New Zealand coalition powerbroker Winston Peters says government formation talks are progressing and are "closer to the finish line" than many believe.
Mr Peters' NZ First is engaged in negotiations to form the next government with National and ACT, the three parties that will make up the next Kiwi government.
However, more than a month on from the October 14 election, the parties have yet to agree on the terms of their triumvirate.
The talks are playing out like a tiresome soap opera in New Zealand.
Each day, journalists wait outside hotels or in corridors where the leaders are meeting.
Photographers are stationed outside leaders' houses or in airports to track their movements.
And each time relevant MPs are spotted, they decline to answer questions of what's being discussed, out of respect to the sensitive negotiations.
"I can't possibly tell you that, can I?" Mr Peters told the assembled outside Auckland's Cordis Hotel on Friday.
"We're having private conversations with three parties and ... it would be wrong for me to break the confidence of the arrangement we're entering into."
Saying talks would continue in Auckland over the weekend, Mr Peters did offer a hint of positivity.
"We're probably closer to the finish line than you guys think," he said.
Another party leader, ACT's David Seymour, has been slightly more forthcoming, saying his libertarian party was close to a deal with National which would then need to be cross-checked by his party's board.
"Those are things that have to happen and could take a couple of days. But in terms of getting the substance done, I think we're in a good place," he said.
At the centre of the negotiations is Chris Luxon, the National party's leader who will become prime minister when a deal is done.
Everything is on the table in the talks: policies, positions, and the shape of the government: which appears to be a three-party coalition, all with cabinet roles.
Mr Luxon is negotiating individual deals with each party so he is able to make representations to the governor-general that he can command a majority in the parliament.
There are growing criticisms of Mr Luxon's approach to the negotiations, which are entering marathon territory.
Since the mid-1990s when New Zealand reformed its electoral system to the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system in use today, there have been 10 elections.
Only once have government negotiations taken longer; in 1996, when National leader Jim Bolger sealed a deal with Mr Peters' NZ First 59 days after the election.
As of Friday, Mr Luxon is up to 34 days.
"We're making sure that we've got a really good foundation, that we understand each other fully," he said on Friday.
"We're going through line-by-line item each of the (party policy) manifestos. We've made tremendous progress."
Most commentators are offering scathing reviews of Mr Luxon's performance, especially given how frequently he promoted his background as a corporate deal-maker during the election campaign.
Former National and ACT political strategist Matthew Hooton wrote in the NZ Herald that Mr Luxon had offered "vacuous and facile slogans" for five weeks.
"It has made him sound less like the leader of the country at a confusing time and more like a cheap salesman promising that this great new toothpaste really will make those pearlers shine fantastically white," he said.
Newshub political editor Jenna Lynch said the negotiations were being conducted not to Mr Luxon's tune - but to that of 78-year-old Mr Peters.
"When Peters says jump Luxon's no longer just asking how high, he's asking: when and where too," she said.
"It's not Winston Peters' first rodeo but it is beginning to look like Christopher Luxon's first circus."
