NZ to find out Peters’ choice today

A new government will be announced this afternoon when NZ First declares the result of its negotiations with National and Labour.

NZ First leader Winston Peters has spoken to both Bill English and Jacinda Ardern and, among other things, he’s told them he’ll make his decision today.

Peters didn’t front media yesterday - it is understood he left the building out a back entrance after an all-day meeting with his caucus wrapped up.

National, Labour and the Greens now need to consult their caucuses and, in the Green Party’s case, 150 party delegates, to sign off any agreement before Peters reveals his government of choice.

Earlier yesterday, Peters had said he was ’’sort of confident’’ of making a decision by the end of the week.

The NZ First leader said the party’s intentions had always been to get negotiations completed as fast as possible but to ‘‘make a decision out of haste would be a bad idea’’.

When asked by Radio Waatea yesterday whether he would meet his deadline of a decision by the end of the week, Peters said, ‘‘I am sort of confident that, all things being equal, yes, we could look forward to that being the case’’.

He went on to say that he was hesitant about putting deadlines on things because ‘‘if you miss a timetable, then you’re beleaguered by all sorts of criticism about not keeping your promise and it just doesn’t make sense for me to say that’’.

‘‘I’ve tried to sort of set timetables on the completion of negotiations and all those substantive ones were completed some time ago, but there’s work to be done on sorting out exactly with great clarity what exactly you have agreed on,’’ he told Radio Waatea.

The last thing Peters said he wanted was people saying after the fact that they hadn’t ‘‘quite agreed on that’’.

‘‘You want a document that says we had this substantive talk on issue after issue and here’s our agreement now let’s get on with it, because there’s enough surprises in politics let alone the surprises of the ones you could have overcome before the event even started,’’ Peters said.

While Peters had left it open as to when a decision might be made, Labour’s deputy Kelvin Davis was predicting the public would know the negotiations this morning.

At this stage Davis says the party is ‘‘still in the dark’’ as to ‘‘which way Winston’s going to swing’’ but the negotiation process had been ‘‘fair and robust’’.

Davis told Radio Waatea on Tuesday morning that ‘‘we’ll know in the next day or so who is going to form the next government’’.

‘‘People really need to allow the process to play out - there’s only a few - y’know 48 hours max to wait,’’ he said.

Davis has been part of the Labour negotiating team along with leader Jacinda Ardern, finance spokesman Grant Robertson and advisers including former MP Annette King, Mike Munro and chief of staff Neale Jones.

‘‘The reality is we’re deciding who the next government is going to be - that’s outcome of really serious business and a serious decision to be made.’’

‘‘This is about forming the next government - we’re not sitting around choosing which colour to paint the Beehive next time it gets done. It’s very important work and I think people just need to wait for the next few days and everything will be revealed,’’ he said.

During negotiations with NZ First, the two parties went through ‘‘policy after policy’’.

National Party leader Bill English said his caucus would meet today at 11am so he could provide MPs with an update on coalition talks.

"A separate teleconference will then take place with the National Party board. We stress that we have had no indication of what decision NZ First will make. We have no further comment at this stage," he said.