Editorial: This isn't working

The final vote count will have a big impact on where NZ First decides to go. Pictured is leader Winston Peters.

It isn't expected to change the outcome much, but New Zealand First is right to wait until the final vote count before beginning coalition negotiations. And there is some logic to its apparent willingness to negotiate with both Labour and National before it decides which it will help into government.

It is logical, too, that it will enter into a coalition with whichever of the major parties is prepared to cede the most ground in terms of the policies it campaigned on. However, there is a much more compelling logic that has not come into play.

The only other country that shares our electoral system is Germany, but they do it differently. There the various parties occupy clearly identifiable ground, meaning that electors can confidently expect that whoever they choose will lean in one direction or the other. The same applies here in terms of ACT, which clearly leans towards National, and the Greens, who have always favoured Labour. Voters for either of those parties know what they are voting for.

"So voters, who should be in charge of this process, will watch from the sidelines as negotiations take place, completely beyond their control. And while Winston Peters has said we will not see a repeat of the extraordinarily protracted process of 1996, these negotiations may not be easy if he sticks to the policies he took into the election campaign."

The other minor choices do not offer the same surety. New Zealand First, as always, could go either way. So too could have UnitedFuture and the Maori Party. Neither features in the process that is about to begin, although there must be some theoretical possibility that the Maori Party could come back from the dead after the special votes are counted.

The problem for the voter is that either of those parties would have comfortably joined either Labour or National, depriving their supporters of any idea of the government they were voting for.

UnitedFuture leader Peter Dunne, without a hint of irony, made that very point on election night. He accused some politicians of not yet grasping the fundamental principal of MMP, in that they did not make their coalition preferences known until they saw how the cards had fallen.

That's a bit rich coming from him. Throughout his MMP career Dunne has made it very clear that he didn't care who he supported, as long as it got him, and more generously his party, into government.

That might have been marginally acceptable when one needed a degree in political science to differentiate between Labour and National, but not this time. Voters had a clear choice in terms of urban and rural issues, and to a degree the 'size' of government they were opting for. National in this campaign was not Labour lite, and those who voted for either major party had a right to know who those parties' allies were going to be.

It is far from unreasonable to assume that some, perhaps the majority, who gave their party vote to New Zealand First were hoping for a National-led government, with a strong New Zealand First influence. They might still get that, but that depends upon a party that gained 7 per cent of the vote, and as someone put it last week finds itself with 100 per cent of the power.

That is wrong. Many of us voted without a clue as to what we were choosing. And if it's good enough for voters to nail their colours to the mast, it's good enough for parties to do the same, particularly when, for some, the difference between governments could be stark.

The convention that minor parties support the larger party that gets more votes than the other is no more than that, a convention. While Winston Peters has always made it clear that he wanted to see the election outcome before he began talking coalitions, he is not bound to choose on the basis of popular support. He has left both doors well and truly open.

What he should not be doing is buying into claims from the left that New Zealand has voted for change. It did nothing of the sort, and anyone who believes otherwise is delusional.

If the Maori Party had survived, and it might well have had it nurtured its resources more carefully and campaigned more intelligently, National could have been about to form a government that varied from the last nine years only in the absence of UnitedFuture.

National's election night vote fell 1 per cent from its 2014 result, while New Zealand First took a hammering, presumably due to the defection of some of its support to National, and the Greens' vote was decimated, presumably because of the defection of support to Labour.

The Greens' major achievement was in surviving. Perhaps, after its best efforts to self-destruct by completely misreading the ethics of its existing and potential support base, that represented some kind of victory. What it did not represent was a groundswell of support for a change in government.

What we voted for, and even the final count is unlikely to change this greatly, was the status quo. That should be at the front of New Zealand First's mind, and possibly is.

It is not unimaginable that it knows with some degree of certainty that it will help form a National-led government, and is simply milking its moment in the driver's seat for all it is worth. Who knows? Those who voted for it certainly don't.

Meanwhile the common perception is that the final outcome will be down to one man. Winston Peters rejects that. He has said he will be talking with the party's board and his fellow MPs before entering into negotiations, which he obviously should. The perception that the party will do his bidding is probably not far off the mark though, given that it is doubtful that it would even be in the mix without him.

So voters, who should be in charge of this process, will watch from the sidelines as negotiations take place, completely beyond their control. And while Winston Peters has said we will not see a repeat of the extraordinarily protracted process of 1996, these negotiations may not be easy if he sticks to the policies he took into the election campaign.

As we understand it, New Zealand First will not countenance a water tax (except on water bottled for export), and will not support Labour's plans in terms of the emissions trading scheme. It will be on more comfortable ground with Labour over immigration, and perhaps in greater difficulty with National over iwi provisions within the Resource Management Act (although National's principles might have softened somewhat with the demise of the Maori Party).

Neither of the major parties are likely to accept a referendum on the future of the Maori seats, although New Zealand First is reportedly less committed to that than it was before Labour's clean sweep. Not sure what difference that makes, but that's the expectation.

Whichever major party New Zealand First offers a leg up to, the regions will hopefully be on to a winner. For all the campaign rhetoric, for all the plans and prognostications, the regions, Northland included, have good reason to feel that they have been ignored for a long time.

Perhaps that was inevitable, to a degree, given that earthquakes and global financial crises have dominated the actions of the National-led government over the last nine years, but not now.

Winston Peters has taken a firm stance on regional development, and hopefully he will stick to it. There is much more to this country than NZ Inc, which even Labour leader Jacinda Ardern admitted pre-election wasn't in bad shape, and the cost of houses in Auckland. Winston is just the man to make the next government understand that.