Richard Prebble
Columnist, former cabinet minister and ACT Party leader.
If the polls are right, New Zealand will need something we have never had: a four-party coalition.
Four-party governments are not unusual in countries with proportional representation.
What New Zealanders are not prepared for is how long negotiations can take.
In the Netherlands, forming four-party governments took 225 days in 2017, 299 days in 2021 and 223 days in 2023.
Belgium took a year and 176 days to form a government after its 2010 election.
Could that happen here?
I was in parliament in 1996 when it took 65 days from polling day to the swearing-in of a new government. The press gallery and political commentators freaked out.
The negotiating parties imposed a news blackout. In the vacuum, the wildest rumours circulated.
No one wanted to negotiate with ACT, so I gave a press conference every day. I even started my own news sheet, The Goss.
Lobbyists went into a frenzy. No one knew what would happen to their favoured projects.
But the country did have a government. A caretaker government.
The Reserve Bank reported that the New Zealand dollar remained strong. A modest sell-off before the election was quickly reversed. Financial markets were remarkably unaffected.
There is an old saying that no man’s life, liberty or property is safe while parliament is in session. We may discover that we rather like Christopher Luxon as a caretaker prime minister.
And start wondering why we bother having elections.
This article was originally published on I’ve Been Thinking.
