Kerre Woodham: Where do we go from here?

And here we are, right back where we started on Friday. I hope you had a wonderful weekend and you got along and voted. We went as a family on Saturday and there was a sausage sizzle at the local school and it was all very straightforward. Showed my voter card, my smart voter card on my phone and in we went and all went off and did our own thing really.

I think there was one clear winner on Saturday night and that would be the pollsters. They got it bang to rights all the way through. I took some screenshots of polls leading into election night just to see and they were pretty much bang to rights. People are fed up with the two main parties, Opportunity was always going to get in and too close to call between the right and left blocks.

The second winner for me on the night and I don't want to blow smoke up his designer jeans, but I have to say Mike and Barry and Maurice and the team who put together the election night coverage did a fantastic job. And I guess that's what it comes down to is that ultimately election coverage is a radio job. There's nothing to see until the leaders' speeches and that's much, much later in the night. In the absence of anything to see, if you're a television channel, you manufacture things to see, like panels. And then everybody sits there and has their reckons and fills in time until the votes start coming in and the seats start coming in thick and fast.

And really, I think the telly coverage is all a bit forced and manufactured. Radio with pictures, we watched it on YouTube. The ads were annoying, yes, but then you could always sign up to be a YouTube premium watcher, but the ads were a little bit annoying, but I much preferred that because if there's one thing Mike Hosking knows how to do, it's radio. And that's what election coverage should be, on the radio really. And I think no discredit to the presenters of the different television shows, they were just doing what they do best, standing there and trying to present a show, but when there's nothing to see, what is the point of television?

Anyway, however you saw it or heard it or what have you, the results are in and none of us is really any the wiser as Chris Hipkins put it so beautifully.
Tonight New Zealand has spoken. It may take us a little bit longer to figure out exactly what it is that you've said.

Brilliantly put. Winston Peters also sounded a note of caution. He's not his first rodeo, is it? Hey?
A lot of people are getting carried away right here, right now about what the outcome means. It'd be very wise if they held their counsel for a bit longer.

Well, quite. Qiulae Wong, Opportunity, they were the story of the election really.
You have voted to change New Zealand politics for good. I cannot express how grateful I am to all of you that have put your faith in us tonight.

And the Greens, they had a good night.
Tonight you made history. This is the biggest result the Green Party has ever achieved. And tonight we are also seeing an historic Green wave in the Māori seats and Māori support.

Yes, and before Chloe starts throwing her weight around about rigging elections, maybe she should have a long, hard look at just how the Greens did so well. And for Christopher Luxon, yet again it was a win that wasn't a win that was almost a win but was also a loss.

Some of the hardest phone calls tonight have been to colleagues and friends who look unlikely to make it back into Parliament. And in particular, I'm thinking of our most incredible deputy leader, Nicola Willis. I want to thank you, Nicola, for your dedication, for your determination and for your years of service to our party and this great country of ours. I'm also thinking of my friends Paul Goldsmith and Gerry Brownlee, Melissa Lee, Nancy Lu and Vanessa Weenink who've also missed out tonight.

So yes, where do we go from here? They'll cobble together some sort of government depending on the results. We're waiting for the specials that do tend to go left, but all of the pundits are saying it would have to be every single one of the specials would have to before anything would change. Probably National will cobble together a coalition that will be much the same as we had last time except they'll be just a little bit more demanding, I imagine New Zealand First and ACT because they've got a few more votes.

I did think Shane Jones was sounding very statesmanlike when he was saying people have said to him very, very clearly that they want less of the squabbling. People are fed up. And I think you can certainly look at the election, look at the results for the parties, look at the low voter turnout. Maurice Williamson had us all thinking it was the most amazing and the biggest and a record turnout.

Apparently the Electoral Commission got the numbers wrong on the website, but I was thinking, wow, well there you go, people are obviously really engaged in whatever side they want, they know they have to get out and vote. No. No. We did have a very, very good rate of enrolment, 93.7% of the population were registered to vote, but only 74.6 chose to cast their vote. Voter suppression again, Chloe cool your jets. There were 3.7 people enrolled to vote.

The fact that only 74.6% of them chose to cast a vote means that unless the voters were held at gunpoint inside their homes, there was no suppression of voting. How absurd is that? They just couldn't be asked. They were uninspired, completely and utterly uninspired by what the parties had to offer. Helen Clark has called for a thorough review into New Zealand's electoral system, looking specifically at campaign funding and disenfranchising enrolment changes. Should we look into whether vote splitting should be allowed? Should we go back to voting on the day? I don't think so.

I like the fact that people have to take it seriously and understand that there's an election coming up and they have to vote. They have to think about it. Campaign funding, well Opportunity benefited enormously from campaign funding. It was certainly ACT does a good job at getting money into the into the war chests, maybe. But the vote splitting, yeah, I don't think we're going to put up with having 130 MPs in Parliament, are we? Maybe we should be looking at that. But it's both sides that did it, both the left block and the right block. Te Pāti Māori started it, the Greens certainly benefited from it as referenced by Marama. Harry Mowbray, well a bit of thanks would be nice. You've had your moment in the sunshine.

I don't know. I think both National and Labour need a major refresh, a major refresh. They cannot rely on old party loyalties, they cannot rely on history. They have to make themselves modern and relevant, otherwise they will die. They will just become a footnote in history. Should both Chrises keep their jobs? It'll be hard to get rid of whoever leads the next government, very hard to get rid of somebody who is the Prime Minister, but I give the one who forms the government 18 months. I give the one who doesn't about enough time to clean out his desk. And which way should Opportunity go?

I'm kind with the pundits who think they should go on the cross benches and learn the ropes, learn where the loos are before they start throwing their political weight around.

LISTEN ABOVE