|
ACTING Prime Minister of New Zealand Helen Clark has reached agreement with minor parties to form a new Labour-led coalition government, making her the first Labour chief since World War II to win three consecutive terms as the South Pacific nation's leader.
Speaking a month after cliffhanger elections, Clark said her Labour Party would rule in a formal coalition with the Progressives while the nationalist New Zealand First and center-right United Future Parties have formally agreed to support her administration on crucial votes.
The Progressive Party has one seat, New Zealand First has seven and United Future has three.
The Green Party, which has six seats, said it would abstain in votes that could oust Clark's government while the newly formed Maori Party, with four seats, decided not to support Clark's new government.
"I have every confidence that this government ... will be durable and will enable us to offer strong progressive and stable government," Clark said.
"This government will enjoy a good majority in the parliament" with 61 votes committed to supporting it and only 50 committed to opposing it, she added.
Clark's Labour Party won 50 seats in the Sept. 17 elections, requiring it to woo several minor parties to cobble together the minimum 61 seats needed for a majority in the 121-member Parliament.
New Zealand First Party leader Winston Peters, known for his anti-immigration and protectionist policies, will become minister of foreign affairs, Clark said.
Peters was named a minister outside the Cabinet, meaning he would take on ministerial responsibilities but not participate in Cabinet meetings. Any policies Peters wants implemented will have to be approved by Clark's Cabinet.
"His views on foreign policy are very similar to those of Labour," Clark said.
Clark said she already had taken her coalition plans to Governor General Dame Silvia Cartwright, the New Zealand representative of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, for formal approval. Parliament will sit for the first time since the election in the second week of November, Clark said.
Peters, a vocal critic of Labour policy in the past, has said the nation's annual ceiling on immigrants should be slashed below 10,000, while Labour has set the figure at 45,000 as it seeks to attract skilled workers.
He said a 2004 government campaign to attract more migrants would create "another immigrant invasion" and drag New Zealand "into the status of an Asian colony."
In the September election campaign, Peters said an extremist Muslim "militant underbelly" was being allowed into New Zealand.
He last held Cabinet status as treasurer and deputy prime minister in the 1996 National Party-led coalition government of then Prime Minister Jim Bolger.
Clark defended Peters' appointment.
"His views on foreign policy are very similar to those of Labour," she said.
New Zealand's opposition National Party significantly boosted its support in the election on pledges to scrap special treatment for the country's impoverished indigenous Maori minority and slash income tax but its 48-seat bloc was not enough to topple Clark.
|