Mr English was instead referring to a constitutional review, a topic not without its share of supporters and detractors and which, like an election result, has the potential to unseat a political party.
The Government announced in December plans to conduct a wide-ranging review of New Zealand's constitutional arrangements.
The review, part of the confidence and supply agreement between National and the Maori Party, will be led by Mr English and Maori Affairs Minister Pita Sharples in consultation with a cross-party reference group of MPs and supported by an advisory panel.
The group's first report to Cabinet is expected by June, after which the review will be suspended for six months to allow for the general election before resuming in 2012. The ministers will then provide six-monthly reports, with a final report to Cabinet due by the end of 2013. The Government will then respond within six months.
As well as covering electoral issues (the size of Parliament, the length of terms of Parliament and whether or not the term should be fixed), the review's terms of reference will focus on Crown-Maori relationship matters, including Maori electoral participation and Maori seats in Parliament and local government.
Of particular significance will be the role of the Treaty of Waitangi within New Zealand's constitutional arrangements and the big question: whether New Zealand should have a written constitution.
Asked whether New Zealanders were ready or willing to adopt a written, entrenched constitution, Mr English responded: "Look, I don't see any demand for one.
There will be one constitutional issue dealt with shortly - and that's a referendum to change from MMP or not; I suspect that will be a dominant issue in the next year or so and from there we will move on to others."
But let's back up a little: what exactly is an entrenched constitution?
Put simply, it is the law by which all other laws must abide. It is a yardstick, a set of values against which all lesser legislation must be measured.
Significantly, it transfers authority from Parliament as the final lawmaker - as in our present system - to the courts, i.e. judges, who have the power to interpret the constitution and strike down any legislation deemed to be contrary to it.
At present New Zealand operates as a democratic, constitutional monarchy; the Queen, as head of state, is the source of legal authority in New Zealand but she and her representative, the Governor-General, act on the advice of our elected government.
Although New Zealand is one of only three countries in the world with an unwritten constitution - the others are Britain and Israel - it does have core items of legislation and convention that, collectively, do comprise a working constitution.
These include the Treaty of Waitangi Act (1975), the Constitution Act (1986), the State Sector Act (1988), the Electoral Act (1993), the Judicature Act (1908), the Supreme Court Act (2003), Ombudsmen Act (1975), the Official Information Act (1982), the Public Finance Act (1989), the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990) and the Human Rights Act (1993).
In addition, British laws such as Magna Carta (1297) and the Bill of Rights (1688) have been incorporated into New Zealand law by the Imperial Laws Application Act (1988).
Andrew Geddis, of the University of Otago's Faculty of Law, whose expertise includes constitutional law, believes the concept of a "written constitution" is something of a misnomer.
"Our constitution already is written down in lots of different ways ... We could always take these different written bits and put them together into one single Act of Parliament, but that isn't what is meant by a 'written constitution'. The better descriptor of the question is: do we want a supreme constitutional document to replace our current customary constitutional practices?
"It might help people better understand what our constitution is and how it works. For example, teaching my public law class would be a lot simpler if I had a book I could pick up and say, 'here's the Constitution - let's see what it says'. There's some value in that," Prof Geddis says.
"More fundamentally, it would shift the final say over what policies or rules are allowable in New Zealand from the political branches of Government - i.e. the executive (Cabinet) and legislative (Parliament)) to the judicial (the courts).
"As things presently stand, any aspect of our constitutional arrangements can be altered without any formal legal constraints either by a mere change in practice or by a change in legislation.
"But if you shift to a supreme constitutional document, then you have a kind of 'super-law' against which government actions/legislative measures can be judged."
"And that judgement is done by judges, who can say 'nope - this piece of legislation fails to accord with the Constitution, so it isn't law'. That's a fairly major step to take."
The question of whether or not we have a supreme constitutional document requires us to ask another: what would be in it?
"Equality, fraternity, liberty", a slogan of the American (1776) and French (1798) revolutions, words aimed at improving the rights of citizens, might seem simple enough ambitions but, ultimately, still require interpretation and application by someone. And given the legal nature of a constitution, that "someone" usually is a judge, Prof Geddis points out.
"You can put whatever you want into a constitution ... but the more ambitious you are with respect to your 'vision', the more disagreement you will get about how it applies in particular circumstances.
"The original US Constitution - the benchmark for this sort of endeavour - actually was very short on aspirational or visionary statements, and heavy on technical nuts-and-bolts rules. It's the Bill of Rights attached to it later on that has the vague language that has provoked most of the controversial court decisions."
And you don't need such a Bill of Rights in a constitution, Prof Geddis says, citing as an example Australia, "which has a very rule-heavy constitutional document that makes no mention of individual rights or freedoms at all".
There could also be tension in terms of a document capturing the public imagination (by way of soaring language or high ideals) and what is required in terms of mapping out how particular disputes should be resolved, he says.
"Complicating the picture even further is the problem of what exactly it is we want the courts to oversee in any written constitution. If it is a set of simple rules like 'only New Zealand citizens may be MPs' or 'only MPs may be Ministers of the Crown', then that's easy enough. But what if we include things like 'every parliamentary enactment must be consistent with the Treaty of Waitangi' or 'no parliamentary enactment may unreasonably take property without compensation'?"
That's where the cross-party review group and its advisory panel come in.
"We are now in discussions as to the compositions of both of those groups and expect that will be resolved over the next month or so," Mr English explains.
