NZ First adamant it is not in Government

Peter Brown

New Zealand First's MPs will seek to sit on the opposition benches in Parliament, despite their leader Winston Peters being the new Foreign Minister.

The party has agreed to support Labour on crucial confidence votes but NZ First deputy leader Peter Brown said today the party did not see itself as part of the Government.

"There will be plenty of issues where we will oppose the Government, so we don't think we should be sitting together," he said.

In the last Parliament, National, NZ First, Act and the Greens all sat on the benches opposite the Government.

With National winning 48 seats at the last election there will not be enough space for all those parties.

Mr Brown said although the Greens planned to abstain from giving the Government confidence and supply votes, he believed NZ First should have first call to sit on the opposition benches.

"The Greens campaigned on supporting a Labour-led government and have said they could not support National, so we think they should sit with the Government."

Mr Brown said he did not see it as a problem that Mr Peters would have to answer questions relating to his ministerial portfolios on behalf of the Government.

"Winston is a minister outside Cabinet and I'm sure he can handle questions from anywhere in the House."

But Greens co-leader Rod Donald said today NZ First's desire to sit away from the Government was outrageous.

He said NZ First and United Future were supporting the Government on confidence votes, whereas the Greens were not.

Therefore those two parties should be sitting alongside the Government, not the Greens.

"It is the height of arrogance for NZ First to effectively veto the Greens involvement in the Government and then claim that we sit as part of the Government, while they who have taken a ministerial position sit in opposition," he said.

"It's very devious of them to take a ministerial post and then claim they are not part of the Government."

Ultimately the Speaker has the power to decide where the parties sit. However, the Speaker usually tries to organise the seating arrangements through consultation and agreement among the parties.

There is no Speaker until one is elected when Parliament sits again on November 7.

Mr Donald said that could mean MPs would have to sit in some sort of temporary arrangement when Parliament sits again.

When there were similar problems in 2002, MPs sat in broad alphabetical order when Parliament first met.

Meanwhile, Mr Brown said reports that NZ First had asked for ministerial posts from Prime Minister Helen Clark during government-forming negotiations were untrue.

He said Helen Clark had suggested ministerial posts as a "sweetener" when she invited NZ First to give Labour a positive vote on confidence and supply.

There had then been a two-way discussion about what posts outside Cabinet would be appropriate.

- NZPA