It was the election outcome that even two of the winning parties feared.
On polling day on 14 October 2023, New Zealand swung to the right, ending six years of Labour-led government and making Chris Luxon's National the biggest party in parliament.
Mr Luxon spent the campaign telling voters he wanted to govern with right-wingers ACT, and ACT only: a sentiment the minor party shared.
Early on election night, it looked like the pair would get their way, with results predicting their desired outcome.
They fell short in the final tally, needing Winston Peters' populist force New Zealand First to govern with a parliamentary majority.
Cue predictions of a "coalition of chaos" and a cabinet mired by acrimony.
Those calls were not unreasonable, given the history between ACT leader David Seymour and NZ First's Mr Peters.
At different points through their careers, Mr Seymour had described Mr Peters as a "charismatic crook", "the least trustworthy person in New Zealand politics" and "grandpa".
Mr Peters scolded Mr Seymour, 38 years his junior, as a "political cuckold", a "chihuahua" and someone who would "last 10 seconds in the ring with me."
However, as New Zealand marks a year since the election, fears of a broken-down dysfunctional government have not come to pass.
Mr Seymour, now regulation minister, told AAP he found Mr Peters "much less obstructive and keener to get along that I'd anticipated".
"Perhaps that was my naivety about how (other leaders) would operate when we actually have a government but it's certainly been easier and more successful than I thought," he said.
Chris Bishop, National's campaign chair and the housing and infrastructure minister, insists the coalition is working well behind closed doors.
"Genuinely and not bull****ing, genuinely, it's been a real privilege and a pleasure," he told AAP.
"We're different parties for a reason. Different priorities, different emphases, different policies.
"There's stuff on the edges where there are disagreements and different emphases (but) there are quite a lot of things at a really important fundamental level, where the parties don't disagree.
"There's a real willingness from everybody in the coalition to make it work. Differences are resolved amicably and congenially."
At the heart of the government - what Mr Bishop calls the "lodestar" - are the coalition agreements negotiated between the three parties.
Across six weeks from election night, National negotiated two deals, one each with ACT and NZ First, with an aim to produce a stable and effective government.
Inside each is a detailed policy program, decision-making principles, terms of engagement, and the number of ministries offered by National.
It dictates, uniquely, the shared deputy prime minister position which will change hands from Mr Peters to Mr Seymour on 31 May 2025, the term's half-way mark.
Landing the agreements was a tortured process, with a back-and-forth between parties led by Mr Luxon that exasperated many Kiwis.
Some involved in the negotiations privately concede their messiness.
"We took quite a long time to pull it together and people at the time said 'what on Earth is taking so long?'" Mr Bishop said.
"The reason we did that is now bearing fruit, because it's provided a really good guiding document for all three parties."
Not that the government is beyond criticism. Far from it.
Many of the policies embraced by the coalition have drawn a mighty backlash, particularly those supported by ACT and NZ First, the minority parties which secured 8.6 and 6.1 per cent of the vote respectively.
Public sector cuts - particularly in health - and the abolition of smoke-free strategies, fast-tracked consent for mining projects, gun law reform, and most controversially, Treaty of Waitangi reform, have angered many.
However, the policy program outlined in the coalition agreements is so vast that Mr Luxon - a former corporate executive with a marketing and sales background - can pivot to fresh announcements, skipping past controversy.
So far, the government has produced a First 100 Day Plan with 49 actions, followed by three quarterly plans with a combined 119 actions.
While some are double-ups or signify milestones rather than completed projects, it shows a busy government that's, to borrow a Luxon catchphrase, "relentlessly focused on delivery".
Mr Seymour says the government is "moving at tremendous pace".
"We negotiated a huge number of of commitments. My great fear is I may get proved to better at negotiating than implementing ... we've only got three years," he said.
The agreements also allow the parties room to "agree to disagree" - ACT has done so on media reform, and NZ First has on a COVID-19 Royal Commission - and to respectfully criticise each other.
"We campaigned on real charge. The government is going in the right direction ... but it's not going as far as it needs to," Mr Seymour, a fiscal hawk who is eyeing further cuts to public spending, said.
While discipline is one thing, the coalition members acknowledge the centrality of one issue to their success: the economy.
New Zealand is mired in recession, with GDP per capita falling by 4.6 per cent over the past seven quarters: a larger fall than it experienced during the global financial crisis.
The economic downturn is largely due to the Reserve Bank ratcheting up interest rates to contain high post-pandemic inflation - a challenge which appears contained given the centre bank is now easing rates.
Kiwis are still feeling the pinch, and and unemployment rate has grown by 1.4 per cent in the last two years and is likely to keep growing.
Mr Bishop says the government's number one aim is "getting growth back into the economy" and knows it must do so to win a second term in 2026.
"The thing unites the coalition, that unifies everything, is this deep belief that the economy is in trouble and that we can be better," he said.
"We need more foreign investment. We need a better infrastructure pipeline. We need growth-enabling policies when it comes to resource development and planning laws. We need to be more fiscally restrained.
"There's quite a degree of consensus around what we need to do .. and we just get on with it. And we will."
