It might have taken six weeks to decide the shape of New Zealand’s next government (or three if you count from the final results), but in the end that is the nature of proportional representation. Compromise, trade-offs and haggling are the price of an MMP electoral system designed to avoid single-party rule.
So, after some intermittently passive-agressive political posturing and much striding through airports, the deals were done and signed off in Wellington today. Both the ACT and NZ First parties have agreed, with exemptions, to National Party’s fiscal plan, tax plan and 100-day plan.
With two of the three coalition parties having run on campaign slogans about “taking back” the country and putting it “back on track”, there was a predictable sense of a return to policies of the past.
