OPINION
This is an updated transcript of Audrey Young’s subscriber-only Premium Politics newsletter. To sign up, click on your profile at nzherald.co.nz and select ‘Newsletters’. For a step-by-step guide, click here.
Welcome to the Politics Briefing on the day of the Big Reveal.
In theory, the policy deals for the coalition government and the ministerial arrangements pass muster.
Incoming Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has made a bold decision to have his coalition partner leaders, Winston Peters and David Seymour, take turns at being Deputy Prime Minister.
But he did not have much choice once they both made it clear they wanted the job. He could not risk beginning his government with one of them offside.
Peters goes first, as no doubt he would have wanted, and then Seymour. That will allow Peters to reinforce his position of seniority for the first 18 months, then give him perhaps a little more freedom towards the 2026 election.
The ministry is large, with 20 ministers in Cabinet, eight outside Cabinet and two under-secretaries. But Luxon had to consider his own party and the fact that his party is way larger than Act and New Zealand First combined.
The deal handles Act’s proposed referendum on the Treaty of Waitangi as well as could be expected, assuming Act had to get something from it.
National has agreed to support an Act bill on the principles of the Treaty to a select committee but has given no commitment beyond that. There will be a clause in the bill requiring the bill to be put to a referendum, but that can be knocked out by some or all of the other parties in Parliament.
The bill will ensure there is a public debate on the issue and give other parties, including Act’s partners in Government, time to test the waters but commit to nothing beyond a first reading.
Perhaps the bigger and more immediate debate will be around the agreement to repeal the current regime allowing councils to set up Maori wards to one where they can be overruled by a local referendum. And those that have been set up in the current term will have to be endorsed by a local referendum. That is policy all three parties campaigned on.
NZ First has secured approval to change the law in response to a Court of Appeal decision earlier this month on the foreshore and seabed law which, if it stood, would have lowered the threshold for iwi and hapu applicant to be awarded customary title.
And controversially, it has also secured a repeal of the recently passed Therapeutics Products Act and an agreement to rule out the introduction of hate speech law.
National has largely had its policy platform endorsed by Act and NZ FIrst with specified exceptions, such as the partial lifting of the foreign buyers ban on residential houses.
There will be a lot more in the fine print of the agreements to emerge.
The biggest risk for National, however, was evident at the event announcing the deals, and that is the risk Luxon could be overshadowed. It all looks fine in theory but will it work in practice?
Peters was in a truculent mood, sparring with the media when there was little or no provocation. He did not use the opportunity to talk to New Zealand, instead focused on creating conflict where there was none.
Seymour seized the opportunity and exposure to press his party’s case for way too long as though he were back on the election hustings. Luxon amiably managed them and the situation quite adeptly but was not quite the impact player.
Their respective positions were evident when asked the question if they trusted each other (and with the preface that Seymour had previously called Peters untrustworthy). Luxon said absolutely. Peters said he did not answer silly questions. And Seymour took the alternative to the fifth, effectively saying the rules required him to trust and back all ministers in the interests of cabinet collective responsibility.
They have set up a cabinet coalition committee to hammer out differences.
But there will undoubtedly be more problems ahead for each of the three leaders: Seymour and Peters are bound to find Luxon’s inexperience exasperating at times and he will make some dumb calls; National, if not Luxon, will get the occasional tongue-lashing from Seymour over public policy purity; and the famously prickly Peters will be deeply offended by Luxon and Seymour over something but they’ll never know what because he won’t tell them.
On the other hand, the bonds the three leaders have forged in doing the deal will last a while and that was evident from their interactions on the podium.
Each of them has achieved a remarkable turnaround for their respective parties for which they will be accorded great respect by each other. Seymour has taken Act from a state of near ruin to its best result and part of a coalition government. Peters has resurrected his party from oblivion for a second time and into government for a third time.
And Luxon, after just three years as an MP, is about to become the Prime Minister in charge of a challenging government arrangement at a very difficult time. An astonishing achievement.
“You’re not gonna nail me down; this is not my first rodeo” - Winston Peters yesterday to reporters trying to find out if the deal had been done.
“I think it has been a calm, professional approach and from my perspective it suggests [Christopher Luxon] will be a calm, thoughtful Prime Minister” - former Prime Minister Jim Bolger on the coalition talks (to TVNZ) and backing Peters for Deputy PM.
Do you know which parties the following new MPs are from: Darleen Tana, Laura Trask, Tanya Unkovich and Vanessa Weenink? (Answer below.)
Goes to Hamish Rutherford, who might look like Christopher Luxon’s bodyguard but is, in fact, his chief press secretary, who appears grimly in the frame of every media standup to record his boss’s utterances. Cheer up Hamish, you’re on the winning side.
To outgoing Prime Minister Chris Hipkins, who did a good job as caretaker prime minister while waiting patiently to gain the worst job in politics, Leader of the Opposition.
Political stability: Long coalition negotiations have seen a major economics consultancy downgrade its perception of New Zealand’s political stability to its lowest rating in more than a decade.
Mini-Budget: Time is running out for the new Government to put together a mini-Budget before Christmas as promised.
Downtown car park sale: An Auckland Council meeting erupted in anger yesterday during debate on the sale of the Downtown carpark on Customs St West.
Te Pāti Māori: New Tāmaki Makaurau MP Takutai Kemp says she and her colleagues are looking forward to being “the pebbles in the shoes of Pāremata Parliament”.
Israel-Hamas war: A top UN watchdog visited Wellington on Tuesday, warning that war crimes were being committed in the Israel-Gaza conflict.
Quiz answer: Darleen Tana (Green, list), Laura Trask (Act, list), Tanya Unkovich (New Zealand First, list) and Vanessa Weenink (National, Banks Peninsula).
Audrey Young is the New Zealand Herald’s senior political correspondent. She was named Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards in 2023, 2020 and 2018.
For more political news and views, listen to On the Tiles, the Herald’s politics podcast.
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