By AUDREY YOUNG and NZPA
Only two of 25 MPs made ministers yesterday used the Bible to swear their oaths at Government House in Wellington.
The Alliance leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Jim Anderton, and Maori Affairs Minister Dover Samuels placed their right hand on the Bible to swear their oath of allegiance to the Queen, ending in the familiar phrase "so help me God."
All the others in the Labour-Alliance Coalition, including Prime Minister Helen Clark, solemnly affirmed their intent instead, without reference to God.
The four Maori ministers, including Mr Samuels, recited their oaths and allegiances in Maori as well as English.
Before that happened, the Governor-General, Sir Michael Hardie Boys, asked a relaxed Helen Clark if she could form a Government.
She said she could and he said he was satisfied she could, given the statements of parties and the coalition agreement signed on Monday between Labour and the Alliance.
Labour heads the minority Government with 59 seats of 120. But the seven Green MPs have pledged their unconditional support in the first confidence vote in February.
An hour before the swearing-in, National leader Jenny Shipley took her last drive in the prime ministerial limousine (numberplate CR1) to tender her resignation.
She returned to Parliament in another ministerial limo, to which she will still have access both as Leader of the Opposition and, for life, as a former Prime Minister.
Looking less comfortable in their first limo ride were Alliance ministers Laila Harre and Matt Robson.
Former Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer watched the proceedings, a guest of the new Attorney-General, Margaret Wilson.
Labour and Alliance ministers mixed and joked easily.
The formalities had a greater air of ease about them than the swearing-in of the last coalition cabinet, the National-New Zealand First team of 1996.
The new cabinet will meet on Monday afternoon. New ministers have the weekend free to contemplate a move into the much-despised Beehive.
Centre-left and centre-right files and furniture cross paths this weekend, as movers lug Labour and the Alliance into the corridors of power left vacant by the defeated National Government.
On Monday, ministers will walk into Beehive offices occupied by their political foes for nine years.
But their proud steps may falter, their chests marginally deflate, when they see their new surroundings.
Helen Clark and her staff this week checked out the seat of power, on the ninth floor of the drab and outdated Beehive.
Renovated when Jim Bolger was PM, her suite was in good shape. But the rest of the floor left long Labour faces.
The much-loathed brown carpet is threadbare, with power and computer cords held in place by sticky tape.
Labour MPs leave behind them the plush carpets and stunning native-timber trimmings of Parliament House, upgraded four years ago for $160 million to meet earthquake standards.
Alliance MPs must abandon the spectacular city and sea views of the Bowen House office block, across the road from Parliament but connected by a tunnel with a mobile walkway.
Parliamentary staff have spent this week packing boxes that will be moved.
But flux in the fortunes of Parliament's seven parties as special votes were counted over the past two weeks has caused accommodation headaches.
First there were no Green MPs. Ten days later there were six. Now there are seven. Plans for Labour, the Alliance, National and NZ First had to be changed as they lost seats to the latecomers.
Then NZ First turned the headaches into a thudding migraine.
In Winston Peters' latest last stand, his party has refused to leave Parliament House for its new home across the road in Bowen House.
Ministerial Services and the Parliamentary Service, who are in charge of the reshuffle, were working frantically yesterday to get the move started on time.
Both Act and United remain in the same offices, with Act having to squeeze in one more MP than it had last term.
The Greens, who have pledged their support to the incoming Government on confidence and money supply, are staying in Bowen House.
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