Bob Jones: We may need another election within 12 months

One must feel for Rodney Hide. According to the polls, his party is wallowing at something like 1 per cent, despite Act having a clear-cut, marketable philosophy.

Yet New Zealand First - a party without any underlying philosophy, one that would die overnight if its leader did - hovers around 12 per cent.

During Act's leadership contest, Hide suffered the indignity of his party's hierarchy pumping for other candidates. Despite that, the membership opted for Hide. But pounded from all sides thereafter to become statesmanlike, Hide abandoned the style which won him the leadership and Act's support collapsed.

Hide has tamely chanted that his job is to ensure Don Brash becomes the next Prime Minister. That being the case, he should join the National Party - it was tantamount to confessing to irrelevancy. His message should be that his objective is an Act Government. Unexpectedly, his party found it had exchanged a mad dog for a lapdog.

No good turn goes unpunished and the Nats, concluding that Act was indeed irrelevant, refused it a sure-fire electorate, which would have guaranteed another eight or so coalition-partner seats. They may yet rue that decision.

Meanwhile, Don Brash claims Winston Peters must declare who he will run with in a coalition if, as polling suggests, Peters will be the kingmaker. Brash claims failure to do this will make the election a lottery, implying that this effectively places its outcome in the hands of a single individual.

Peters justifiably resents this. His objective is to win the election, not passively accept a bronze-medal destiny before the race has been run. Unlike his less astute minor-party rivals, he never refers to the "two main parties" but derisively to the "two tired old parties".

It's that attitude, among other things, which explains NZ First's popularity.

There's an assumption that because Peters can't stand Labour's social agendas he would never get into bed with them. What is not appreciated is that he equally loathes the Nats and, as he sees it, their smug, born-to-rule attitude. It is National and not Labour which New Zealand First aims to replace in the essentially two-party system.

Peters likes causing surprises. He likes upsetting the media and proving them wrong. He will not repeat his 1996 mistake when he said in advance he would never form a government with National. Following that election, in which Helen Clark led Labour to its lowest-percentage vote since 1928, Peters smouldered with rage at the media celebrations of what was assumed would be New Zealand's first elected woman Prime Minister.

One can hardly blame the media, given Peters' pre-election assurance. Nevertheless, this became a huge incentive to him to prove them wrong. But primarily he went with National because they made more policy concessions than Labour did. Labour, not unreasonably, assumed he was committed to them.

There is no obligation on Peters to say who he would form a coalition with. Has Labour or National - or for that matter the Maori Party, which may be a significant player - done so?

Only the Greens have come out on this count and, unsurprisingly, said they will back Labour. Jim Anderton's party is a fiction, while everyone accepts that should Peter Dunne survive, he - as the ultimate political trollop - will jump into bed with anyone, as his record shows.

If the public finds all of this unsettling then it has only itself to blame for opting for MMP. It was forewarned.

Nevertheless, minor parties count now - unlike under the former system where they were victim to the wasted-vote claim. They count not only in deciding governments, but in policy issues which they can insist on being non-negotiable.

Here's my pick on the outcome. Labour and National will each score a similar 37 to 40 per cent of the vote. Peters will not form a coalition with Labour, because to be associated with any third-term government is certain political death next time out. But that doesn't mean he will opt for the Nats, as opposed to sitting on the cross-benches. So it's possible that we'll get a minority government and a re-run election as early as 2006.