Jacinda’s much vaunted ‘Kindness’ legacy, which started out as an incredible political strength and ended up being used as a term of derision by those embittered by Covid, is complex and the ending of it by this new hard right racist climate denying Government is going to cause a cultural dislocation far larger than our Pandemic response.
There were two Jacinda’s
The first was ultra conservative and saw change in incremental stages that were heralded as ‘great first steps’ but amounted to jogging on the spot, and then there was the Jacinda with the enormous emotional intelligence who could channel NZs infamous emotionally stunted headspace to embrace the huge moments that defined crisis in NZ.
From volcanoes, to terror attacks, to a once in a century pandemic, she cut a glowing light of hope against the darkness of those moments.
Her masterclass in leadership that Jacinda performed defying the feral QAnon antivax lunatics and death cult capitalists by protecting us from 20 000 Covid deaths deserves special attention.
Was the personal sacrifice steep to all of us?
Yes.
Was the economic cost steep?
Yes.
Do the recent revelations by Pfizer that the vaccine didn’t stop transmission suddenly prove all the anti-vaxxers right?
Not at all…
Social media users are circulating video clips of testimony by a Pfizer executive, who is said to “admit” that the company and its partner BioNTech did not test whether their mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine reduced virus transmission prior to rolling it out – which is something the companies were not required to do for initial regulatory approval, nor did they claim to have done.
To get emergency approval, companies needed to show that the vaccines were safe and prevented vaccinated people from getting ill. They did not have to show that the vaccine would also prevent people from spreading the virus to others. Once the vaccines were on the market, independent researchers in multiple countries studied people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and did show that vaccination reduced transmission of variants circulating at the time.
As these results on transmission were emerging in early 2021, national health authorities in many countries implemented or proposed vaccine-passport-style regulations that prompted ongoing debate (here) over the ethical and legal basis of the rules.
The misleading posts imply that national restrictions such as vaccine passports were based on a promise of vaccines blocking virus spread that neither the companies nor EU regulators made before the vaccines were marketed.
…Jacinda’s courage to go hard and go early caused deep societal anger and dislocation, but so would have 20 000 dead!
We all sacrificed, some more than others, but we all paid a pound of flesh to get through this horror and while the response wasn’t perfect, the truth is we were running blind through a once in a century pandemic and Jacinda saw us through that better than most.
The immediacy of banning the favourite machine guns of psychopaths in the wake of the white supremacists terror attack in Christchurch was another example of her ability to provide true leadership.
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.
Jacinda’s aspiration didn’t meet the reality and in her last interview with Jack Tame 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 was spent on motels for vulnerable people causing enormous social carnage with no real wrap around support services present and 27 000 are on emergency waiting 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 600 000 require food banks each month.
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.
All that said however, Jacinda’s neokindness did have a shallow response that actually was more important than her policy results on poverty, inequality and climate change and which when reversed will trigger an enormous dislocation.
What Jacinda’s ‘kindness’ actually did was force all State Departments and Agencies to act with kindness to everyone who used their services.
If an example of unkindness could get to the media, that Department rushed to solve the issue because they knew Jacinda expected kindness.
The first stand Jacinda made was dumping private spy company Thompson and Thompson from having anything to do with the State.
And this kindness mantra worked! Welfare punishment, state housing punishment, IRD actions, sentences, debt issues – every Department of the State was expected to be kind and they were.
An entire generation of people have grown up under 6 years of the State being kind, the new hard right racist climate denying Government now however wants to remove any carrot and just use the stick.
Take roading.
National have stripped money out of road safety features to keep people safe and will instead use the power of the Police to just ticket anyone speeding.
Rather than spend more money on making our roads safer, National will just use the power of the State to strictly enforce the rules.
It’s easier to fine a speeding driver than build better safer roads.
This new hard right racist climate denying Government will use the State to beat the bejesus out of the people and I don’t think Kiwis remember what it’s like to have a State that is out to get us all the time.
Jacinda’s Kindness legacy is about to be juxtaposed by a State that is actively attempting to hurt you and we will miss her then.
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Yep, though MSD/WINZ have never adopted kindness–bar the middle class second tier benefit during peak COVID–let alone the WEAG recommendations, watch out if you have the misfortune to have to interact with a case manager from now on!
Housing Corp showed compassion to the 10000 that acted bad enough for the neighbors to complain. Onlyv18 were dealt to never mind the good people that are left fearing for their lives.
It was Labour that reduced the road limit to 80 so making it easier to get fines coming h in from driving at the old speed of 100.
The kindness and promised openness was an illusion and as soon as Labour realized voters were starting to see through it she was let go.
I think as leaders go she will be remembered as a good person but her Labour government will go done as 6 wasted years were so much could have been achieved .
aRdern might be kind but she’s no political Renaissance influence.
Did she unleash a woman’s fury on roger douglas? No. She didn’t. Did she repeal rogers greedy, evil, shadowy skulduggery? No, she didn’t.
aRdern? You’re one of them aren’t you? Not, one of us. And why didn’t you invite Martyn Bradbury to your wedding for fucks sake? It was the tweed cap wasn’t it? There are only a handful of people who suit tweed caps. The entire male cast of Peaky Blinders and our very own Martyn Bradbury.
Heh, Lol, etc. I will give you points for that one CB. You attacked me personally a few posts back-and you were dead wrong. I fought against Rogernomics in my unions and political parties and movements from day one, and have never voted NZ Labour since 1984.
CB is gun-powder — stand away. Attacked me like a fury over a classically misinterpretable NZ even-handed Israel comment he and Bravery took as an attack.
I admit I often used to be an incommunicable ease in previous days.
One better than you, Muldoon’s early election in’84 prevented me from voting for Labour. Much worse than you, I never worked in the movements for the people.
CB is a strange but delightful guy. Here in Gisbo we have a magical centenarian who still sells and services vacuum cleaners. Had to laugh at how he said he got to 100 in the paper, ‘everything in moderation’. The salesman in him and the humorist. Knowing him, he lived large and loud his entire century.
The only thing I remember about the volcano was the govt prosecuting (and mainly failing) everyone except themselves.
Global brands are melting into global transformative politics.
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