RODNEY HIDE: One table, one agreement

David Seymour wants "one game plan, one coalition agreement." He argued for the same in 2023. He is right.

In 2023 National signed one deal with ACT and another with New Zealand First. Each partner had to agree to the other's, with an agree-to-disagree clause. It was a halfway house. National sat in the middle, the only party that could see the whole picture.

That is how we have always done it. The big party negotiates with each smaller one in turn and keeps the talks apart. It suits the big party. It can tell one partner the other won't wear it. It can trade them off.

In 2008 I was fortunate enough to negotiate ACT's agreement with National. All the way along I was always talking to the Maori Party. We knew where each other stood, what was being offered, and National couldn't play us off against each other. That worked because we made it work. It is no substitute for one table and one document.

And the numbers now are nothing like 2008. That year ACT and the Maori Party had five seats. National had 58. In 2011 and 2014 the support parties had five seats and then four. National could afford to run it from the middle. The partners were small.

This year, on the preliminary count, ACT has 13 seats and New Zealand First 12. That is 25, against National's 42. Partners that size are not add-ons to be managed one at a time. A government like that needs one set of rules, agreed by all three.

It is how it's done overseas. In Germany the parties negotiate one coalition contract together. In 2021 the three parties produced 177 pages and each party ratified it. In the Netherlands the parties write one agreement after an independent go-between tests which combination can work. In Ireland in 2020 three parties agreed one Programme for Government, and each party's members had to approve it.

For Sweden's Tidö agreement of 2022 four parties of the right signed one document, including the Sweden Democrats, who stayed outside government. Nobody could be played off.

Separate deals make New Zealand the odd one out.

One agreement gives a stronger government. ACT and New Zealand First would have to settle their differences in the document, not over three years in Cabinet. Seymour says the coalition "barely survived" the last term. With one text, all three are bound by the same words. There's no side deal and no excuse that you never saw the other agreement. Voters get one document to judge the government by.

It may take longer. National won't love it, because the old way makes it the broker. Winston Peters has always preferred one on one. But the fights it brings forward would have come anyway, later and in public.

If they want a government that lasts the term, and sets them up well for 2029, they should sit at one table and write it once.

Rodney Hide is a former Minister and ACT Party leader