Waiting for Winston

November 18, 2023

A local dog waiting for a snack in Georgia – it's not too stretchy a simile to compare dogs patiently eyeing you up for a bone with political negotiations, is it? Dogs following us was always stressful ... would they go home? On this occasion all was well – after walking with us for three hours, the dog happily turned around and followed a group of people walking in the opposite direction, back to its village.

For once, I'm more sympathetic to politicians than to media. Media are telling us it's been a month since the general election so it's high time we had a government. However, Christopher Luxon, David Seymour and Winston Peters are united in pointing out to the media that its take time to form a coalition that can withstand the pressures of Parliament and I would agree with them. "It's not like picking flatmates," Chris Luxon said, suggesting it is easy to get rid of flatmates. I don't remember it being that easy to get rid of undesirable flatmates, either.

I don't you if you rolled your eyes, like me, when you heard that Winston Peters would again play a critical role in determining the course of the next government. Winston has had a length career as a politican. He entered Parliament in 1979 and has been there continuously except for breaks in 1981-1984, 2008-2011 and 2020-2023. In 2020, the media suggested he might be washed up. However, just like the cat who came back, here is Winston again, along with his trademark Cheshire cat smile.

Winston was notably the 'king maker' in the first election in New Zealand under mixed-member proportional (MMP) representation in 1996. The negotiations took a record sixty-one days. To be fair, given it was the first MMP election, no party had any practice at negotiating to form a coalition. These days there are lots of discussions prior to the election, in 1996 it was all post election. Either major party could have got into power, depending on who Winston chose. He chose National, surprising the country, given he had been ousted from the National Cabinet by Jim Bolger in 1991 and subsequently left the party in 1993 to form NZ First.

In 2005, Winston went with Labour under Helen Clark. In 2017 he again had a 'king maker' position and chose to go with Labour under Jacinda Ardern. The coalition ended up including the Greens, with whom Winston refused to negotiate directly. This time around, I think most people other than Winston supporters hoped there would be a two party negotiation and Winston would not have the opportunity to wield a big stick.

I find myself now regretting those thoughts and my eye-rolling. Apparently (if one believes the media), Winston is vehemently opposing re-opening our doors to foreign house buyers, a critical part of National's tax package as a theoretically significant income earner. Good on Winston – I vehemently oppose allowing foreign buyers back in, on the basis that it would further hike our ridiculous house prices, putting them every more out of reach of normal income earners.

Back to the time taken to form a government, how long is reasonable? For a start, there hasn't really been a month for negotiations, only two weeks. Until the final election results came in, it wasn't clear whether National needed both ACT and NZ First, or only needed ACT to form a government. Three-way discussions are a very different thing to two-way discussions. It was probably a good thing that we had twelve years of MMP before we had a coalition of more than two parties (National + ACT, + United Future + Māori Party in 2008). I can also sympathise with National's need to hold initial meetings between themselves and one other party at a time – the amount of horse trading required to juggle demands from two very different coalition partners must be a nightmare.

Even if you take the whole time since the election of one month, when you compare this with the average of 36.5 days to reopen Parliament since MMP, we are still below average. The quickest ever was 21 days in in 2011 when the 2008 coalition continued. This week saw a major step forward in the negotiation process when all three leaders got together for a very stale white male photo op, in dark suits, distinguished by their ties and brands of smile. By the end of the week they were all declaring that we are probably nearly there. However, there is always the wild card of Winston – he could decide it's possible to negotiate with Labour after vetoing this possibility pre-election ... he has been known to change his mind!