Christopher Luxon has made the all-important phone call to the governor-general, informing her that he can form a government.

“On Monday I look forward to being sworn in as New Zealand’s 42nd prime minister alongside ministers from National, Act and New Zealand First who are ready to get to work to make this great country even better,” said Luxon in a tweet, alongside a cheery looking photo of him on the phone.

Act always said it was more focused on the policy, but putting that to one side for a moment, I just want to take a look at the numbers.

In recent days, David Seymour has reiterated his view that Act should be proportionately represented in cabinet based on its election results. Act received 8.6%, while NZ First got 6.1%.

Earlier in the week, Seymour told reporters: “I think proportionality’s important to democracy, it’s important to the people. Every person out there, their vote counts the same and so should their representation in a government. It’s also a fair way to do things and if there’s one thing that really resonates as a Kiwi value it’s fairness.”

He also made a pitch to be deputy prime minister alongside the same lines, and to be fair he only half lost that bid (given he will be deputy PM from May 2025).

But looking at cabinet, you can’t help but feel that Winston Peters locked in the better deal. There are three ministers from Act and three from New Zealand First inside cabinet – the same number, despite NZ First’s lower performance on election night. Outside cabinet, Act picked up an additional two ministers, while NZ First grabbed one.

And while Seymour secured his desired regulation portfolio, Peters has grabbed foreign affairs and the first 18 months of deputy prime minister, while Shane Jones has three portfolios and Casey Costello two. Brooke van Velden looks like Act’s biggest winner, as internal affairs and workplace relations minister.

Read more: The coalition deal at a glance

At a meeting yesterday, Auckland councillors decided not to fund transport infrastructure as part of the sale of the council’s Downtown Carpark. As the name suggests, it’s a carpark in central Auckland, close to the Britomart train station and the waterfront. The carpark will continue operating until at least 2025, as the purchaser decides how to develop it. Working in tandem with Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, developer Precinct Properties wants to create a “mixed use precinct” featuring residential, office and hospitality space.

There was some acrimony and argument over the sale, with councillors Mike Lee, Christine Fletcher, Wayne Walker and John Watson questioning why public submissions from carpark supporters were not allowed by mayor Wayne Brown.

There were also questions over the decision to abandon a $28m bike, scooter and bus hub as part of the development, which was proposed as part of the initial sale agreement. “I was elected to stop wasting money on stupid stuff like that, so I am happy we have been able to knock it on the head,” Brown said in a press release. The previous council had agreed to sell the carpark three years ago.

There are more than 12,000 parking spaces within a nine-minute walk, and the current occupancy of the carpark, which is cheaper than many other parking options in the area, is about 47%. 200 short-stay carparks will remain on the site.

The formalities have wrapped up at parliament, with revelations New Zealand will soon have two deputy prime ministers (well, sort of, Winston Peters until May 2025 and then David Seymour).

That was one of the major bombshells in the newly unveiled coalition deal – you can scroll through our live blog here.

Also confirmed:

• NZ First has successfully argued for the removal of National’s planned foreign buyers tax, which was campaigned on as a way to fund the party’s tax relief package.
• The “partnership schools” or charter schools programme will be reintroduced, with a policy to allow state schools to become partnership schools.
• David Seymour will be the minister for regulation and a law, the Regulatory Standards Act, will be passed to “ensure that regulatory decisions are based on principles of good law-making and economic efficiency”.
• The public sector will be shrunk back to 2017 levels “by reducing non-essential back office functions”.
• The ban on cold medicine containing pseudoephedrine will be lifted.
• Stop first year Fees Free and replace with a final year Fees Free with no change before 2025.
• Keep the superannuation age at 65.
• Require the public service departments and Crown Entities to communicate primarily in English – except those entities specifically related to Māori.

The full rundown of key policies and ministerial postings can be found here.

In short, at 11am. That’s when we’ll here from the leaders of National, Act and New Zealand First and watch as they gather round to sign the all-important coalition documents.

From there, we’ll learn the details of the coalition agreement – what has survived and what hasn’t – and later in the day we’ll learn who has picked up ministerial warrants.

If you want to keep up with the day’s developments, follow along with our live blog which you will find here. It will have all the details, including insights from our Wellington editor Joel MacManus, as we ready to welcome the new government.

