Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in his Beehive office.
It is one year since National, Act and New Zealand First formed the country’s first-ever three-party coalition Government, reaching agreements after weeks of tense discussions following the 2023 election.
The Herald has interviewed the leaders of all three parties about how they think the coalition has fared so far, how they’re getting on with one another and how the dynamic could change ahead of the 2026 election.
Today, we hear from National Party leader and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Interviews with Winston Peters and David Seymour will also be published this week.
It was dubbed the coalition of fear, cuts and chaos.
The spectre of a chaotic Government was first raised by a campaigning Christopher Luxon as he warned voters of a Labour-Greens-Te Pāti Māori combination during the 2023 election.
Labour then used his own attack against him as it became evident National and Act would need NZ First’s support to take power despite both Luxon and David Seymour repeatedly expressing their reluctance to work with Winston Peters.
Commentators and Opposition MPs pointed to Luxon’s relative inexperience as a politician and questioned his ability to manage Seymour and Peters, who had traded barbs publicly for years before the 2023 vote.
But 12 months on from the signing of coalition agreements, Luxon believes his Government has defied the critics.
“There was a lot of scepticism, I suspect, about a three-party coalition Government and how would it all work and the personalities and the players,” he tells the Herald from the Beehive’s ninth floor.
“But actually, I’m really pleased at how coherent that has been and the way that we are working together on the inside has been very good.”
Luxon says he has different relationships with his fellow party leaders. It’s a more social arrangement with Peters: “We might catch up for dinner with our partners and things.”
With Seymour, there’s a greater focus on the “policy side of things”.
“They’re both very different personalities and both representing different perspectives, but I would say that I think in both cases, I’ve built a relationship with both of them.”
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Luxon has suffered friendly fire from Seymour on multiple occasions throughout the debate on Act’s Treaty Principles Bill.
Seymour’s public criticism of Luxon has prompted intrigue in political circles about the pair’s dynamic when Act’s leader takes over from Peters as Deputy Prime Minister on May 31 next year.
Asked whether he believed the change would limit Seymour’s critiques of the Prime Minister, Luxon was vague.
“Well, the leaders understand that they’re part of a coalition Government.
“Yes, there’s a big National Party, there [are] minor parties in that coalition configuration, but we expect all ministers to represent the Government, and it’s the Government ahead of parties.”
Central to maintaining his relationships with the two leaders, Luxon says, have been the “coalition clearinghouse meetings”, conducted in every Parliament sitting block. They were originally agreed as meetings between the three leaders, their deputies and the Leader of the House, but they’d since morphed to sometimes involve just two leaders.
“There are three different takes in this Government, the different parties, different leaders, and where we have issues of potential tension, we try and diffuse it all in advance and that’s why we have a regular clearinghouse meeting.”
Luxon also believes inheriting a “pretty dysfunctional” National Party in 2021 had prepared him well to manage a three-party coalition.
“A lot of what I have to do as the leader is make sure I can make the people dynamics work and that I’ve got the best set-up that I possibly can to get the best out of everybody ... so I think, yeah, I’m proud of how that’s come together.”
On what he saw as the coalition’s achievements thus far, Luxon pointed to efforts to tame inflation and “put financial discipline back into government”. He also cites the heightened intensity placed on New Zealand’s international relationships, led in part by Peters as Foreign Minister.
He views the next 12 months as moving “very much into [economic] growth and jobs”, while still forecasting turbulent times ahead.
“It’s going to be a bit bumpy, but the reality is we need to get the education system fixed, we need to get science [and] technology moving, we need to get infrastructure built, we need to get rid of the red tape, we need to have strong trade and investment from overseas as well, so that’s the programme by which we fundamentally lift our standard of living.”
Public signs of division between the parties have been less common than opponents may have first expected. The coalition agreements’ agree-to-disagree clause was used twice in one week when in July, NZ First remained opposed to the continuation of the initial Covid-19 inquiry, while Act refused to support the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill.
Another disagreement appears to be brewing as the three parties differ on what replaces the troubled Cook Strait Interislander ferries.
However, the most apparent and ongoing source of tension is the Treaty Principles Bill - Act’s attempt to redefine Te Tiriti o Waitangi’s principles ultimately through a referendum.
Read in the House for the first time this month, opposition to the bill sparked what was possibly the largest protest ever to arrive at Parliament. An estimated 55,000 people, endorsed by Te Pāti Māori and the other Opposition parties, called on Luxon to “kill” the bill that is now heading for a six-month select committee process.
National and NZ First pledged to support the bill only to its first reading in the House. Luxon was initially vague about his party’s stance on the bill after that point but amid intensifying pressure, he confirmed National’s support would not continue, effectively condemning the bill to the scrap heap.
Seymour hasn’t been afraid to criticise Luxon for the move, saying in August it would have been “respectful and democratic” to pass judgment only after the public had seen the proposed legislation.
National’s early positions against the bill were grounded in its belief the law would seed division. In the last two weeks, Luxon has sought to further explain how National believed Crown/Māori issues should be dealt with on an case-by-case basis, as the party copped flak from supporters convinced by Seymour’s argument it would provide equal rights.
Luxon told the Herald the bill was the most difficult of the post-election coalition negotiations and says he knew then how it would be received by the public.
Despite that, Luxon says he’s never approached Seymour to further negotiate what had been agreed in November last year.
“We have an election, the party votes come out in the way that they come out and then you’re tasked with forming a Government, so we took the coalition agreement and negotiations process really seriously and once we make a commitment, we need to honour those commitments.”
The right for parties to express their distinct views is enshrined in the coalition agreements, which recognises “the importance in a democracy of maintaining independent political identities arising from the voting public’s choice”.
Luxon believes this is a result of a maturing MMP electoral system and is being reflected globally in countries like Ireland and the Netherlands.
“You see a party system now in New Zealand where all the parties have slightly different positions and they’re probably even hardened up from what it was, say, in 2008.
“So MMP is maturing, coalition governments are a reality, and you have to find compromise and trade-off[s] ... rather than be consumed by all the internal dynamics of a coalition Government.
“The consequences and the implications of it, you have to kind of buy and live with as well.”
The novelty of a three-party coalition raises the question of how the leaders will approach the 2026 election.
In 2023, National pushed hard for its preferred arrangement to work solely with Act, even enlisting former PM Sir John Key to urge voters not to place the country in electoral “limbo land”.
Luxon chuckles when asked whether he would still prefer a National-Act combination, in light of the grief Seymour had given him over the Treaty bill.
“Well, you know the mantra will be ‘Party Vote National’ at the next election in 2026, as I’m sure it will be ‘Party Vote New Zealand First’ or ‘Party Vote Act’ as well.
“I’d just say to you, the New Zealand people are in charge, we live in a democracy, they make the decision and my job is to make it work and in the same way I try and make it work within my own party.”
Luxon wouldn’t discuss how readily he would enter into another three-party arrangement but predicted the next election result would be determined by the Government’s ability to deliver.
“Ultimately, 2026 will be about, ‘have New Zealanders felt that this Government has delivered better. Are they better off now three years down the road than they were?’
“All I can do is make the case for why the National Party should get the maximum amount of voting and then I deal with the consequences on the other side of an election.”
Adam Pearse is a political reporter in the NZ Herald Press Gallery team, based at Parliament. He has worked for NZME since 2018, covering sport and health for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei before moving to the NZ Herald in Auckland, covering Covid-19 and crime.
For several years NCEA results were improving - then it all started to unravel.