ACT leader David Seymour leaves NZ First's offices after a brief meeting with Winston Peters. Photo: RNZ / Craig McCulloch
There's been a short second meeting between the leaders of the two parties negotiating to form a government with National as momentum builds towards a final deal.
Late Thursday afternoon New Zealand First leader Winston Peters went over to ACT's parliamentary offices for their first face-to-face meeting - a significant step forward in the talks.
On Friday morning ACT leader David Seymour dropped into the Treasury, where NZ First has temporary offices, for a quick visit.
Emerging about 10 minutes later, Seymour said he was "very happy" and had got "a lot of very useful things done in a short space of time".
"We've left early because we've done exactly what we hoped to do."
When trying to leave, he and chief of staff Andrew Ketels found themselves temporarily trapped without swipe card access to activate the doors. A laughing Seymour joked, "As negotiating tactics go, that's hardball."
Prior to the meeting, Seymour told RNZ talks were in a "positive place".
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"Oh, I'm just going to see a man about a horse," he said.
"Obviously, you can have lots of discussions, but you've still got to trade off what the final agreement looks like.
"I think we're getting closer to that stage... obviously, everyone's saying they want it to happen faster but in a three way negotiation, no one individually has the power to determine the outcome or the timing."
He described their meeting on Thursday as "really congenial and also promising".
"We both recognise that there are some pretty big problems in New Zealand, that's why the people voted for change and they want us to deliver it.
"So whether or not that's the configuration that any of us might have chosen beforehand, in an election of democracy, the will of the voter is king and queen and that's what we respect and work to."
The next crucial step will be all three parties getting together to see the deal as a whole.
"A triangle has three sides," he said. "So you've got to be committed to supporting what both of the parties' agenda is and otherwise mathematically it just doesn't work.
"So that all has to be worked through and I wish I could go through blow-by-blow but the other folks have agreed that they're not going to go through everything in great detail, blow-by-blow, and we have to respect that too."
NZ First second-in-command Shane Jones said this morning he personally was "not involved in any three-way assignations today".
"Have patience, it's all in the Bible," he said.
Policy discussions were all under a cone of silence, he said.
"It'll soon be revealed, I know people may be anxious. Yesterday I said Shakespeare, today it's in the Bible."
He made reference to Galatians, a section of the Bible which relates Paul's plea to a group of Jewish Christians to follow universal teachings, rather than the Jewish Torah.
National Party deputy Nicola Willis, entering through the back of Parliament in the late morning, had little to say about how things were progressing.
"It's great that we're making progress in the discussions... we'll be delivering tax relief."
Once a final deal is struck, each party then has to carry out formal consultations with their own people.
Seymour says the ACT constitution requires that the caucus must consult "the board who represent the party members before entering into agreement".
"We also have a caucus, people that are committing to work hard for three years, and whatever bed we make they have to lie in and so obviously we need to keep them involved in that process too."
