Peter Dunne: How coalition negotiations work

Of Interest

After the 2014 election, Peter Dunne got a phone call from Prime Minister John Key to say National wouldn’t need the support of United Future to form a Government.

The same call was made to the Act and Māori parties, which had also signed confidence and supply agreements after the 2011 election.

Key invited all three parties to stay in the tent, if they wanted, but said there wouldn’t be any policy concessions or negotiations. They took the deal.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” Dunne said, in an interview for interest.co.nz's Of Interest podcast.

“About 10 days later, the specials came in and National had lost a couple of seats, and its outright majority, and suddenly realised they had a problem”.

Key and his team came back to the three parties and asked to renegotiate the newly-signed confidence and supply agreements into a more substantial and specific arrangement.

Dunne, and the others, refused: “I said, no, we've got a signed piece of paper here”.

“National, ended up in the worst of all worlds. It had supply partners they hadn't conceded anything to. All it was getting from us was confidence and supply. Everything else had to be negotiated case by case”.

“If they'd been a little less impatient, and waited till the specials they could have got better deals”.

This memory might be a factor in why National and New Zealand First have been holding out for the final vote count. The numbers might shift around in unpredictable ways.

Once the special votes are reported, Dunne thinks a Government could form quite quickly.

He said it was partly Christopher Luxon’s leadership style. But also because Parliament has to sit by mid-December, and the National won’t want that to happen under a caretaker government.

The National leader’s message, that he would not provide blow-by-blow commentary on the negotiations, was more directed at Winston Peters than at the media.

“I thought he was also sending a pretty clear warning to Act and New Zealand First: don't you either.”

“Because, if you look at New Zealand First's track record, they like to control negotiations, they like to be the ones that sort of indicate where things are at”.

It was an “unedifying spectacle” in 1996 and 2017 when Jim Bolger and Jacinda Ardern found out they would be Prime Minister, only when Peters announced it on live television.

“The bronze medal winner shouldn't tell the gold and silver medals who they are. I think Luxon is trying to guard against all that sort of thing happening again”.

Listen to the rest of the interview for more insight into negotiating a coalition.

*You can find all episodes of the Of Interest podcast here.