National Party leader and Prime Minister-elect Christopher Luxon says he doesn't expect to make it to the APEC conference this week, despite previous hopes a government could be formed in time for him to go.
It comes as New Zealanders wait for National, ACT and New Zealand First to strike a coalition deal. A government would need to be together by Wednesday for Luxon to attend the international forum in San Francisco.
Luxon told Breakfast this morning that he'd been in contact with "all parties" over the weekend.
"We're making good progress," he said. "This week's an important week, we want to bring it home and get the job done.
"It's important that I focus on that, that's the must-do job. I think that's why it's unlikely I'll head out to APEC on Wednesday evening.
"I'd sooner be here, getting the job done, forming a strong government."
But if he could be there, he would be, Luxon said.
"I'd love to go, don't get me wrong," he said. "I'd love to go, because I do want to signal that New Zealand is open for business and I do want to be able to build rapport and relationships with those key world leaders.
"But actually, there'll be another APEC and there's other ways in which I can go about doing that.
"But actually, my job right now... I'm not selecting flatmates to go live with, I'm making sure that we've got a strong government."
Luxon was again tight-lipped on the detail of coalition talks. He's repeatedly said he wants the negotiations to be private.
However, he said there is good will and good faith on all sides.
"To give you a feel for it, basically you take each party's manifestos and you end up debating and discussing each element of it.
"And the good thing is that, by and large, we have massive agreement," Luxon said.
If a coalition wasn't in place by Wednesday, the National leader said he wouldn't send a shadow representative to APEC alongside a member of the current Labour government.
National's Gerry Brownlee represented New Zealand at the Pacific Islands Forum alongside Labour's Carmel Sepuloni last week.
And when pressed on whether National's proposed tax cuts would see change in coalition negotiations, Luxon simply said he was committed to delivering tax relief for low- and middle-income Kiwis.
He was also tight-lipped on how a proposal to end to the foreign buyers ban was progressing in negotiations.
And he said it was "way too premature" to publicly discuss possible positions in the next government.
"I appreciate this is [what's been done before] but I said to you from day one, we're not doing this through the media.
"We have a great future ahead of us but we have some pretty big decisions to deal with," Luxon said.
"We have different approaches but we're actually all very aligned on those goals."
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