John Armstrong: Clark in action faster than you can say motorcade

Helen Clark is tackling the task of patching together a new Government with a speed which would have left her infamous motorcade trailing in the slow lane.

The Labour leader has set a cracking pace as she endeavours to ram home the advantage of her one-seat lead over National.

Sunday's phone calls to other party leaders were quickly followed by three separate meetings yesterday afternoon with United Future, the Greens and the Maori Party, while preliminary talks are scheduled with NZ First for today or tomorrow.

The caretaker Prime Minister allowed cameras to capture the meet-and-greet handshakes and hongis at the start of each of yesterday's Beehive meetings, purportedly to provide television with file footage.

The real purpose was to present an image of a Prime Minister in control, even if she currently enjoys only caretaker status.

With stability her priority, she also wanted to press home the message that she is doing her utmost to form a Government - even though it will be two weeks before final election results reveal whether the Greens have secured an extra seat.

And with yesterday's meetings establishing the ground rules for the serious haggling to come, the exercise was also designed to show that National is out of the picture.

There is not much Don Brash can do about that. He can initiate contact with other leaders. He can hold out carrots.

But he cannot realistically open parallel negotiations with other parties. With United Future and NZ First declaring they will talk first with Labour, the National leader can only wait, fingers-crossed, hoping that negotiations break down.

That is further reason for Helen Clark to crack the whip and strike deals as quickly as she can.

She has her fingers crossed that the whole process does not collapse as a result of back-biting between the minor parties.

To get them all on board, she is now talking about establishing a far more flexible "working relationship" with some of them, rather than tight formal coalition or the confidence-and-supply option, which is looser than coalition.

The even looser "working relationship" model echoes Labour's "cooperation agreement" with the Greens during the last parliamentary term, when they were voting against Labour on confidence motions.

The"working relationship" model could be adapted to recognise NZ First's preference for abstention on such motions.

But its real value would be as a mechanism to manage Labour's uneasy relationship with the Maori Party.

Labour wants to keep Tariana Turia and her colleagues at arm's length. But Labour will likely need them to get some measures through Parliament during the next three years.

Likewise, Mrs Turia will want to maintain some distance between her and Labour. However, she will need some policy trophies to carry back to her Maori electorates in three years' time.

The Prime Minister is not saying which arrangement might apply to which party. But just three days after an election which produced a hideously complex numbers game, the foundations of a new Government are already starting to appear.