It’s still numbing isn’t it?
It still doesn’t feel real.
Our Leader. Our Captain. Our Hope.
Our Jacinda.
How much of a pack of shit stains are we to burn out Jacinda’s kindness chip?
She must be thinking to herself, “I saved them from a mass death event, and yet they hate me and want to do terrible violence to my family”!
Trying to unpack the youngest Prime Minister who was the first to give birth while in the role, a Prime Minister who is lauded overseas and threaten at home won’t be easy.
The Good:
Jacinda reset leadership dynamics beyond the masculine. She made empathy, compassion and kindness political strengths, not weaknesses. Every women who matters to me walks 2 inches taller with pride at Jacinda’s leadership.
In moments of crisis like Covid and the Christchurch terror attack, she used that incredible emotional intelligence to navigate this country through some of the most extreme events outside war.
She instinctively knew how to care and lead an emotionally stunted culture like ours and we loved her for it.
90% of NZ complied with the lockdowns. When history asks which country dealt with Covid best, NZ can proudly argue that our open and transparent system made the case using best science to win over our citizens into doing the right thing rather than the authoritarian arm of compulsion.
Economically, Jacinda’s leadership was far better than the Right pretend it is…
Shutting down the engines of growth
Greg Sheridan writing in The Australian wailed,
“All her economic instincts were bad, all her strategic instincts were bad. She had a great desire to undo productive economic reform and remove or shut down the engines of economic growth for what should be a nation of limitless opportunity.”
James Macpherson on the Bolt Report claimed,
“Jacinda Ardern wants to be remembered for being empathetic and kind. Well, she won’t be remembered for building a strong economy.”
The Daily Mail’s Guy Adams opined that,
“Back in New Zealand, where this progressive superstar has never been quite so popular as she has overseas, voters are facing a cost-of-living crisis, spiralling crime rates and soaring inflation. Housing is increasingly unaffordable and the economy is on the verge of a recession …”
The Flat White column at The Spectator asserted,
“Labour is aware that a failing economy is bad for the polls, with Ardern previously overseeing a pay-cut in solidarity.”
We now have annual GDP growth for all 38 wealthy OECD members. New Zealand now ranks fourth, the highest ranking since records have been kept. See grey chart, below.
At 6.4 per cent, New Zealand’s annual economic growth, far from being “on the verge of a recession” is double the rate of the Netherlands, South Korea, Italy, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. It is three times that of the USA and four times Japan, Germany, France and Switzerland.
When Ardern became prime minister in October 2017, New Zealand’s annual GDP growth was a modest 3.0 per cent which ranked 19th in the OECD.
Employment
The jobless rate has been at 3.4 per cent or lower since June 2021. Between September 2021 and March 2022, the rate was 3.2 per cent, the lowest since records have been kept.
That ranks fifth in the OECD, beaten only by Switzerland, Norway, Denmark and Japan.
Job participation had reached an all-time high of 71.2 per cent just before Ardern took office. She kept this within what seems to be an optimum band between 69.9 and 71.2 per cent throughout her tenure, until the third quarter last year, when it reached a new record high of 71.7 per cent.
Labour productivity was a modest 124.1 when Ardern took office. This has increased steadily since then, except for a blip during the Covid recession, and hit a new peak of 132.02 in the latest quarter.
Wages have increased satisfactorily from NZ$30.51 per hour in Ardern’s first quarter to NZ$37.93 in the last measure published.
Further fun facts and figures
New Zealand’s current inflation rate is 7.2 per cent, just below the peak of 7.3 in the previous quarter. This is well below the OECD average of 11.6 per cent, ranking around eleventh. Given the global challenges, it is quite false to characterise this as “soaring”.
Ardern’s Government has shone in budget discipline, with healthy budget surpluses in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The pandemic recession year caused a deficit of 7.3 per cent of GDP, with that improving substantially in 2021 to just 1.3 per cent of GDP.
Housing approvals
The Australian’s Greg Sheridan wrote:
“In substance, Ardern was a flop … She promised the government would build 100,000 homes, it built barely 1000.”
