Coalition talks were due to resume in Auckland. Photo: RNZ
As National's negotiating team gathers in Auckland this morning, Labour's Carmel Sepuloni says the slow pace of coalition talks "speaks volumes".
Coalition talks to form the next government are resuming at a different hotel in Auckland today.
A month on from the election, and nearly two weeks after the official results were released, National leader Christopher Luxon is yet to sign an agreement with ACT and New Zealand First.
However, it has only been 13 days since the final election count - on that metric, it's just a day longer than it took in 2017 for Labour, the Greens and NZ First to strike a deal.
The deal-making took a symbolic step forward on Wednesday with Luxon meeting David Seymour and Winston Peters at the Pullman Hotel in Auckland.
Caretaker Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver
Deputy Labour Leader and caretaker deputy prime minister Carmel Sepuloni said the time it was taking to form a government spoke volumes about the coalition's future.
She told First Up the ongoing coalition talks were obviously difficult.
"We're just waiting. Waiting like the rest of the country I guess," she said.
"The time that it's taken goes to show that bringing those three parties together is not going to be easy - which I think speaks volumes for what may happen moving forward."
"But those are their negotiations and we'll just leave it up to them."
It wasn't a surprise that coalition talks were taking so long, she said.
"Absolutely thought it would take a bit of getting to. I think some of the dialogue in the lead-up to this maybe underestimated how difficult this could be - but we always knew it was going to be difficult."
ACT leader David Seymour had the previous night told RNZ's Checkpoint the meeting had been useful both for continuing the negotiations and to show progress being made.
"We certainly chatted through how the negotiations are going and what the structure of them is for the remaining time and what tasks need to be completed.
"Also I can understand having heard the people ... people want to see that we're getting on with it, I'm one of them actually, and I think it was useful for that purpose too."
Asked if Peters was holding things up he said it was a process of three people who were previously competing in an election, now seeking to cooperate.
"We can all point to things that maybe should have happened and people that should have replied or reached out or whatever, but we have made a lot of progress including today getting the three former competitors, now cooperators, in a room to form a government."
"The things you leave to last are the things that may be most difficult to resolve, and I'd just give you the caveat that I'm not party to all of the interaction between National and New Zealand First - some but not all of it.
"There are a few outstanding issues, I mean a handful, that we shall work through. We've made good progress."
Seymour said a Treaty referendum was an issue that was still being worked on but "I wouldn't say that's the major thing here, there's a range of issues".
There was some urgency behind the talks, he said, but "if you get it wrong and you don't have a stable, united government that gets stuck into the problems that people elected us to solve, I don't think anyone in two years time will thank us for having signed a document two days earlier because we rushed".
Sepuloni had represented the government at the Pacific Islands Forum in Rarotonga last week, with National's Gerry Brownlee representing the incoming government.
She had dubbed the duo "Caramel Brownie", and told First Up it was important for New Zealand to have a consistent foreign policy.
"So I was not there to scrap with Gerry, I know that I'm in a caretaker role and the main thing is to make sure he is as informed as what I have been in the roles that I have undertaken in the Pacific so that we can maintain that consistency of support, relationship and shared kaupapa that we've had over the years."
It made sense for Luxon not to attend the APEC summit in San Francisco, given he was not yet prime minister and coalition negotiations were still ongoing, she said.
