But when the law was introduced into Parliament it had the signoff from Cabinet which is a coalition sense would ordinarily mean the deal's done and dusted.
This is Labour's signature policy, its trade union backers are insisting on having more power in the workplace but if you read between the lines there's still a lot i's to be dotted and t's to be crossed in the small print.
The Prince of the Provinces, moneybags Shayne Jones has never made any secret of his dislike for the new law. He's made it pretty clear it's not in its final form yet, even though it's back before Parliament the way it was originally written. Jones said "let's just wait and see what has eventuated from the interplay between the coalition leaders."
His boss Winston Peters is as usual being slippery about the prospect of change saying the bill when it finally passes into law will have their support which falls short of saying he's happy with the way it stands at the moment.
And his boss Jacinda Ardern's come up with a new phrase to describe where it's at, like all legislation, it's going through she says an "iterative process," reminding us that "they work well together." Now that process in these circumstances is a little difficult to define but in a literal sense it means it's "a process for calculating a desired result by means of a repeated cycle of operations."
Don't know about you, but on this one that would seem to mean they're going around in ever diminishing circles.
