New Zealand’s Luxon Signals New Government Could Form Next Week
(Bloomberg) -- New Zealand’s incoming prime minister, Christopher Luxon, is optimistic a new government will be formed within days of the release of final election results on Nov. 3.
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“We won’t be able to do it exactly on Friday, but we’re going to move as quickly as we can in the coming week,” Luxon told NewstalkZB on Wednesday. “We’ve been working really diligently, all parties involved. I think we are making progress.”
Luxon’s National Party won 39% of the vote at the Oct. 14 election and on preliminary counting would be able to form a center-right government with ally the ACT Party. But their slim majority may evaporate in the final results, which include more than 560,000 special votes that often favor the center-left parties.
Accordingly, Luxon has included the centrist New Zealand First Party in his talks.
Luxon said talks were more advanced than a week ago, but he wouldn’t commit to a time-frame for announcing the details.
“There’s a good intention from all leaders to progress this as quickly as possible,” he said. “We’ve worked every day diligently to progress the arrangements and the relationships. We will still have some stuff to nail out, but we’ve made tremendous progress considering we haven’t had a final vote count. We all understand the urgency. The country needs to get sorted.”
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