We read earlier the Daily Mail hack bemoaning “Housing is increasingly unaffordable …”
Well, according to Stats NZ, total housing starts have risen in every Ardern year and boomed over the last two. In the first five years of the previous National Government, housing approvals averaged 3.7 per year per one thousand residents. Through Ardern’s five years, they averaged 8.2 per year. See blue chart, below.
Economic Freedom
Finally, the rankings on economic freedom compiled by Heritage Foundation in the USA give the Ardern administration huge bragging rights.
Heritage ranked New Zealand the top economy in the OECD in four of the last five years. Global ranking has fluctuated between second and fifth.
If the right wing media read these numbers when the Nationals were in office, they would have proclaimed them from the mountain tops.
…you can’t pretend that Jacinda didn’t have serious policy wins and strong results.
The Fair Pay Agreements are the greatest Workers Rights expansions in 30 years and her gun control measures and focus on online extremism in the wake of the Christchurch terror attack are all remarkable achievements!
In 2008, Ardern was elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth and that range went from middle class kids in the suburbs to pipe bomb activists in the poorest neighbourhoods. She quickly learned that ideology would erode solidarity and so understood the importance of bringing everyone into the tent to make the decision, because that is where her authority as a leader came from, consultation with the people.
Her instinct was kindness.
The Bad:
Those crisis moments made her and saved us, but her incremental reform of the neoliberal Wellington Bureaucracy, her ‘Neo-Kindness’ is what robbed her of her strongest strengths leading a Government with an unprecedented MMP majority.
She didn’t expect to win the 2017 election, nor win an MMP majority in 2020 so had no 100 day plan to force change upon the self serving Public Service.
Jacinda’s aspiration didn’t meet the reality and in her interview with Jack Tame last year had the audacity to call any criticism of her aspiration unfair by arguing it was better that she had high aspirations rather than not having any at all.
That’s her argument, sure we aren’t doing anything meaningful or transformative, but it’s important she had high hopes.
That’s neokindness.
At the end of 2017, 108 people said they lived in cars and John Key’s Government was torched for that.
Last year there were 480 people living in their vehicles.
A Million dollars a day is spent on motels for vulnerable people causing enormous social carnage with no real wrap around support services present and 26 000 are on emergency housing wait lists – we can’t solve those problems apparently but the Government can spend a billion dollars on consultants each year?
$1bn spend on consultants each year
“Labour’s spending on contractors and consultants has climbed to nearly $1bn a year, despite Labour coming to power suggesting that they would rein in this use of the private sector. Much of this is spent on the “Big Four” contractor firms – Deloitte, PwC, KPMG and Ernst and Young.”
What the hell happened to left wing transformative change?
You can not spend a billion dollars a year on the professional managerial class in consulting while 150 499 children live in extreme poverty, while we hand out 100 000 food packages each month while our mental health and suicide rates soar.
You can’t spend a billion dollars a year on consultants while so many are in material hardship.
Jacinda’s neokindness wasn’t enough, if you aren’t forcing the Wellington Bureaucratic Elite into radical reform, they play you and stymie your agenda.
The difference between National and Labour is that National are full of Managerial sociopaths who have no issue bullying the Wellington Bureaucracy into action where as Jacinda wanted to have a hui with everyone with a vegan dinner, the menu in te reo and a side order of pronouns.
The Self serving bureaucracy never feared Jacinda and that’s why they continued building their glass palaces instead of service delivery to the citizen.
By refusing to tax the rich, Jacinda could never fully fund the public service infrastructure and was relegated to rearranging the Bureaucracy as solutions rather than increasing capacity.
She didn’t challenge neoliberalism, she merely managed it.
He ‘nuclear moment’ on climate change was as ineffective as standing down wind from a garlic factory while testing perfumes.
Her failure to deescalate the Parliament Lawn protests because she was offended at their language was a strategic blunder that has led to a radicalisation we will see for years to come.
