Qiulae Wong was in her early 20s when a visiting MP came and spoke to her political studies class at the University of Auckland.
“I remember thinking it just sounded like an awful job,” the new leader of The Opportunity Party (Top) recalled in an interview with Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan that aired on Sunday night.
“To be honest, in most of my career I have felt like you look at it in the media and it doesn’t look particularly fun. A lot of the time it looks very stressful.”
So why, after a successful corporate career that included leading the B Corp movement, is Wong getting into politics now?
“Through my career, I constantly came up against systemic barriers to driving more change and making, for example, sustainable business the norm,” she said.
“You need structural change; you can’t just rely on a few good people and a few good businesses to do the right thing. And so, rather than sit on the sidelines and complain and get frustrated that things aren’t moving in the direction I would like, I thought ‘I should give this a crack’.”
Wong has a job ahead of her to become an MP. The Opportunity Party (formerly the Opportunities Party) has never made it into Parliament, falling well below the 5% threshold in three previous elections.
Wong acknowledges that the next year, before the general election in late 2026, will require her to campaign hard if she’s to have any hope of breaking into New Zealand’s halls of power.
And as a wife and mum of two, she admits she worries about how her new political career might impact on her family.
“It does a bit, honestly, and we’ve talked about it a lot,” Wong told Real Life.
“Obviously, [my husband] Grant needed to be fully in on this journey if I was going to do it, so we had some long chats about that. I think our routine is going to look different from what it has previously, although we were both in busy jobs so it was always a bit of a juggle.
“We’re fortunate that my family is here in Auckland so we’ll be able to lean on grandparents a little bit for help, and we’re testing out a few different routines – but it’s going to definitely change.”
But Wong says it’s her daughters that motivate her to work for change in New Zealand, particularly in the area of housing. The Opportunity Party is working on implementing a land value tax that would help curtail ongoing house price rises.
“When we bought our house, the average [price] was seven to nine times income, and for my parents it was three times,” she said.
“I look at my kids and it’s like, if that’s going to be 15 or 20, what is that world even going to look like for them? Not just in terms of being able to afford a house, but the flow-on impacts of everything else in the economy and society as a result?
“So it’s definitely at the forefront of my mind when I’m doing this and it’s what gives me the drive to do it.”
Wong also wants to play a role in relieving the country of some of its social divisions, which she says are “really rife” at the moment. She says part of that involves New Zealanders banding together and buying into a shared vision of the future.
“I try not to buy into the whole mudslinging thing, and it’s something I hope I don’t get dragged into in this role,” she told Cowan.
“We [Top] can model that in the way that we talk about things, that we don’t engage in tit-for-tat kind of politics – that’s very much what we’re trying to be about.
“It comes down to us as leaders and then it also comes down to how we try to use our power and influence, if we’re lucky enough to be in that position, to bring people together and find common ground.
“That’s why we have some policies around citizens’ assemblies and things as well, because we actually want to make politics something fun and engaging, not something people tune out from.”
Part of Top’s modus operandi is being willing to work with parties from across the political spectrum and Wong says the party will hold each side accountable in different ways because of its values and policies.
“The levers we’ll try to pull will be different, whether it’s National or Labour that are the major party,” she said.
“But I suppose the difference as a negotiating minor party – instead of someone like New Zealand First, who’s a bit of a handbrake to the past – is we see ourselves as an accelerator to the future.”
A big part of that future is marrying the seemingly disparate sectors of business and the environment. That’s something both major parties have tried to toy with, Wong says, but she’d like to see them go further.
“On things like an energy strategy, how do we really lean into renewable energy and electrification? I think that is something that is realistic for us to get on the table and will make such a meaningful difference to Kiwis – and, I think, will help them win brownie points too as the major party in that coalition.”
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