WELLINGTON: Qiulae Wong’s path to potentially holding the balance of power in New Zealand politics began with a job advertisement.
The former KPMG consultant was working from home in August last year when an email landed in her inbox: the small, centrist Opportunity Party - which had never made it into Parliament - was looking for a new leader.
"I remember replying very quickly, it would have been within 30 seconds,” Wong said in an interview.
"It was a very short email saying, ‘This is really interesting. I don’t have any experience in politics, but really interested in what this might entail.’”
Nearly a year after taking the helm, the 38-year-old newcomer is on the verge of delivering a historic breakthrough for the party.
Recent polls show Wong may claim Opportunity’s first-ever parliamentary seats in the Nov 7 election.
Neither the governing right-wing coalition nor the left-wing grouping of Labour, the Greens, and Te Pati Maori is currently projected to command a majority, meaning those seats could prove decisive. With the traditional blocs deadlocked, the formation of the next government may rest on Wong.
An RNZ-Reid Research poll published Thursday (Oct 29) morning put Opportunity at 7.2% - a new high for that poll - which could place the party in a position to decide the next government. Wong said she was encouraged by the poll but added that nothing was guaranteed.
"We still need every vote that we can get. We are making history here," she told RNZ.
As a political newcomer, Wong has generated excitement not seen since the meteoric rise of Jacinda Ardern, who took the reins of the Labour Party at age 37 in 2017 on her way to the premiership.
While Ardern was a political insider, Wong has used her outsider status to call for progressive reforms and to appeal to those disillusioned by the country’s two dominant parties: centre-left Labour and centre-right National.
This has helped position Wong as a challenger to Winston Peters, the veteran populist and leader of New Zealand First who is known for his combative style of nationalist politics. She is pitching a modern, moderate alternative, trying to appeal to those seeking pragmatic solutions to issues ranging from housing and childcare to climate concerns.
"New Zealand First uses their narrative and their rhetoric to divide New Zealand, and we are very much trying to do the opposite, and focus on what we do have in common,” Wong said.
This election, the pair are benefiting from a broader trend playing out across global democracies, where frustrations over inflation and inequality are driving voters away from traditional parties and toward politicians promising disruption.
In New Zealand, the shift is stark: Labour and National have seen their combined share of the vote fall to around 56% in recent polling, down from 81.3% in the 2017 election.
A hollowed-out centre has historically worked to Peters’ advantage, repeatedly allowing him to play kingmaker.
At 81, Peters is one of the democratic world’s original modern populists, having pioneered his brand of anti-establishment politics before Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, or Pauline Hanson rose to prominence.
New Zealand First, which advocates for economic protectionism, strict immigration controls and tougher law and order, has long drawn support from voters who feel left behind by the political mainstream.
He first entered Parliament in 1979 - nearly a decade before Wong was born - and has exploited New Zealand’s proportional voting, which was introduced in 1996 and regularly forces major parties into European-style coalitions to govern, to gain outsized influence.
He famously launched Ardern’s premiership in 2017 by picking Labour over National. He has since steered his party further to the right, entering a three-party coalition with National and the libertarian ACT party after the 2023 election.
Now polling at around 11%, almost double the 6.1% at the last election, Peters is running on a mix of economic nationalism and cultural conservatism. He has pledged to roll back some climate regulations and to abolish dedicated Maori seats in Parliament.
He has also framed Wong’s approach as naive, presenting himself as a proven leader.
"It’s not my first rodeo,” he regularly reminds audiences.Wong’s Opportunity Party has been polling between 6% and 9%, putting it on track to claim as many as 10 seats. It, too, is tapping into widespread frustration over sluggish growth, but positions itself as a pragmatic alternative focused on political compromise, tax reform and environmental protection.
Founded almost a decade ago by wealthy economist Gareth Morgan, the party initially struggled to shake its association with his anti-cat crusade - Morgan vocally blamed domestic cats for killing native birds - making it both a punchline and an enemy of cat lovers. A succession of subsequent leaders failed to gain traction, and the party never came close to the 5% of the vote needed to enter Parliament. Then came Wong.
A mother of two with degrees in law and politics, Wong has largely avoided the tit-for-tat squabbling between party leaders, cultivating a calmer political style. That has helped to broaden Opportunity’s appeal - even among those who still find Peters’ roguish theatrics entertaining.
"She is good at giving speeches and debating, and she seems relatively stable and calm,” said Rachel Bluck, 50, an administration worker from Wellington.
"I actually like Winston. I like his chuckle. But my preference would be for the inclusiveness of Opportunity.”
Lara Greaves, associate professor in politics at Victoria University of Wellington, credited much of Opportunity’s recent success to Wong’s composure and communication.
"There’s something around her manner, her way of speaking, debating, interacting that has been really strong,” she said.
"Her age, her cultural background, being a mum of young kids - all that kind of stuff is a point of difference that some groups of voters can relate to.”
Born in Fiji to a European mother and Chinese father, Wong moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Auckland, the country’s largest city, where 43% of the population was born overseas.
Wong, who spent nine years living and working in London, also has firsthand experience of why many New Zealanders, particularly young Kiwis, head overseas: a lack of opportunities and affordable housing.
"From my personal experience, I know that choosing to come back to New Zealand was not a financial choice. My husband and I both ended up getting paid less to do similar jobs,” she said.
"It was really expensive to buy a house, but we came back because we wanted to be close to family. How awesome would it be if it was a financial choice, that you saw the opportunities of coming back to New Zealand to grow your career and build your life here? That’s what we would like to do.”
Wong said she wants to change Opportunity from being a party for policy nerds to one that resonates with voters.
"People don’t read your policy manifesto and vote based on that,” she said. "They have to feel an emotional connection to the party. We’ve run a much more emotionally-led campaign, and one that is very clear about who we are standing for.”
The party combines its centrist positioning with some unconventional economic policies, including an annual NZ$19,400 (US$10,900) citizen’s income for every adult, a land-value tax and a goal to lift research and development spending to at least 2% of gross domestic product. The strategy isn’t to win over everyone but to target a 5% to 10% slice of unaligned voters.
Wong is clear on the group they are trying to attract.
"The core would be people like me, future-focused millennials, a lot of young parents who have grown up between this old-fashioned kind of economy, which is very extractive of nature and all about individual pursuit of wealth, and see that we need to do things differently,” Wong said.
"We still want to grow successful businesses and have a strong economy, but we think we can do that in a way that looks after nature and looks after people.”
But that fresh approach has come with a downside: inexperience.
By March, while Wong was still settling into her new role, Peters and New Zealand First were already getting their election campaign under way, holding meetings around the country.
Greaves said Wong may have made a rookie mistake by publicly committing, including to Bloomberg, to negotiate first with the largest party after the election.
"Scholars in this area of coalition agreements would say that you are in a position of relative strength if you can play the parties off one another,” Greaves said. "But she’s said that she’s not going to be doing that. Potentially, that’s a missed opportunity for her to get the best deal for her party.”
Opportunity has drawn firm "bottom lines” for coalition negotiations, including stronger powers for the competition watchdog to tackle grocery prices and energy, a 10-year plan for the health system, a phase-out of bottom trawling as well as measures to restore New Zealand’s climate credentials.With those demands, Wong says her party can serve as a post-election "bridge builder.”
Peters recently dismissed her pitch as little more than "dream-time stuff,” defending his own bare-knuckle approach.
"The reality is, politics is a passionate business, a passionate profession where you have principles and beliefs that are fundamental, and there’ll always be a huge clash of that,” he said.
"The way of humans in our democracy is to argue like it’s everybody’s business.” - Bloomberg