"It's a bit different from most government advisory processes because this one is deliberately open-ended. We are giving them the very broad task of informing the public and listening to their views and that's because we think that any constitutional change should only occur if there is a pretty broad consensus for change.
"There would only be a referendum if there was some specific proposition that clearly had support," Mr English says, adding public consultation will inform the review.
"Anyone who takes an interest will have the opportunity to contribute, either writing papers or submissions ... [There will be] some public opportunity to voice their opinion."
The review's terms of reference include evaluating the role of the Treaty of Waitangi within New Zealand's constitutional arrangements, a point stressed by Dr Sharples when the Maori Party co-leader announced the initiative in December ("I know Maori want to talk about the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our constitution, and how our legal and political systems can reflect Tikanga Maori ...").
Asked whether the review would entail a long, hard look at the place of the Treaty in any future higher laws, Mr English replies: "I'm sure some people want to bring those arguments forward and this will be an opportunity to present them to the wider public to see if they can create a consensus for change.
But it's up to the proponents of those various views to do that.
"There are smaller groups who have quite strong interests in constitutional change, either in a written constitution or some change in the role of the Treaty.
"There is a very broad group of the public which is pretty relaxed about how the constitution works; they are not exactly sure what it is. In New Zealand, in practice, it is a set of behaviours and conventions, some of which are written down, some of which aren't," Mr English says.
The Treaty of Waitangi is already a significant element in our current constitutional framework: Article 1 agreed the terms on which New Zealand would become a British colony (the agreement being made between various Maori tribal representatives and the Queen); while the remaining two articles balance the respective interests of Maori and the Crown as well as expressing an ongoing relationship between Maori and the Crown.
Treaty rights and obligations are intertwined in various aspects of our present constitutional arrangements and include the Treaty of Waitangi Act (1975), out of which was established the Waitangi Tribunal (although, unlike the courts, it doesn't have the final authority to decide points of law); among other institutions are the Maori Land Court, the Maori Affairs Select Committee and Minister of Maori Affairs.
John Dawson, of the University of Otago's law faculty, an expert in Treaty of Waitangi law, says the precise terms used to refer to the Treaty in any written constitution would be critical.
"[Inclusion in a written constitution] would give the Treaty more legal status. The Treaty's principles might then control Parliament, which couldn't enact legislation that ignored Treaty principles. But the entrenched constitution would almost certainly include other civil rights, including rights to equality."
Prof Dawson points out that though other civil rights would probably be entrenched with any Treaty rights, the inclusion of the Treaty would not be without controversy.
"The principles of the treaty are capable of more than one interpretation and whether or not particular pieces of legislation were contradictory to the Treaty's principles could be a highly politicised question."
Another outcome might be that a written constitution wouldn't necessarily entrench the Treaty, Prof Dawson says.
"The draft proposed by Sir Geoffrey Palmer in 1985, for instance, was going to entrench only the rights of Maori to be protected in the Treaty [as per Article 2]. I suppose his thinking was that governance under Article 1 was already protected by other legal arrangements.
"Alternatively, the reference to the treaty and the constitution could be to the 'principles' of the Treaty rather than 'the' Treaty. There is a subtle difference. Depending on the precise terms used in the constitution, that would undoubtedly affect the interpretive exercise."
However, Prof Dawson believes it unlikely a National-led Government would favour an entrenched constitution, particularly one including the Treaty.
"Traditionally, the National Party has not favoured conferring greater authority on the judiciary to resolve political questions. I don't think it would want to upset current property regimes either.
"They are upholding their apparent bargain with the Maori Party to embark on the review, but I don't see a National-led Government proceeding to take steps to have an entrenched constitution.
They might agree to have a referendum on such a matter; they might do that because they'd be pretty confident the New Zealand public wouldn't endorse the idea."
Another possibility, a compromise position suggested by Sir Geoffrey Palmer's son Matthew in his 2008 book, The Treaty of Waitangi in New Zealand's Law and Constitution, would be to give the Treaty a similar status in law such to that of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990.
"Basically, he suggests any Act, all levels of statutory decision-making, would have a general requirement to take into account Treaty principles, alongside whatever other considerations are listed in a particular statute. The Resource Management Act, for instance, already requires that and so do about 35 other statutes," Prof Dawson says.
"Rather than being in the position we are in now where Treaty principles are viewed as not applying unless Parliament says so, it could be the other way around - Treaty principles would be generally applicable. It wouldn't involve such a major transfer of authority to the courts.
"This is a possible intermediate position, one more likely to attract public support and it wouldn't preclude a move to an entrenched constitution at some other time, in 50 years from now or whatever."
His colleague, Prof Geddis, agrees there is no simple solution to the issue.
"It seems to me that there are two parts to 'the Treaty' question.
"First of all, is it desirable to recognise through some sort of supreme constitutional document New Zealand as having some sort of bicultural status, in which the Crown and Maori jointly exercise authority?"
"Secondly, even if that end is desirable, is the Treaty the right vehicle to achieve that end? Because even though the Treaty is historically important and symbolically powerful, it has its limitations as a legal document. It exists in two languages. It is pretty vague in places. Not all Maori even signed it - see the Tuhoe, for example," Prof Geddis explains.
"It would be entirely possible to say, 'yep, a constitution should recognise that both the Crown and Maori ought to have sovereign status in New Zealand, but it ought to do so in a way other than giving the Treaty legal force'.
"How you'd do that is tricky ... which is maybe why talking about this for a couple of years isn't such a dumb idea."
