The 2026 general election looks to be a close run with neither the right nor the left blocks having a clear majority at this point. The Trust Democracy team has pulled together this summary of the different party positions (as at 14 September) with regards to all things democracy.
Green Party
The Strengthening Democracy Member’s Bill is the party’s core democracy-reform package, one of three pillars of its 2026 manifesto, alongside Affordable Living and Healthy Nature. The bill proposes: a ban on donations from overseas; lowering the disclosure threshold for donations to parties/candidates from $15,000 to $1,000; capping individual annual donations at $35,000; letting voters of Māori descent change their electoral roll type at any time rather than only during the five-yearly Māori Electoral Option; repealing the prisoner voting ban entirely; adopting the 2012 Electoral Commission’s recommended MMP changes (lowering the party-vote threshold from 5% to 4%, scrapping the one-electorate-seat “coattail” rule, and fixing the electorate-to-list seat ratio at 60:40); and lowering the voting age to 16.
Sources
- Manifesto 2026 – Green Party
- Strengthening Democracy (Member’s Bill) – Green Party
- Greens unveil election manifesto at packed AGM in Auckland – RNZ
The Opportunities Party (TOP)
TOP’s “Clean Up Politics” policy includes: a mandatory public lobbying register, a one-year cooling-off period before ministers can become lobbyists, a statutory lobbying code of conduct with fines and deregistration powers, a $30,000 per-election-cycle cap on individual donations, a ban on donations from companies, unions and trusts (restricting donors to registered NZ voters), lowering the disclosure threshold to $1,000, an independent anti-corruption body targeting “soft” corruption such as conflicts of interest and nepotism, a strengthened Official Information Act, broader whistleblower protections, and an independent policy-costing unit — priced at roughly $52 million a year. Separately, TOP’s “Citizens’ Voice” policy proposes Citizens’ Assemblies: representative groups (around the size of Parliament) selected through a sortition process, convened for a year with expert briefings, overseen by a Parliamentary Commissioner, to develop recommendations on gridlocked long-term issues (climate, housing, superannuation, infrastructure, health) that Parliament must formally respond to. The party says the process would include dedicated Māori/iwi engagement consistent with Te Tiriti.
Sources:
- Clean-up Politics – The Opportunity Party
- Citizens’ Voice – The Opportunity Party
- Opportunity Party vows to ‘clean up politics’ with lobbying and donations reforms – RNZ
Te Pāti Māori
On 1 September the party unveiled a $220 million “Te Tiriti Entrenchment Policy” that gives its previously general Mana Motuhake commitments concrete mechanisms. It proposes: a Mātike Mai Fund ($220m over four years) to resource an independent secretariat and a Māori-led Constitutional Convention to determine the eventual constitutional model; a new Te Tiriti Commission empowered to investigate serious Crown breaches and issue binding “Te Tiriti Compliance Orders”; making Waitangi Tribunal recommendations binding on the Crown rather than advisory; and a national action plan implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples within the first 100 days of government. The party has set 2040 — the bicentenary of Te Tiriti — as its target for full constitutional transformation.
Sources
- Election 2026: Te Pāti Māori Unveils $220m Plan to Make Te Tiriti Obligations Enforceable – Waatea News
- Mana Motuhake – Te Pāti Māori
- Te Pāti Māori’s Te Tiriti entrenchment plan: How would it work, and could it happen? – Te Ao Māori News
NZ First
NZ First’s Member’s Bill for a binding referendum on the future of the Māori electorates, introduced in February, remains its live legislative and campaign platform, timed to be held alongside the 7 November election. The party frames this as cost-efficient (no separate referendum date) and says the bill is drafted and ready; it still needs support from other parties to pass, which it does not currently have.
Sources
- NZ First Bill to Enable Binding Referendum on Māori Seats at 2026 Election – NZ First
- Māori Seats Referendum Bill – NZ First
National
Christopher Luxon’s call for a referendum on MMP and on moving to four-year parliamentary terms, if National is re-elected, remains contested rather than settled party policy. Constitutional law academic Andrew Geddis has said the referendum has close to zero chance of occurring even if National wins, since Parliament would first need to pass enabling legislation and no current majority supports the change.
Sources
- Luxon says he will call referendum on MMP if returned to power – Newsroom
- Luxon holds firm on MMP referendum call despite cross-party criticism – 1News
- Election 2026: National in disarray over Christopher Luxon’s sudden bombshell MMP comments – NZ Herald
ACT
ACT released its Treaty policy, “One Law for All with One Future Together,” on 23 August. It would require Cabinet to specify which Treaty interests a bill engages before drafting; remove existing “give effect to the principles of the Treaty” clauses from legislation as they are updated; restrict courts’ use of tikanga to cases where it is “directly relevant” (e.g., disputes between iwi); add a new property right to the Bill of Rights Act; and write three principles — parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, and equality before the law — into the Constitution Act. The Treaty Principles Bill and an associated referendum are absent from this policy.
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Labour
Labour’s published policy platform contains no dedicated democracy-reform policy. Its Fiscal Strategy policy includes restoring wellbeing reporting to the Public Finance Act and establishing a Parliamentary Budget Office, which relate to fiscal transparency rather than democratic reform. Labour, alongside the Greens and Te Pāti Māori, has criticised the Electoral Amendment Act 2025 (see below) as voter suppression, but this does not give rise to any proactive Labour policy.
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Context: the Electoral Amendment Act 2025
Passed in December 2025 this sets the backdrop against which several of the above policies operate. It reduced the voter-enrolment window to 13 days before polling, banned prisoners from voting, raised the anonymous/voluntary donation disclosure threshold from $5,000 to $6,000, and prohibited distribution of food and most beverages near polling places. Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori have characterised these changes as suppressing turnout among younger and ethnic-minority voters.
Voting age and civics
The Make It 16 campaign continues pushing for votes at 16 in this election, after the bill was blocked in 2024. The Green Party remains the only major party with a formal policy to lower the voting age to 16; no other party has adopted this position.
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Minor and extra-parliamentary parties
Confirmed or likely contestants beyond the six parliamentary parties include The Opportunities Party (covered above), Legalise Cannabis, Outdoors, Vision NZ, Animal Justice, New Conservative, Women’s Rights, and Freedoms NZ. No substantive democratic-practice policy was found from any of these beyond TOP.