The really really ugly:
Aloha Luxon originally thought online misogyny wasn’t worse for women in his RNZ interview…
Christopher Luxon initially ‘not sure’ if women face more abuse in politics, later admits they do
It’s no secret the Prime Minister faced vitriolic, often sexist, comments, but Jacinda Ardern denies misogynism fed into her decision to quit.
When he was asked about it Christopher Luxon said he didn’t believe women in politics face more abuse than men, but then quickly conceded that wasn’t true.
…by that afternoon (after being shouted at by Nicola Willis and every other female member of his Party), Aloha Luxon made a press statement acknowledging that gender abuse online was worse as he’d been subjected to an enormous amount of it since his RNZ interview.
I think the nation is reeling at the naked hatred so many Kiwis have shown with disgusting glee at Jacinda standing down.
The feral excitement by the new redneck Kiwi at celebrating Jacinda in a wood chipper is gasp inducing is it not?
…the radioactive bile that has been vomited up on her has been a shameful low in public debate.
There were many legitimate reasons to disagree with the Prime Minister, this blog did so on many occasions, but there is a difference between reasonable difference and that hate speech she and her family have been buried under.
There is an enormous distance between being critical and abusive. The easily triggered woke have lowered that threshold to such ridiculously subjective levels the outrage olympics that follow seem embarrassingly trite while at the other end of the spectrum, the feral antivaxxer Qanon race baiting redneck confederacy that endlessly threatens violence and sexual assault are as common as hashtags.
We burnt out a good person as our Leader and part of that burn out was the feral manner in which debate via social media has deformed into a battlefield of spiteful threats and abuse.
Cheering the destruction of your enemy because your abuse has worn them down is a shallow victory for the cruel.
Many of the swing voters who are 50+ white tertiary educated and female will have seen the tsunami of social media vilification from the Right and I don’t believe they will want to reward that type of malice.
A new feral redneck Kiwi has been born of the post Covid spite and they revel in their animosity like book burners dancing manically in front of the library bonfire.
Jacinda’s Legacy:
A tourist once said to me, “I know Kiwis hate being asked if they know such and such because it always reminds Kiwis how small they are, but do you know Jacinda”.
I was agreeing with his statement, right until he asked if I knew Jacinda, and I laughed and said, ‘she’s marrying my mate and she baby sat my daughter’.
Kia kaha Jacinda. You helped lead us in frightening times and you tried so damned hard to cast light in a dark world.
You have earned our respect, our admiration and gratitude.
Rest Comrade.
A Prime Minister who reset leadership dynamics while juggling national emergencies with an emotional intelligence that will echo down the corridors of history.
Jacinda’s personal legacy will be a never ending security detail decades after she leaves Office because of fears some feral lunatic will attack her or her family.
Let that sink in.
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Elizabeth McCombs, yes; Helen Kelly, yes; Sue Bradford, yes; Mabel Howard, yes; the Ambassador to Australia, a probable yes, women who will light up our history – if all of the books are not burned.
Good riddance. This country is in a worse state now than when she took over. That’s her legacy.
Bullshit!
As she probably does you @ Zelda. The good thing is, now she doesn’t have to.
Btw, put ya teeth back in, someone will confuse you for a dried up old prune, or even worse – Jenny Shipley maybe
“I saved them from a mass death event”
No she didn’t i caught Covid it wasn’t even that bad.
Which means of course that wasn’t that bad for everyone else. No doubt you’ve gone done your research too. Research that hinges, and is peer reviewed by something like Quora.
You’re a top bloke Mikesee
You where one person that caught it once, did it take your one brain cell to work out that, it didn’t have a devastating effect on lives in other parts of the planet. I suspect you’ve had a diluted version than the first that appeared, don’t bump that head in that narrow tunnel, you may effect further thought process.
