Mike Hosking: Major parties acting like subservient wimps

So, a good weekend for the centre-left block: two more seats from the special votes and an improved majority under a deal with New Zealand First - a sort of buffer should any sort of deal turn a bit pear-shaped.

The usual arguments are being rolled out from both sides - the centre-left have an increased mandate, the centre-right are the largest party therefore have a moral right to form a government... the argument that the majority of us have voted for change isn't true.

Winston Peters is the difference. If Peters goes with National then the majority haven't voted for change at all.

A fourth term National Government isn't change - it's the status quo.
Peters of course found something to moan about - he can't win he whined - as he left one of his meetings.

And he can't win ... and this is only partially his fault because he has all the power. And a person with 7 per cent of the vote should never be in such a position.

But he's been allowed the perception of that power by two major players that are acting like subservient wimps. Not heavy hitters who actually have the cards - not Peters.

Many are arguing that Thursday is too short a deadline.
Well not if you're doing a confidence and supply deal as I suggested the day after the election.

This I am increasingly convinced will not be 1996 all over again - we are not going to be dealing with pages and pages of detail.
Therefore we don't need days and weeks of meetings.

Factor in also - unlike 1996 - that we have experience... many a deal has been done. We know how it works, what the ground rules are.

And it's not like all parties don't already have a pretty detailed idea of what each other wants and what each other is prepared to give away

So it's not like we're starting with blank pages.
If a confidence and supply deal is the way we go ...you'd have to favour National, if for no other reason that they as a singular party have more support that both Labour and the Greens combined.

For a third player to support two other players into government that can't together equal the support of the single largest player is not democracy ... and wouldn't go down well at all.

But here's the good news - we'll know in three days. And in the ensuing period it's not like the country has hit the rocks is it?