Venu Menon
Wellington, November 18,2023
There is no timeline in sight for forming a new government two weeks after coalition talks began following the verdict of Election 2023.
New Zealand has remained in a state of suspended animation as the leaders of the three coalition partners – National, ACT and New Zealand First – locked heads over policies and portfolios.
On Friday, Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon of the National Party indicated a breakthrough in the talks was imminent.
But while Luxon gave the impression that discussions were coursing down the home straight, NZ First’s Winston Peters appeared to be set for a marathon.
“Some of the media don’t seem to understand that in Germany these things can take months and months and months,” Peters said.
These coalition talks might easily rate as being the most tightly-guarded and non-porous exercises encountered by the media, which grasped at crumbs tossed at them every time one of the leaders left a closed-door meeting.
A snapshot of the three leaders seated around a table at a conference venue in Auckland earlier in the week had raised hopes that a deal was in the offing.
But when Peters failed to show up in Wellington for the next round of talks, causing Luxon and ACT’s David Seymour, who had already reached the capital, to hasten back to Auckland, a roadblock loomed on the horizon.
The coalition partners quickly closed ranks around the incident, pooh-poohing media speculation that the talks had struck a discordant note or, worse, that Peters was living up to his reputation as a disruptor.
But the optics around the U-turn in Wellington was unflattering for Prime Minister-elect Luxon.
The rookie was taking his cue from the seasoned politician, before they were even seated around the Cabinet table.
Peters was prioritising policy over portfolio. But that could well be a decoy move to deflect attention for the time being from the slot of the deputy prime minister, and his own ambition of filling it.
If the three coalition partners reasonably have their sights set on 2026, it would be politically wise for Peters to aim for a portfolio that ranks above that of foreign affairs, without forfeiting his party’s claim to either of the portfolios.
ACT’s Seymour was ambivalent on the issue when pressed by the media, which indicated his party may not make that a sticking point as coalition talks progressed.
On policy, there would appear to be convergence rather than divergence, given that the parties had clearly demarcated their prior areas of interest. NZ First was taking aim at the “duopoly” of supermarkets and banks and what it saw as their profiteering at the expense of the consumer.
ACT was committed to a referendum on the Treaty and a shift away from “race-based policies,” while National had pledged tax breaks for middle income New Zealanders.
But Peters was already emerging as the key arbiter of policy for the incoming government after National appeared to backtrack on its plan of imposing a levy on high-end property buyers from overseas.
Luxon’s coalition management acumen will be sorely tested in the time ahead. But first, he has to find another word to describe the process of coalition building.
Peters is not partial to the word “chemistry.”
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
