Opportunity defends rule giving board minority a veto over a Govt deal

The Opportunity Party is defending the power of a minority of its board to veto a coalition agreement.

A feature of the party’s constitution is that a 75% majority of the board must approve any coalition deal. This means two members of the seven-person board can block any coalition deal.

Attention has focused on Opportunity’s largest donor, Alan Wilderland, who sits on the party’s board, giving him a significant role in deciding a future Government, if Opportunity’s votes are needed to form one, as current polls suggest.

Leader Qiulae Wong defended the rule this morning on Ryan Bridge TODAY, noting that other political parties also give their boards a role in ratifying coalition deals.

She said the issue had been “blown out of proportion”.

Other parties were “very unclear” about the level of power their boards have over the approval of any coalition deal, Wong said.

“National says that the board is involved in negotiations and has to approve the agreement. It doesn’t say by what majority. So actually ours is being more transparent,” she said.

Other parties have different rules. Labour puts coalition deals in the hands of its caucus; National lets its board and the leader approve a deal. The Greens have to get the approval of 75% of party delegates for any coalition deal, and Act gives the leader the power to approve a coalition deal, after they have consulted with the party board.

Earlier this year, Opportunity reviewed its constitution to remove provisions that gave the board other powers over caucus.

Wong said the board approval was a form of accountability, calling it a “check and balance” to ensure the party remains accountable to its members

Questions have been raised over board member Alan Wilderland, a major donor to the party, after he recently told the Herald that working with the left bloc might be easier.

Wong was asked about whether it was right for Opportunity to campaign on cleaning up politics and getting big money out of politics when its constitution gives its largest donor a near-veto over forming the next Government.

“I think all parties have a process for signing off their coalition agreements, whether that’s voted directly by members, whether that’s a council, whether that’s the board. And this is our process,” Wong said.

Act leader David Seymour said in a social media post that if Opportunity makes it into Parliament and “two unelected people choose the next Government and PM of New Zealand” then the party’s constitution “will be the most significant story of the election”.

“The proposition is that if two of the seven board members don’t like the decision of the elected people in the Opportunity Party, they can veto that deal and effectively choose that the whole country gets a different Government,” Seymour told RNZ.

“The fact that one of those persons might be their only really significant donor is another thing, and yet another thing is that they promised that they were amending their constitution so their unelected board couldn’t veto their caucus. They made one change, but they retained the ability to veto a coalition decision, which is probably more consequential than anything else,” he said.