@Mikesee, you sound like one of the American right wing shockjocks, who were anti vax, or anti mandate, or pro horse dewormer or drinking bleach, or who bought into the whole 5G-Bill Gates-Plandemic conspiracy craziness, and told their listeners that “…Covid it wasn’t even that bad”. But then as their conditions progressed and the harsh reality hit them, and they could see the writing on the wall, and the pearly gates ahead of them, only then did they u turn, and plead to their listeners to get fully vacinated and to take it as seriously as they were now taking it, as they lay on their deathbeds. Six of them dying from covid, dying because of what they beleived in, which turned out to be rubbish. Well educated, well adjusted, highly functional, successful adults sacrificed, not in the pursuit of some great goal, but in wanting to believe that some conspiracy might be true, but turned out to be pointless. As pointless as last years protesters on the Beehive lawn, all heat but absolutely no light. Kia Kaha JKLA we never deserved you.
@CLoD
Ivermectin is used by millions of human beings in Africa, Asia and India as a remedy for parasitic infections and has been especially effective against a nasty African parasite which causes ‘river blindness.’ It is also like other drugs suitable for some animals e.g. dogs, horses and other mammalian livestock.
Anyone who mentions Ivermectin and chooses to leave out the entirety of information about is guilty of misinformation. This would include Dr.A. Bloomfield.
It has been realised that Ivermectin has other remedial properties but Doctors who have used it successfully when treating patients with Covid recommend
using it in the first five days and then proceeding with other drugs.
Naturally as there were potentially trillions at stake pharmaceutical companies were more than anxious to suppress any information about any remedies.
https://www.oraclefilms.com/alettertoandrewhill
Anyone who puts any faith at all in politicians these days needs their head read.
@Archonblatter, many drugs were trialled for use against covid, incuding ivermectin, which showed activity against covid in the test tube, but the effective dose to suppress covid exceeded the safe dose, and later human trials that occurred at safe doses did not show enough effectiveness for it to be aproved as a treatment. The entirety of information is on the public record available online.
It would be unwise for a doctor to recommend an unapproved treatment, if there are approved treatments available, as there were later in the pandemic. Early in the pandemic there were no approved treatments, and some doctors may have prescribed ivermectin simply because there nothing approved they could use.
Doctors are human, and want to try and help people, without necessarily waiting for studies to be completed, because at the time, they didn’t know what the studies would show.
Ivermectin is approved, at a safe dose, as an anthelmintic, and I have given it to my cat, because its approved for that.
There are no safe drugs, only safe dosages.
Alternative medicine which has been proven to work, is called medicine.
Tell that to the families of the 2600 who have die from covid related illnesses .
I am not a Jacinda fan but she deserves credit for initial covid moves and the way she worked with the Muslim society after the Chch event. Unfortunately her government lost their way in the follow up to the economy recovery after covid and the gun laws past in the wake of the Chch shotting hit ordinary people and made no difference to the real criminals
If someone is going to claim they saved me i would actually have to be in danger first.
People who think Covid was a “mass death event” are probably still suffering from Y2K.
NZ looks more or less the same as before Labour took over. I can’t really see a difference. Jacinda didn’t do anything… All a bit pointless really
Neil. Not the same. New Zealand had an independent Commissioner for Vulnerable Children, of whom we have too many, and that Commissioner was kneecapped by this government, against contrary advice from every direction.
You where one person that caught it once, did it take your one brain cell to work out that, it didn’t have a devastating effect on lives in other parts of the planet. I suspect you’ve had a diluted version than the first that appeared, don’t bump that head in that narrow tunnel, you may effect further thought process.
Ginny my captain now?
I was about to post that yes, you’re right – indeed we didn’t deserve her (in a negative sense), but I remembered Churchill’s famous quote:
“Democracy is the system of government where you get the one you deserve.”
OMG talk about over done. Never attempted bold moves like she should have, transformational yeah right.
She had the mandate, in the first six weeks they should have done something about poverty, she should have done something that really made a difference and by this election this year, we would have had fewer people in poverty, fewer kids going to school without breakfast and shoes. Fewer people in prison, fewer teenage pregnancies. Read the Spirit level it says it all.
Gutless Labour!
