Former All Blacks Captain to Run for Conservative-Leaning NZ First Party

New Zealand's former All Blacks captain Taine Randall (C) leads the Haka, a Maori warrior traditionnal dance, before the All-Blacks-France test match 26 June 1999 at Wellington Athletic Park. New Zealand won 54 to 7. (Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images)

By Rex Widerstrom

Rex Widerstrom

Rex Widerstrom is a New Zealand-based reporter with over 40 years of experience in media, including radio and print. He is currently a presenter for Hutt Radio.

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April 17, 2026Updated: April 17, 2026

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Former All Black captain Taine Randall will stand for the conservative-leaning nationalist party, New Zealand First (NZ First).

He played 51 tests between 1996 and 1999 and led the national rugby team to 12 wins in 22 tests, after having been the youngest player ever to captain provincial side Otago at age 19 years and 152 days.

He is currently a director of a Māori tribe’s asset holding company, including a stake in the Fiordland Lobster Company, the country’s largest exporter of live crayfish, marketed under its KiwiLobster brand.

Randall confirmed to the NZ Herald’s Ryan Bridge TODAY programme that he had been approached by the centre-left Labour Party in the past but declined because “at the time. I didn’t care.”

He revealed he had steadily developed an interest in politics and that choosing NZ First had “taken a while,” he said.

“Like a lot of people in this country, [I feel] things are unsettled in this country and globally. I like the people in New Zealand First, [there’s] a good culture in the party and their policies. And I guess their values [are] the most similar to what I believe in.”

Randall could contest the seat of Tukituki in New Zealand’s North Island, currently held by National’s Catherine Wedd, who chairs Parliament’s Environment Select Committee.

The Winston Peters-led NZ First is a socially conservative party, which made its name opposing immigration and asset sales to foreign buyers.

Epoch Times Photo — New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters attends a press conference during a Nordic Council Meeting within the framework of the informal foreign and security policy cooperation (N5), on October 29, 2025 in Stockholm, Sweden. The Nordic Council meetings bring together prime ministers, heads of government, ministers, parliamentarians from across the Nordic Countries and guests every year. The 77th Session of the Nordic Council is taking place at Sweden’s Riksdag from October 27-30, 2025. (Claudio Bresciani/TT News Agency/AFP via Getty Images)

Recent polls suggest NZ First’s popularity steadily growing with a March RNZ-Reid Research Poll finding the party sitting on 10.6 percent, which would give it 13 seats—five more than at present.

While an April Taxpayers’ Union-Curia poll found the party’s support up 3.9 percentage points to 13.6 percent.

Currently, NZ First governs in coalition with the centre-right National Party and the libertarian ACT.

Previously in 2017 and 2020, party leader Peters partnered with the Ardern Labour government and then.

Peters was a member of the National Party before resigning to start his own party in 1993.

The next national election is due on Nov. 7.

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