Christopher Luxon says he'll keep tight-lipped about his coalition negotiations for at least the next two weeks until special votes confirm the final election result.
The incoming prime minister confirmed this morning that his team had reached out to New Zealand First as part of negotiating a governing coalition.
He met many of his new MPs in Wellington today as politicians take in Saturday's win for National and a shattering defeat for Labour.
Speaking this afternoon, Luxon suggested to media that he would take a different approach to coalition-building as compared to other parties post-election.
"I've watched New Zealand elections play out over many years. I've been pretty unimpressed with the process, in terms of how that gets done," he said.
Incoming prime minister Christopher Luxon is in limbo waiting for special votes to be announced on November 3. (Source: 1News)
"What's very clear to me is that I made a commitment to the New Zealand people that I would deliver a strong and stable government."
On current numbers, National and ACT can govern alone on a wafer-thin majority of exactly 61 seats — a majority of one. However, special votes are expected to tilt towards the left, with expectations that Luxon may still need the support of Winston Peters.
National's campaign chair Chris Bishop said this morning he was "fully expecting" the party to lose "at least" one seat after all the votes are counted.
Questions are now swirling around how the party will deliver on its promises. (Source: 1News)
However, Luxon said he will be remaining tight-lipped for the next few weeks as his party negotiated with ACT and New Zealand First.
He said the two parties were currently being dealt with separately.
"We're going to be doing that confidentially. We're going to be doing that in private."
When asked how negotiating with Peters was going, Luxon responded: "Again, not getting into it. Not getting into it." When later asked whether he wanted to meet with Peters himself, the incoming PM again said: "Again I'm just not getting into it with you."
A reporter later asked the incoming prime minister whether he was intending to continue staying tight-lipped about negotiating for the next several weeks.
Luxon responded: "I suspect that's going to be immensely frustrating and I apologise for that upfront. But I do want to signal to you that I want to work in a different way and I've been very clear about that.
"I want to build a proper government — we've got serious issues in front of us. I'm not interested in the sideshow and the parlour games. I came here to get things sorted."
Luxon said having "good chemistry" and relationships were important to the negotiations.
"I think chemistry and relationships are really important," he said.
"From there, we talk about arrangements, then we lock in our special votes, we know where we stand, and we move forward."
Luxon says speakership report 'could' be wrong
A report by Politik's Richard Harman this morning suggested Luxon's team had offered Winston Peters the role of speaker in the next Parliament.
The story suggested Peters had quickly rebuked the offer.
Luxon responded to the story today: "I've watched and read a lot of punditry and commentators over my three years in politics, and it's often very wrong. Again, I'm not too interested in too many people's reckons."
When specifically asked if the report was wrong, Luxon said: "Again, I'm not going to comment on that, because I'm not ruling things in and out based on these conversations.
"What I'm saying to you is that there's a lot of people with their reckons and they could be very, very wrong."
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