Food is everywhere and inescapable, which is why we at The Spinoff are launching an ambitious fundraising campaign to support an equally ambitious new editorial project: What’s eating Aotearoa?

Here’s The Spinoff’s editor Madeleine Chapman:

With a brand new government set to be announced today after a long election campaign centred around the cost of living, there’ll be a lot of threads to follow in 2024. We want to pull all of them.

We want to spend 2024 focused on all the ways food intersects culture, business and climate change. From the supermarket duopoly to local producers to the hospitality sector to the conditions that lead to food poverty, from liquor licensing to diet culture and government reform to gastronomical delight.

Food is at the heart of our most joyful moments, and yet, it’s a source of anxiety and shame for many.

What’s eating Aotearoa will be an ambitious editorial project focused on producing longform and accessible journalism.

We need your help to raise $75,000 on PledgeMe, with an initial goal of $50,000.

We’ve got the whole team around the table to create rewards to thank you for any support you can give us. Exclusive access, opportunities, rare Spinoff merch and recommendations. Whether you’re after a lunch with Duncan Greive, a hamper of snacks ranked by me, a beer list curated by Alice Neville or a vintage Spinoff tea towel (circa 2019), there should be something for most, if not all, Spinoff fans.

Read more about the campaign here and support The Spinoff here.

Could a South Island cherry farm set the standard for an electric future? On this week’s episode of When the Facts Change, Mike Casey from Rewiring Aotearoa joins Bernard Hickey to discuss what it took to make the switch from running his cherry farm on fossil fuels to renewable electricity. He also explains the ways in which going electric will save our homes, farms and small businesses thousands each year.

A pause in fighting in Gaza will begin at 7am local time on Friday (6pm NZT) and the first hostages will be released that afternoon, Hamas has confirmed. The four-day ceasefire will commence a day later than originally announced, after last-minute negotiations over the details of the deal. Thirteen hostages are expected to be released by Hamas today, with dozens more people set to be released by militants during the ceasefire along with some Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

A Hamas statement says Israeli “prisoners, women and children under the age of 19, will be released”, with an agreement that three Palestinian prisoners, including women and children, would be released for every Israeli. In addition, 200 trucks containing medical supplies would be brought into Gaza on a daily basis, along with four trucks containing fuel and cooking gas, the Guardian reports.

Want to read The Bulletin in full? Click here to subscribe and join over 39,000 New Zealanders who start each weekday with the biggest stories in politics, business, media and culture. 

More organisations have today been targeted by what police have called “concerning emails”, but it’s believed there is no actual threat.

A number of organisations, including hospitals and schools, first received the emails and reported them to police yesterday.

“As noted yesterday, police are confident that the emails being received are from the same source, and we do not believe there is any actual threat to the organisations receiving the emails,” said a statement.

“However we ask that organisations who receive the emails continue to report them to police, to assist in our ongoing enquiries to identify the origin of the emails.”

The year started with a policy bonfire, and it’s looking to end with one as well.

Outgoing prime minister Chris Hipkins put his stamp on the Labour leadership, and hoped to recoup some of his party’s lost support, by starting his tenure with a major reshuffle of the policy agenda. As I reported at the time, that included discarding costly proposals like the TVNZ-RNZ merger.

With the coalition deal ready to be signed today, and the new government set to get to work on December 5, we’re in for another major readjustment of policy in time for Christmas.

The Herald’s Thomas Coughlan has laid out some of what the new government will want to discard quickly. It includes ditching the outgoing government’s reforms of the Resource Management Act and returning to the old system (with a promise to introduce their own new RMA sometime in this term of office). The so-called “ute tax”, also known as the clean car fee, is also expected to be on the scrapheap this side of Christmas.

With coalition talks dragging on for 40 days, making it the longest time to form a government since 1996, the incoming administration will not have long to draw up a policy programme for the next month. According to The Post’s Luke Malpass, the time it took to wrap up this week was not just because of debate over who would be deputy prime minister, but over positions including agriculture and attorney-general.

For now: here is what we do know about today. At 11am, the formal signing ceremony will take place after which, as Newshub’s Jenna Lynch put it, the “cone of silence” around the deal will disappear. Later in the day, we’ll learn which portfolio has been picked up by each party in the coalition.

Tomorrow is the Port Waikato byelection, meaning there won’t be a lot of action from the new government but Luxon said parliament offices would be getting set up. And on Monday, all going to plan, the swearing in will take place.