See K. Bolton’s article New Zealand Histories II), the idea of the noble savage dates from the seventeenth century and the musings of enlightenment philosophers. Enough to say here though that we have been fed a diet of enlightenment “noble savagery” for decades. A rose garden history of Maori society. All peace and light, the noble savage living in peace and prosperity until the evil white devils came on ships to steal their peace, destroy their culture and murder their people. There is in this narrative nothing of any value in the story of European settlement of New Zealand. Without strong voices clearly speaking truth into this darkness it is entirely possible that they will get what they are asking for, a return to nepotism, and inter-tribal warfare.
It was the peace of 1840 that saved the Maori race, freed the slaves and gave them a future. It was a close call though, Maori population figures did not begin to recover until the 1890’s. The rewriting of history in the Marxist trope of oppressor/oppressed has led us to believe that Maori society was doing just fine all on its own and would have continued doing so had it not been for the arrival of us Europeans. This is a deliberately destructive story that flies in the face of the facts of history which, if we could have widespread access to it and embrace the truth as a nation could get past the contrived politics of Guilt and Grievance and realize that there is evidence a-plenty for mutual respect. You know, more or less one people as was originally intended.
The Greens
Some of their public transport ideas are good. But as it is I am already paying $200 pa to fund bus services that I NEVER use! It would be great to have an overnight train between Ak and Welly, but can it compete with the cost of flying? Where is the funding for these ideas coming from?
The Greens are Te Pati Maori-lite. After reading the Greens policy concerning the Treaty it is truly alarming that they are high enough in the poles to represent a real threat to New Zealand. In terms of our culture, demographics and system of government. With such a thinly veiled radical communist party like the Greens, it matters not that The Māori party is polling below 2%.
The Green party website does not refer to New Zealand, it is always Aotearoa, and the text is peppered with Māori words and phrases that make comprehension challenging for anyone not committed to the maorification of New Zealand. The Greens are completely wrong headed about Maori radical aspirations, seem to be completely ignorant of history and have bought into the current distorted narrative.
