He lost the selection contest to Sam Lotu-Iiga, who went on to win the seat, but O'Connor was appointed as a list candidate for the 2008 general election, ranked 72nd.
[6][11] On 30 September 2022, it was reported that three unknown people had launched campaigns to replace O'Connor as the National party's Tāmaki candidate at the 2023 New Zealand general election.
[14] In late April 2023, ACT New Zealand confirmed that its deputy leader Brooke van Velden would be contesting O'Connor's Tāmaki electorate in a "two ticks" campaign during the 2023 general election.
O'Connor also expressed concern "...that much of this information eventually became public via the U.S. Department of Justice... yet New Zealand agencies still did not make contact with us [which] begs even further questions.”[20] The Minister Responsible for the GCSB, Hon Judith Collins KC, had earlier in March issued a statement attributing the compromise of Parliamentary Service and Parliamentary Counsel Office systems to the Chinese government-affiliated group APT40, describing the use of cyber espionage to "interfere with democratic and institutions..." as "unacceptable".
[21] In an interview on internet broadcaster Reality Check Radio with former MP and minister Rodney Hide, O'Connor announced that he was affiliating with the conservative Christian lobby group Family First.
[22] Family First released on 14 May 2024 news that O'Connor would host a weekly, live podcast across multiple streaming platforms, entitled Solid Ground.
Protest groups Queer Endurance In Defiance and the Pōneke Anti-Fascist Coalition denounced the conference for allegedly promoting transphobia and said it was contacting the Council in order to cancel the event on safety grounds.
[29] O’Connor, while Chair of New Zealand’s Foreign Affairs, Defence, and Trade Committee joined with his counterpart committee chair counterparts from the United Kingdom (Tom Tugendhat), Canada (Michael Levitt), and Australia (David Fawcett) in writing a joint letter to UN Secretary-General António Guterres asking that he appoint a special human rights envoy to monitor Hong Kong in light of the imposition of China’s new National Security Law.
[30] During 2022, as IPAC co-chairs, O'Connor and Leary obtained information about the Solomon Islands-China Security Pact and raised concerns about Chinese military expansion in the Pacific.
[31] In 2023, O’Connor asked Parliamentary Written Questions seeking information on the deployment of Chinese made cameras in New Zealand government offices.
[33] O’Connor wrote to representatives of Bytedance, owners of social media platform TikTok, asking about the privacy of New Zealanders' data.
In March 2023, he set up the first All Party Parliamentary Group on Taiwan within the New Zealand Parliament, being inaugural co-chair along with Labour's Ingrid Leary and involving around 15 other MPs.
[37] In November 2023, O'Connor was invited by the Taiwanese government to visit Taipei and meet with President Tsai Ing-wen, Foreign Minister Joseph Wu, and other senior political representatives as part of the Indo-Pacific Formosa Club initiative.
In 2022, O'Connor joined other elected representatives from around the world in Washington DC as part of the Interparliamentary Task Force to Combat Online Antisemitism.
[44] O'Connor voted conservatively on most conscience issues, although he opposed raising the drinking age back to 20 in 2012 and he supported the introduction of Easter Sunday trading.
[48] In March 2020, he attracted attention for a statement he made as part of his speech in opposition to the third reading of the Abortion Legislation Bill, where he repeated a quotation from the Bible in Latin: "Mihi vindicta: ego retribuam, dicit Dominus," which is translated as "Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” [49] In late June 2022, O'Connor published a Facebook post welcoming the United States Supreme Court's overtuning of Roe v. Wade.