'Is Winston Peters undermining you at the moment?' Jack Tame's curly question to Jacinda Ardern gets curt response: 'No'

Jacinda Ardern hit back today at recent murmurs Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters is working to undermine her.

"No," the Prime Minister replied curtly as TVNZ1 Breakfast host Jack Tame posed the question to her this morning, her smile quickly disappearing from a joke moments earlier. "Sorry, do you have another question?"

The answer comes after a speech over the weekend that was touted as a major announcement of the coalition Government's 30-year goals.

But not much new was said in the speech, political analyst Bryce Edwards told Breakfast yesterday. The real reason for it, he surmised, was to get the Labour, New Zealand First and Green leaders on stage together as a show of unity following a disastrous month when cracks in the coalition appeared to be showing.

In that sense, the speech was a resounding success, Mr Edwards said.

But Ms Ardern rejected the notion today, saying she started working on the speech "about a month ago, from memory".

"It would be very hard to do anything like that in a week's time," she said, jokingly adding that Mr Tame has "so much cynicism for one so young".

But she acknowledged that there are some fundamental differences in the three coalition partners.

"Whilst we have campaigned on things like individually regional economic development, there's no doubt that New Zealand First have put extra emphasis on that area," she said. "In the same way that way that we've always believed in environmental protections, but you get extra emphasis from the Green Party on that area.

"So that's where we've seen extra investment."

But aware of the sometimes awkward three-way partnership, the parties also work tirelessly to find consensus wherever possible, she said. And the system "really works for us", she said.

"Around the edges there will always be things that we negotiate," Ms Ardern explained. "Every single day, we'll go through a process of checking in with each other on whether or not we can build consensus. You don't see necessarily all of that, but from time to time you might hear about one or two areas...

"Over the past year, we've done a huge amount and will continue to do so, but with MMP governments there will be differences.

One area of disagreement that has gotten plenty of attention is the refugee quota, with Mr Peters saying earlier this month that his party never agreed to double it to 1500 per year - a major Labour campaign promise.

"We're likely to make a decision on that quite soon," Ms Ardern said today. "But as the Deputy Prime Minister said over the weekend, you'll actually find some similarity between what all three parties are saying in this area."