The Opportunity Party wants to create a national insurance support framework with national rules for identifying and managing insurance retreat, as well as having “transparent” forward-looking risk assessments for homeowners and a “fair” cost-sharing model between central and local government, insurers and property owners.
This comes as the party released its climate policy, on Friday, ahead of November’s election.
Called the Climate Resilient Aotearoa policy, the party says its “three pillars” include:
- Building climate resilience by: establishing a $5 billion Climate Resilience Fund to strengthen critical transport, energy, and water networks against extreme weather. It will support community-led programmes through local groups and marae, and invest $500 million directly into nature-based climate solutions like restored wetlands
- Fixing the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS): handing price controls to the independent Climate Change Commission, making changes to drive decarbonisation at the source instead of relying on offsets, and restoring the link between our Nationally Determined Contributions, emissions budgets, and the Paris Agreement
- Lowering costs for families and businesses: introducing targeted measures to reduce household living costs, including tax write-offs for home energy improvements like rooftop solar, home batteries, and EV chargers. The party is also committing to updating rental standards so tenants can charge electric vehicles. Opportunity also wants to establish low-interest electrification loans administered through local councils
Opportunity’s policy document says climate adaptation is not optional.
“Adaptation means getting ahead of damage instead of paying for it twice: first in disaster clean-ups, then in higher insurance, higher rates, and broken infrastructure."
“We are already seeing the early stages of insurance retreat: when insurers raise premiums, restrict cover, or withdraw entirely from high-risk areas. This is not just an insurance issue. It is a housing and infrastructure issue, a fairness issue, and a national economic issue.”
Alongside proposing a national insurance support framework, the party also wants to extend the role of the Natural Hazards Commission by having the organisation assess national climate risk, recommend adaptation targets, coordinate open hazard data for councils, iwi and hapū.
The document says it also wants the Natural Hazards Commission’s proposed widened role to include “triggering out-of-cycle updates of the national adaptation plan, and working with homeowners, councils, insurers and banks to identify highly vulnerable homes and funding resilience works or, as a last resort, location”.
'The reality is, it is going to cost someone some money and we have to do that fairly'
Last week, before Opportunity's climate policy was released, party leader Qiulae Wong told interest.co.nz the government would have to play a role in climate adaptation and insurance in some shape or form.
"We need to get everyone around the table to figure out what that looks like, and have a long lead-in time so that there's clear signals and people can adjust. The market can adjust."
Asked what she thought about buyouts for extreme weather events, Wong says she doesn't think that's something a government can unilaterally decide.
"We do need participation from local government, from citizens, from businesses, communities, iwi on what that looks like and what's fair, because it's a situation that people didn't foresee and they made decisions based on the settings at the time, but the reality is, it is going to cost someone some money, and we have to do that fairly."
When it comes to businesses, the policy document says the party wants to ask the Reserve Bank to build on its climate stress-testing of banks by monitoring the risks of mortgage lending exposed to flood and coastal hazard and insurance retreat, and on commercial lending exposed to a rising carbon price.
The document says it also will “require transparent climate-risk disclosure for new developments, mortgages, and insurance products so that buyers, banks, and investors can make informed decisions and property markets are not destabilised by sudden shocks”.
ETS and Paris Agreement
On “fixing” the ETS scheme, the document says: “New Zealand needs a durable, credible climate framework that gives households, farmers and businesses confidence to invest, while ensuring we meet our emissions targets at the lowest possible cost.”
“Opportunity will work to build political consensus around the core architecture of climate policy, because businesses and households cannot plan for the future when the rules change with every change of government.”
The party wants to give the Climate Change Commission the power to decide annual ETS unit supply settings, minimum NZU (New Zealand emission unit) auction clearing prices, and cost-containment reserve thresholds. It also wants to refine the forestry settings in the ETS “to reduce forestry slash and forestry-sourced sedimentation risk”.
On the Paris Agreement, which Opportunity supports NZ remaining part of, the party wants to “restore the link between our Nationally Determined Contribution and the Paris Agreement 1.5C goal and our natural emissions budgets”.
The policy document says the party will “develop a plan to meet New Zealand’s Nationally Determined Contributions and record the cost as a liability on the Crown balance sheet” and “implement the Climate Change Commission's advice on amendments to the 2050 emissions reductions targets, including international aviation and shipping emissions”.
On other issues, the party thinks reinstating a ban on gas and oil exploration is "probably unnecessary".
“However, for purposes of clarity, Opportunity would not oppose a reinstatement of the ban on offshore oil and gas exploration should a future governing party seek to progress it."
Opportunity also wants to reverse the Climate Change Response (Tort Liability) Amendment Act, saying: “Tort law exists precisely because Parliament cannot foresee every new form of harm and to stop a case currently going through the courts raises rule-of-law and access-to-justice questions.”
‘Work across political lines to restore a shared national direction’
The policy document says NZ must “regain that commitment to concerted action”.
“Climate policy cannot be rewritten after every election or reduced to a contest between denial and disruption; it must be ambitious, practical, fair and durable."
“We will work across political lines to restore a shared national direction that cuts emissions efficiently, strengthens resilience and gives every New Zealander confidence that the transition will be managed competently and fairly.”
Before Opportunity's climate policy was released, Wong told interest.co.nz that we needed to get a better grip on accounting for the full cost of climate risk and not just seeing it as a cost to business to decarbonise.
"But what are the benefits to society? And I believe, and I think the science shows that a low emissions economy is a more affordable economy for the next generation," she said.
"And so, when we build our houses better, when we electrify our transport, when we get people moving more on public transport than in cars, that's good for reducing emissions, but it's also good for our economy, and it's good for everyday Kiwis' pockets."
"I do think that's started to shift, but I do think particularly some of the current coalition parties are holding onto this outdated view that climate action is expensive and only in the interests of a few people, it's actually in the interests of all people, and in the interests of our economy. So I think they're doing a disservice to New Zealanders by continuing to push that narrative," she says.
Wong says her party rejects “the false choice between cutting emissions and keeping the lights on”.
“A low-carbon future isn't about doing without. It’s about making our homes cheaper to run, our businesses more resilient, and our country immune to volatile global fossil fuel prices. Our economy will grow stronger and create better jobs when we build a future that faces the challenge of climate change head-on.”
The full policy document is here.
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