Labour will lead NZ Government

New Zealand is getting a new government! Tonight Winston Peters announced he was going into formal coalition with the New Zealand Labour Party. His party will get some minsterial positions in Cabinet. The Green Party will have a confidence and supply agreement with Labour, and will have four ministers outside of cabinet, plus an undersecretary. This will be the first time the Green Party will have had MPs serving as government ministers.

The announcement came late this evening, and the reactions of the other leaders were later still. I decided to try and find the videos of all the main leaders, but couldn’t find two of them. It’s getting late, and I was actually feeling a little under the weather this evening. So, tomorrow I’ll talk in more detail about all of this.

For now, I’ll share the first two party leaders to speak to the newsmedia, Winston Peters making his announcement, and also Prime Minister-elect Jacinda Ardern acknowledging that. Both videos are cued to the start of their remarks, which are followed by questions from the newsmedia.

If I can find the other two—Caretaker Prime Minister Bill English and Green Party Leader James Shaw, I’ll share them tomorrow. Regardless, I’ll go into more detail about this and what I make of it all. However, right now I will say that I’m very pleased with this arrangement, and it can mean great things for New Zealand.

The graphic up top was posted to Twitter by the New Zealand Herald, and linked to their story on the events tonight.