Party Leaders speak to the media after the Special votes final count is released.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peters has spoken about the final election results and what he expects negotiations to be like in the coming days, as the official count shows National and Act need his party in order to form a government.
Asked what is on the agenda, Peters told Sean Plunket on the Platform he had go to ahead in confidence and treat negotiations with urgency and deal with them as fast as possible.
Peters said he couldn’t, however, be “foolish about it”.
On Act and David Seymour, Peters told the Platform that he didn’t rule the party out during the campaign.
After being asked about NZ First and Act working together, Peters said of the last Government’s policies: “What we had foisted upon us [was] unelected, un-campaigned on [change] from the other side, just rammed down our throats.
“We have to put our differences aside - that is the nature of politics.”
He said the most useful thing was for National, Act and NZ First to all get in the room together as opposed to separate conversations.
Peters thought negotiations could happen more quickly than some people may think.
Winston Peters seen casting his vote at All Saints church in Ponsonby, Auckland, last month. Photo / Alex Burton
“This is not my first negotiation, I’m only negotiating with one side, so to speak, not two and that’s why we can expedite this,” Peters said.
Peters said it might be easier if negotiations were conducted between chiefs of staff.
“It’s a matter of logistics. We’ve still got to keep doing our other work. I’ve said to Chris Luxon… look, the key thing is that your main man speaks to my main person so that every hour things are happening, then we can expedite this,” Peters said.
“But if we do this personally, with all the travel, then this won’t work.”
Today’s final election results erased National’s one-seat majority with Act on election night - thrusting Peters and NZ First into the role as kingmaker.
Prime Minister-elect Luxon said he can now focus on forming a strong and stable government – and he will be doing it negotiating with Peters.
“Now we can get cracking,” Luxon told reporters at Parliament an hour after the final election result was confirmed with the counting of special votes.
Luxon said he would work through the weekend on coalition negotiations but he could not guarantee completing those negotiations before the Apec gathering in the US starting on November 11.
Seymour said he hoped the new government could be finalised within a “matter of days” or within a week.
