Coalition talks: Kiwis warned of 'fairly frustrating time' ahead

Most Kiwis' votes have been counted, and the big election night speeches are over - but the real race to form the next government starts this morning for the people who will spend the next few weeks working the phones.

On election-night figures, National and Labour's share of the party vote can hardly be separated and it's not yet possible to say which bloc has the numbers to govern.

The current National-ACT-NZ First coalition would hold 67 seats in a 130-seat Parliament, just one more than it needs, but that margin rests on a 10-seat overhang and several electorates decided by a few hundred votes.

Special votes are still to be counted, and the final numbers could still shift. The Electoral Commission is due to release the official final results on November 27.

One way or another, the parties are going to have to get talking and that's likely to start now. Former prime ministerial adviser Mike Munro worked for Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern for about 12 years and was on Labour’s negotiating team in 2017.

He told 1News the first sign of action after an election was simple.

“Well, the phone starts ringing.”

He said parties with a shot at governing would start to move on contacting potential partners though that could often be through staff.

“This is where chiefs of staff and chief advisers come into play. They all have each other’s phone numbers, and they all sort of know who to be reaching out to,” he said.

Former ACT chief of staff Andrew Ketels, who was on the party's negotiating team in 2023, said some of that contact usually begins before election night is over.

“On election night, I know some of the party leaders are in contact with each other about how the results are coming in,” he said.

Both men spoke to 1News before the results of last night’s election were known.

Ketels, who is now a government relations consultant at Sherson Willis, said serious talks often had to wait for the final count.

In 2023, National lost two seats on special votes, he noted.

“It meant that we required NZ First to form a government rather than just National and ACT, so we weren’t able to dive straight into negotiations on the day after the election."

Munro said party faithful and the public should be bracing for a slow few weeks ahead.

“We should be girding ourselves for a fairly frustrating time over the weeks after the election," he said.

Ketels said parties who expected to see themselves negotiating would be using the wait to put their teams together and decide what mattered most.

“They think about what policies they’re going to prioritise, whether they have any bottom lines, and what an ideal agreement might look like, and work back from there,” he said.

Picking the negotiating team was the first critical decision a leader made.

“You’ve got to make sure you’ve got a balance of experience and good policy knowledge, but also good interpersonal skills and good relationship skills, because they really come into play during these talks," Munro said.

“You don’t want to be surprised, and suddenly have the minor party raising something which is news to you and straight away is going to cause a difficulty.”

The ex-Labour staffer also warned against walking in with too many demands. “Bottom lines are always quite dangerous in these situations. You can’t have too many, because there’s always stuff you’ve got to give away once you get around the negotiating table.”

Ketels said that when only one side could form a government, the major party’s chief of staff would usually decide where and when parties met.

“Okay, we’re going to meet in Wellington on this day with this party, we’re going to meet in Auckland on this day with this party. They would be sort of running things,” he said.

Negotiations began with a major party meeting partners separately, according to the former ACT staffer. This helped give it an upper hand in a multi-party negotiation.

“The larger party might be able to say, well, we’re not willing to do that because we won’t be able to get it over the line with the other guys, and you might be sitting there saying, well, is that really true?”

Munro said parties kept things tight for that reason.

“None of the parties involved in these negotiations like to give much away. They can’t afford to give much away, because there’s sort of parallel talks going on.”

Before the election, both experts saw Opportunity as the biggest unknown if it made it into Parliament.

On the preliminary results, it would hold around 6% - well clear of the 5% threshold.

The party, led by Qiulae Wong, has said it is open to working with either National or Labour, and would talk first to the party with the most seats in Parliament - on current numbers, National, with 42 seats to Labour’s 35.

Munro said no candidates in the party had been through coalition talks before.

“None of these people have any political experience. None have been in Parliament. None have certainly ever been part of any coalition negotiation,” he said. “The smart thing to do is to get some expert advice, and clearly Opportunity has done that,”

He expected its advisers, including ex-Labour minister Iain Lees-Galloway, to urge caution. “Don’t overplay your hand, don’t ask for too much.”

Ketels said that if Opportunity held the balance of power, it would probably “have the ability to dictate the terms” over where and when talks happened.

In September, Opportunity released five bottom lines, including a cross-party 10-year health plan, a phase-out of bottom trawling and a cap on political donations.

Ketels said that in any deal on the right involving Opportunity, the relationship to watch would be the one with NZ First, pointing to their differences on environmental policy.

“There’s not a huge amount of common ground between NZ First and Opportunity, so I think that will be the really interesting dynamic between those two parties.

"That could be the sticking point.

Munro said the mood inside parties could sour quickly after election night.

“It can be a bit nerve-wracking actually, because nobody’s really sure what’s going to happen next. MPs don’t know whether they’ll be in the Cabinet or not, and what portfolios they might hold,” he said.

“There’s a lot of staff running up to Christmas, not really knowing whether they’re going to be working for a government or back in opposition.”

He pointed to 2017 when National won the largest share of the vote that year, but NZ First chose Labour, going on to be part of a coalition with the Greens on confidence and supply.

“It’s always inadvisable to get too cocky on the night, even if you are out in front by a decent margin.”

Ketels said the talks themselves took a toll.

“Everyone is going to be very, very knackered, and the negotiations themselves can be quite tense. For the most part, they’re quite long and grinding.”

Munro, who represented a major instead of minor party, had a slightly different view.

“Some people think that it’s like a bit of a bargaining round that unions get into with employers, but it’s not really like that. If you can’t agree on something, you just put it aside and you come back to it.”