The time it is taking to form a government has become a growing headache for Prime Minister elect Christopher Luxon and his National party, so they will have been glad to announce yesterday afternoon that they have reached policy deals with both Act and NZ First.
Now the smaller partners can assess their respective deals, and negotiating moves to ministerial positions.
Failure to finalise an agreement at the weekend brought the count to five weeks since the election and 16 days since the final result was known.
There have been signs that the public is becoming restless, particularly those National supporters who believed they had managed the changes they wanted by overthrowing Labour and its partner the Green Party.
Caretaker prime minister Chris Hipkins could not resist a jab, saying his boxes had been packed for five weeks now as he waited to move.
Obviously, the job of reaching a consensus with two parties like Act and NZ First, which have divergent views on many things but especially economics — with Act being right-wing and classic liberal, against NZ First’s interventionist economic nationalism — was always going to be difficult.
Speculation abounds on what has caused the delays, with most commentators believing it is National’s policy of funding tax cuts by allowing foreign buyers to purchase expensive homes in this country.
There must be some sympathy for Luxon, who is obviously champing at the bit to start making the changes he wants. It has also been galling for probable Minister of Finance Nicola Willis, who promised to produce a mini budget which would “open the books” within 100 days.
The MMP system has been rightly praised for the way it has made New Zealand’s Parliament more diverse and allowed minor parties to get representation. The downside is that it has always, with the exception of 2020, required a coalition government — some of which have been in the nature of an odd couple.
Stuff reports that the average time for a government to be formed in New Zealand is 36.5 days.
Sir John Key has the record, establishing confidence-and-supply support from three parties — Act, United Future and the Māori Party — in just three weeks in 2011.
And New Zealand is still well off the undesirable record of Belgium, which took 541 days to reach agreement on a government after its 2010 election.
One of the main selling points of the National campaign, and one which the public obviously responded positively to, was to provide a strong and stable government.
Luxon may well eventually establish that — in reality, there is plenty of time. But it has not been the start he wanted.