KEY POINTS:
National can return to its former place as the default party of power.
National was always going to win the election. The only question is whether they'll govern for more than a term.
Act must have thought they were in the box seat when they gained five MPs on the back of Rodney Hide's victory in Epsom. The old ideologue, Roger Douglas, must have been drooling at the thought Key would have to back down on his earlier declaration that Douglas would not be allowed into the new Cabinet.
Hide clearly overplayed his hand when he bullishly laid out Act's hard-right bottom lines to Key. Act underestimated the work in recent years by National's leadership, particularly Bill English, to cultivate a relationship with senior players in the Maori Party and in the wider Maori community. Clearly, National's leadership can count. Key's hint before the election that he would consider asking the party to be part of an incoming National
administration even if Key didn't need them for a majority was under-reported. But that was clearly National's insurance strategy against potential blackmail.
Key will be well aware the centre-left lost on Saturday but not by as much as commentators suggest. Core Labour supporters in working-class seats stayed home in droves. If a National government scares them during the next three years, they will return in force to support Labour.
On Saturday's low turnout, Winston Peters would have returned with six New Zealand First MPs with less than a per cent more of the party vote.
The Maori Party would have won the seven Maori seats if a few hundred more Labour voters had voted for its candidates in the two seats it narrowly failed to win. If they had won, Helen Clark would still be Prime Minister.
National's 59 seats gives Key enormous moral authority, not only over National's coalition partners, but also over the Opposition.
National, on its own, has a nine-seat majority over Labour, the Greens and the Progressives combined.
Key's coup that has won over the Maori Party delivers him a huge 18-seat buffer in the House.
Key is in the enviable position of neutralising Act by turning to the Maori Party when he needs a majority on any legislation. On centre-right policy he can rely on Act, but when they play up over matters that aren't right-wing enough, Key can always get the Maori Party onside.
Frankly, Act has no ace card to play when it comes to push and shove in the back room.
The warning to the Maori Party from Labour's new leader, Phil Goff, that they shouldn't do a deal with National rings a little hollow. When Labour was in the same position as National at the last election, they offered nothing to the Maori Party.
In any event National can rule alone and doesn't need them. Anything the Maori Party is able to win is a bonus. The only alternative strategy is to sit on the opposition benches with Labour - their main electoral competitor - and get zilch.
It seems a Key-led government - at this stage anyway - wants to be inclusive. But even if National does take a rightward lurch, they are aware it's in their long-term interest to ensure the Maori Party is seen to deliver on some key policy planks.
The question for the Maori Party is whether any policy gain under a Key-led government outweighs the electoral risk to them at the next election. Traditionally, Maori have little in common with the National Party. But in reality National and the Maori Party are not electoral foes and so any governing relationship is less complicated. Labour and the Maori Party are direct electoral competitors.
It's in National's interest to cement the relationship and make concessions however unpalatable to keep the party onside. Inevitably, the centre-right bloc will be caught by the Labour-Green duo, possibly by the next election. That makes the Maori Party relationship crucial for Key's long-term survival.
The electoral threat to National comes from Act, whose strategists are a ruthless bunch who have no scruples in tearing away as much of National's constituency as they can.
Key, who wants to be a long-term Prime Minister, will work to support and nurture the relationship. Conversely, he should have no illusions that Act is a competitor and should be contained. If Key adopts this strategy, then it would indicate that this Government will be far more moderate than the previous two National regimes. This will make Goff's job much more difficult.
Labour's job is to chip away at National's soft-centrist vote. Instinctively, Goff will move his party to the right as a way of winning more of the centre ground. Goff has always been among the sharpest operators but he's not only against a moderate and likeable Key, but a large part of the Maori constituency has been carved away from Labour.
There is a significant realignment of politics under way in which National has a real chance of making significant inroads into the Maori constituency once dominated by Labour.
If Key can cement Maori support in the next three years, it is quite possible National can return to its former place as the default party of power in this country. How ironic that the same party that last election almost won by running an overt Maori-bashing campaign could now become their greatest ally.
