A hard task ahead for Jacinda Ardern’s new government

EVERYONE KNEW that the Labour Party would win. But even its leader, Jacinda Ardern, seemed startled by its landslide victory in New Zealand’s general election on October 17th. Ballots must still be counted from prisoners and expats, but so far Labour has mopped up 49% of the vote, compared with 27% for the main opposition, the conservative National Party. New Zealand’s proportional voting system is designed to curb the power of big parties, by making it hard for them to govern without smaller coalition partners. Yet with an absolute majority in parliament (64 seats out of 120), Labour will be able to do just that.

Although she does not need them, the prime minister is now in talks with the Green Party’s ten MPs, to find what she calls “areas of potential co-operation”. They might not enter teha full-blown coalition, but the pair could form a looser partnership whereby the Greens vote with the government on certain issues, in return for a ministerial portfolio or two, says Neale Jones, Ms Ardern’s former chief of staff. The Greens’ co-leader, James Shaw, was climate-change minister in the last government. One idea is that he could be re-appointed to that post. Such an arrangement would have the appeal of keeping criticism at bay. What is more, Labour has lots of ministerial jobs to fill, now that it has a parliamentary majority. Many...

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