Don't know if any one mentioned it thus far but the NZ election took place with the expected result that the centre left emerged triumphant. Full results are at http://www.electionresults.govt.nz/partystatus.html but the guts of the matter is as follows;
Labour, (centre left) 38.9% vote 52 seats Alliance, (left) 7.8% vote 11 seats National, (centre right) 30.7 % vote 41 seats ACT, (right) 7 % vote 9 seats Greens, (hippy tree huggers) 4.9% no seats NZ first, (centre popularist) 4.3% vote 6 seats.
So we get a Labour/Alliance coalition with 63 seats out of 120. You might note that NZ first got less votes than the greens but gets six seats, this is due to NZ first winning an electorate seat and hence not being subject to the 5% cut off. The Greens might still get into parliament as not all votes cast get counted on election night (people voting outside their electorate etc) so if the greens can scrap up another 0.1% of the total vote or win a seat (which they are close to doing) then there will be some change round in the allocation of seats but the Labour/Alliance coalition will remain victorious ( the greens would probably support them at any rate). There where many sad little tory faces on the telly as this result became clear - ha fucking ha, with any luck its going to be a long miserable time for the new right. cheers Bill Cochrane