Who governs New Zealand if the election ends in a deadlock?

The rule in New Zealand is to form a government, to be able to run the country, you need to have an absolute majority in the House of Representatives on certain issues.

They're called confidence and supply.

But basically you need more MPs on your side than are on the opposition side.

And because New Zealand has a House of Parliament with only 120 MPs in it, That means you could have a situation where you get one block of parties with 60 MPs and another block of parties with 60 MPs.

And that means no one has an absolute majority.

And in that situation, if you don't have an absolute majority, you can't form a government.

Neither side is able to actually take over the reins of government and govern.

And so that's what we call a hung parliament because it's, you know, I'm not quite sure of the derivation, but essentially you're stuffed, right? You're not able to govern the country on that basis.

And because, as I say, we have this set up where we've chosen to have 120 MPs in our parliament, that's always a possibility with the 60-60 split each way.

Is there an argument that we should have, I don't know, 121 seats instead?

So I was part of a independent electoral review.

We put out a report three years ago now, seems like forever, where we said that's one of the changes should get made to our electoral system to always have an odd number of seats in the House.

So you just don't have this risk because, yeah, I mean, as long as you've got even number, it's a risk.

It might be a small risk at any particular election, but it's always there.

The rule in New Zealand is to form a government, to be able to run the country, you need to have an absolute majority in the House of Representatives on certain issues.

They're called confidence and supply.

But basically you need more MPs on your side than are on the opposition side.

And because New Zealand has a House of Parliament with only 120 MPs in it, That means you could have a situation where you get one block of parties with 60 MPs and another block of parties with 60 MPs.

And that means no one has an absolute majority.

And in that situation, if you don't have an absolute majority, you can't form a government.

Neither side is able to actually take over the reins of government and govern.

And so that's what we call a hung parliament because it's, you know, I'm not quite sure of the derivation, but essentially you're stuffed, right? You're not able to govern the country on that basis.

And because, as I say, we have this set up where we've chosen to have 120 MPs in our parliament, that's always a possibility with the 60-60 split each way.

Is there an argument that we should have, I don't know, 121 seats instead?

So I was part of a independent electoral review.

We put out a report three years ago now, seems like forever, where we said that's one of the changes should get made to our electoral system to always have an odd number of seats in the House.

So you just don't have this risk because, yeah, I mean, as long as you've got even number, it's a risk.

It might be a small risk at any particular election, but it's always there.