Why Luxon is right to rule Opportunity out
Luxon is 100% right to keep ruling Opportunity out. The reason is that there is close to a 0% chance that Opportunity would choose a National-led Government over a Labour-led Government. All that you would achieve by going through the pretence of negotiations with them is to strengthen their hand with Labour, and to fool the people into thinking National was genuinely an option.
I asked ChatGPT to assess each of Opportunity’s 15 policies, and to state which party their policy was most compatible with, and least compatible with. The summary is below:
| Policy | Most | Least |
| Energy | Greens | ACT |
| Economy | Labur | ACT |
| Clean up politics | Greens | National/ACT |
| Oceans | Greens | NZ First |
| Tax | Greens | ACT |
| Citizen’s Voice | Greens | ACT |
| Education | Greens | ACT |
| Health | Greens | ACT |
| Treaty | Greens/TPM | ACT |
| Crime | Greens | ACT |
| Housing | Labour | ACT |
| Digital | Labour | ACT |
| Infrastructure | Labour | ACT |
| Climate | Greens | NZ First/ACT |
| Environment | Greens | ACT |
A version that can be shared (and please do so) is:
If I was allowed to place money on a prediction market about who Opportunity will go with, if they hold the “balance of power”, I would be quite happy to place $1,000 on a Labour-led Government at 95c or 95%.
Just reflect that every single one of their policies is closest to Labour, Greens or TPM. And every single one of their policies is least compatible with one of the current Government parties.
So Luxon is absolutely right to not pretend the outcome of who they would go with is somehow undecided.