Government in Scotland is about to get much more complicated. Where the past two administrations have seen straightforward coalition between two parties, it is unlikely the next four years will see anything so simple.

Government in Scotland is about to get much more complicated. Where the past two administrations have seen straightforward coalition between two parties, it is unlikely the next four years will see anything so simple.

Labour and the LibDems negotiated binding partnership agreements, with hundreds of policies that they promised to support over the four-year term of each parliament.

Now, other possibilities are opening up with a partnership of at least three parties now required to reach a majority.

Greens are keen on a "confidence-and-supply" model of government, in which the smaller party backs the larger one if the leader is challenged to a no confidence' vote, and also agrees to vote through the budget on agreed conditions. All other votes are up for discussion.

One place that has lots to teach the new Scottish political system is New Zealand, even if it was also the country that set the calamitous example of the ballot form that more than 100,000 people failed to understand when they voted last Thursday.

The present coalition in the Wellington legislature has Prime Minister Helen Clark leading a minority government coalition with her own Labour Party in agreement with the Progressive Party. To make up numbers and secure a majority, there is confidence-and-supply support from two small parties.

The leader of one of them, New Zealand First, is the country's Foreign Minister, while the leader of United Future is the Minister of Revenue. Yet neither man sits in the cabinet.

Further support comes from the NZ Green Party, which has no ministerial post but used its leverage to secure policy concessions from Labour on energy and transport.

A Scottish expert on this is Margaret Curran, who went to New Zealand to find out more. But it looks increasingly unlikely that the Scottish Labour Parliament Minister will have a chance to put the lessons into effect.