National and Act are in limbo land as they wait for New Zealand First to make a move
Analysis: Christopher Luxon and David Seymour are in regular contact as they try to get traction on a new government, but with New Zealand First still in the frame there’s little appetite to start formal talks.
Special votes won’t be counted and published until November 3 and those results will directly influence what role New Zealand First plays in the next government.
National expects to lose at least one seat after specials are counted and there are other complicating factors at play like an overhang and the Port Waikato by-election on November 25. As it stands National and Act only have the slimmest majority of 61 seats.
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The Prime Minister in waiting says he’s going to approach government negotiations “differently” and not conduct them through the media, but no previous National leader in recent history has set out to do things that way either.
The National Party strategy team met at Luxon’s Auckland home on Sunday afternoon.
The meeting, which wrapped up at 4pm, included Luxon, deputy leader Nicola Willis, campaign chair Chris Bishop, campaign manager Jo de Joux, senior MPs Paul Goldsmith, Simeon Brown and Todd McClay, party president Sylvia Wood, chief of staff Cam Burrows and chief press secretary Hamish Rutherford.
Though Newsroom understands McClay has been in regular contact with New Zealand First before and during the campaign period, there has been no communication between Luxon and Peters.
That’s not overly surprising given the pair don’t have a relationship, which Peters admitted to in an interview with Newsroom on Wednesday.
Peters said Luxon hadn’t been in politics long enough for one to have been formed and pointed to McClay and two other senior National MPs – Gerry Brownlee and Mark Mitchell – as politicians he does have relationships with.
McClay’s father, Roger, was a former National MP in the 80s and Peters and him were colleagues and struck up an enduring friendship, which has crossed generations to Todd McClay.
The only thing Luxon is publicly saying about Peters, for now, is that he appreciated the New Zealand First leader’s comments on election night that he was willing to help, and to act in the country’s best interests to form a government.
Luxon now must hold fire and is realistic that the special votes will change things up.
“There’s half a million special votes still to come through and it’s going to bounce around,” he said on Sunday morning.
“There’s quite a few dynamics involved in specials this year. Obviously, there’s been some challenges with the Electoral Commission, there’s been overseas voters sometimes in a different headspace, and you’ve got a lot of people travelling overseas at the moment.
“So, we need to let that come through, but our view is we’ve got a great mandate for change.”
It plays well for Peters to advertise his desire to wait for specials, and deliberately put pressure on Luxon, before any formal talks are set to begin.
The underlying strategy and hope would be that Luxon and Seymour, in their desperation to get cracking, decide to approach Peters with a raft of policy concessions.
In that scenario New Zealand First could end up with a much better deal than if everyone sits tight until November 3.
From Monday the New Zealand First caucus will descend on Wellington to start the induction programme for new MPs at Parliament, and to assess the lay of the land.
Both National and Act’s leaders and new MPs are also headed to the capital, and it’s understood the two parties’ chiefs of staff will this week take over the planning and logistics for their leaders and negotiating teams.
Both sides are pragmatic about the fact they can make all the best laid plans only for Peters and his possé to upend them.
Whether New Zealand First is in the picture and just how much leverage it has will be pivotal in any negotiations between National and Act.
There are some policy areas they could crack on with given the common ground across all three parties, such as law and order, but anything much beyond that would be getting ahead of themselves.
Luxon says he absolutely intends to attend the Pacific Islands’ Forum in the Cook Islands on November 7 and the Apec summit in San Francisco a week later.
The timing of special votes being returned could make PIF a stretch, though that probably wouldn’t bother Luxon too much.
Not getting things together in time to be on the world stage with US President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping, however, would be a different story.
