The provisional state of the parties in the 120 seat parliament is:

National 58,  Labour 45, NZ First 9, Greens 7, ACT (David Seymour) 1

Special votes could make a difference of 1 seat as happened in 2014 (in favour of the Greens at the expense of National). David Seymour of ACT is there to support National.  Which leaves National 2 seats short, possibly 3, and a coalition with NZ First is probable as Winston Peters did this in 1996. That will hopefully mean a ban on 1080 poison, a curbing of the undue influence of the Road Transport Forum in favour of the movement of freight by rail, and a big reduction in the numbers of immigrants.

Jacinda Ardern has made a remarkable improvement to Labour’s showing: from 25% of the vote in 2014 to 36%.  It’s likely that she has a good chance of being the next PM after Bill English — if that’s in 2020, she’ll still be the youngest PM that NZ has had at 40 (David Lange so far has been the youngest at just short of 42 when he was elected).

We have three pieces of advice for her:

1. The best solutions to problems are not always the government throwing money at them.  This is particularly true in health.  What is needed is close scrutiny of how money is allocated and spent. She only needs to look at what’s happened with Kapiti council mismanagement under Mr Dougherty where there has been a huge increase in taxing and spending, but instead of public amenties it has gone on an army of bureaucrats and on vast over-payments for consultants and contractors; in other words “jobs for the boys”.
2. People working together can achieve significant improvements in services without significant recourse to public money.  Look at how much volunteer firefighters, community patrolers, nature enhancers and community beautifiers do in Waikanae!
3. People do not like taxes on water!  Again she only needs to look at Kapiti where two mayors in a row have been defeated because of it.