And now the end is here
And so I face that final curtain
My friend I’ll make it clear
I’ll state my case, of which I’m certain
I’ve lived a life that’s full
I traveled each and every highway
And more, much more
I did it, I did it my way
Regrets, I’ve had a few
But then again too few to mention
I did what I had to do
I saw it through without exemption
I planned each charted course
Each careful step along the byway
And more, much, much more
I did it, I did it my way
Yes, there were times I’m sure you knew
When I bit off more than I could chew
But through it all, when there was doubt
I ate it up and spit it out
I faced it all and I stood tall and did it my way
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself then he has naught
Not to say the things that he truly feels
And not the words of someone who kneels
Let the record shows I took all the blows and did it my way
In my mind, she’ll go down as one of lil ole NuZulnn that punches above its weight’s best PMs.
I’m not sure what people expected of Her even before Covid, Mosque attacks and White Island.
A child that grew up knowing nothing other than neo-liberal and 3rd way pollytiks.
A child where meerkating and media, bullshitting and managing the message was close to all that mattered – at least in the public sphere,
A child of the Blairite,
A child of the socially conservative parentals and fundy religiousness.
She’ll go on to better things, and is. Not even for payment.
Not so long ago, I’d hope Her and hubs Cluck would have fucked off to the Cook Islands for some peace and quiet. Let’s hope life is going to be just as easy for her. She deserves it
I think we’ve had unreasonable expectations of her
Never a truer word said in jest.
Was only good and useful when she had uncle Winston at her side. After he left she was a lost soul.
Lowest ever vaccination rates is part of her legacy. Education fiasco is another. This will inevitably lead to more child poverty.
Seeing all the new electric vehicles around Wellington is how she has rewarded her wealthy middle class supporters.
I wish her well despite political differences.
What’s truly horrific is a mainstream media deifying an ex prime minister – something they do not do for both sides if politics- with gushing praise, zero criticism and yes actual love hearts on their Facebook feeds (NZ Herald).
Farewell Jacinda.
RIP New Zealand media.
.
“Let that sink in.”
It would seem to many of the above commentators could not.
It’s funny how the right accuses the left of being snowflakes, yet time after time, many commentators here revert to childish, emotionally based drivel.
I was glad the fetishist Jon Key retired, but that did not mean I wanted any violence against him. Which seems to be a all to common thread with some. Violence directed to a women who held power, and is now retired. Odd little people who need to take a long hard look at themselves. A LOOOOOOOOOOOONG HARD look.
When she was good, she was very, very, good.
I owe her one for the hijab.
Imagine the hash Bridges would’ve made of it all – yikes.
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart.
Blessed are the peacemakers
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness
Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you.
Blessed are the mother huggers.
Endorse that Pat+O’Dea it’s true.
Great article and a great leader. It’s the economic facts that stand out but for which she gets almost no credit. Her and her family deserve as much normality as they can get – I wish them the best.
A more selective filtering of comments wouldn’t hurt. Reading the level of graceless belligerence kind of makes me lose my faith in humanity.
A couple of wow moments with Jacinda, but sadly her legacy was let down by her descent into woke world which has put the woman’s movement back significantly, by allowing any man who feels like it, to now self describe as a woman without sufficient controls on that.
If you know anything about rape, it is about control.
Sexual violence and abuse of power that was being addressed by the me too movement, has now been overturned by Men being able to say, Me Too.
It is a fuck you, to sexual assault victims when a man being able to control the narrative by saying he is a woman, too.
And to be able to freely throw juice and punch old woman in a protest for woman rights, while the woke politicians cheer them on, is not really a positive change for violence against woman. The opposite.
Jacinda talked the talk but never really delivered. Her time reflected a focus on spin and media manipulation with very little done to improve peoples lives. In fact quite a few social and economic indicators went backwards under her watch. Major promised programmes never happened or were just a shadow of what they were supposed to be. Not since the 1981 Springbok Tour have I seen so much angst and division within NZ society. Being empathetic re the mosque shootings and White Island was perhaps the only area where she excelled. However this was not enough as many/most Kiwis feel/know that NZ went backwards under her watch.
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