Seriously, 131 MPs? There literally aren't enough seats for them in parliament

Here's the plan for more furniture in the chamber.

We're going to need a bigger boat. Preliminary results in the 2026 election, with an overhang here and an overhang there, have served up a parliament of 131. That's 11 more than the default size of 120, and eight more than the previous peak MP population.

That is bound to raise various constitutional questions, but also a more practical challenge: where on earth are we going to put them all? You just need to glance at the current debating chamber to see that, frankly, there's no obvious place to unfold a deckchair.

The good news is that the custodians of the house have been thinking about this for a while now, the Office of the Clerk, David Wilson, told The Spinoff during the campaign. His team and the Parliamentary Service have been exploring the options.

“We can currently fit 124 MPs, including one for the speaker,” Wilson said. “Work is happening now to see what we could do. We need to be ready for it.” 

While some have predicted that negotiations could bump the resumption of parliament into the new year, the reality is it could convene as soon as early December, following the return of the writ. “We’ve got to be ready for December 3rd,” said Wilson.

The existing house is “quite restrictive because of the style of pairs of seats, each with their own desks”, said Wilson. They can’t push the front benches closer together – each side must be separated by two-and-a-half sword lengths, obviously. 

There was hope they could “fit in a couple of seats”, he said. They were already working towards making some parts of the seating arrangement “modular”, in order to accommodate wheelchair users. But they were also looking at something more dramatic: benches. 

Though we refer in New Zealand to frontbenchers and backbenchers, we do not have the literal benches you’ll see in the UK House of Commons, from which we inherited that terminology, along with so much of our parliamentary structure and pageantry (that sword thing included). 

Our MPs sit in comparative luxury, what with their plump leather seats, decadent armrests and ornate rimu desks. And they get one each. In the lower house at Westminster, even when tightly squeezed, there is only room for about two-thirds of the 650 MPs. On a busy day it’s standing room only.

There is no plan to emulate that musical chair situation in the New Zealand chamber. They could, however, “convert some to bench-style seats, like in the House of Commons, potentially without desks”.

MPs would still get a place apiece – and it was worth remembering, Wilson pointed out, that only rarely, such as at the state opening or question times, was the house anything like full. 

As for the important matters of carpentry and upholstery, Wilson said the buildings team has a preferred furniture maker equipped for the task.

And if at times it does get too tight, there’s always the stopgap of stackable plastic chairs, which do come in an elegant parliamentary green, for less than the price of a pint.

This is an updated version of a story originally published on October 28.