Every time Jacinda pops up ion the media, a misogynist tsunami of hate trolls spew an hinged toxic bile at her.
Those alienated by Covid mandates felt for the first time ‘othered’ in their own country and that bitterness of self inflicted victimhood has become calcified on these Kiwis identity with the same cultural paranoia of the worst Woke Wellington cance-culturel Lynch mob.
I argued at the time that it was important for the Government to settle the dumb lives matter protest on Parliament lawns, but Trevor Mallards grotesque over reaction set in motion a train-wreck of events that only sent protestors home with a dark treason treacle in their souls and they have seeded that cancer deep into the political landscape.
Labour and the Green’s permanently lost 5% of the vote forever in the wake of Mallard’s inflammatory and insane actions.
That anger will never heal, but we can not allow these wretched wraiths re-write history.
Jacinda led this country through a once in a century pandemic with a kindness and courage that we should always be proud of and we should never allow the bitter to sink us to their warped level.
We should always remember the truth, not the victimisation of those who refused a vaccine.
The feral anti vax lunatics scream the vaccine was made by a shadowy one world government child molesting Satanic cult who used 5G technology to weaken our immune systems.
Sure they did.
The truth is Jacinda and Labour’s political courage and Covid leadership saved 20 000 lives…
New Zealand’s Covid-19 response saved 20,000 lives – research
New Zealand’s restrictions during the pandemic saved the lives of about 20,000 people, according to new research.
The paper by 16 leading doctors and scientists, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal on Friday, is calling for all serious respiratory infections – including influenza and RSV – to be treated the same way.
…and it resulted in NZ bucking life expectancy trend during COVID-19…
NZ bucked life expectancy trend during COVID-19 – study
“These findings provide further evidence supporting the effectiveness of the elimination strategy for minimising mortality from the pandemic,” Otago University epidemiologist Professor Michael Baker told RNZ.
New Zealand has been praised for its elimination strategy in the early stages of the pandemic. It kept Covid numbers down until vaccines became widely available.
New Zealand in 2020 and 2021 also experienced very little influenza.
By the end of 2021, 90 percent of the eligible population had been double vaccinated.
It was not until 2022, after the government had relaxed pandemic controls, that the country had its first major outbreak, fueled by the highly transmissible Omicron variant.
In 2022, deaths in New Zealand were up 10.4 percent on the previous year – the biggest annual increase since 1918 (following the influenza pandemic).
There were two obvious contributors to the increase: the pandemic and the country’s ageing population, according to Statistics New Zealand.
In total, nearly 6000 New Zealanders have died with Covid, according to the latest Te Whatu Ora data.
But compared with other nations, New Zealand is said to have got off lightly.
“[The paper] reinforces other evidence that New Zealand’s response was extremely effective at minimising mortality during the pandemic,” Baker said.
…the feral anti vaxxers who have been tricked led and manipulated by Social Media Hate algorithms scream NZ has had excess mortality when that is just garbage.
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 facts remains that Jacinda and Labour saved us from a public health catastrophe over Covid and we repaid that courage by electing a hard right racist climate denying beneficiary bashing Government.
We are our own worst enemies in New Zealand.
You are so easily played you sleepy hobbits.
Increasingly having independent opinion in a mainstream media environment which mostly echo one another has become more important than ever, so if you value having an independent voice – please donate here.
JUST LOOK AT THAT GROWTH RATE IN 2022 AND THE RECORD NUMBER OF NEW DWELLINGS .A great construction industry making stuff = a great performing economy .There is no long term gain in asset value for NZ by having a million tourists rampaging through the country creating pollution along the way .You dont build an economy by selling cups of coffee .You build a great country by building homes ,hospitals ,schools and water and waste water pipes .Used coffee cups are not assets .
Real people know what a great job Jacinda and Grant did in their time .The ones slagging them made millions but tribalisim turned them into haters .Those haters are now getting crushed by the looters and rapists and racists .
It is now time to let her rest and live her own life .
No doubt she has a rye smile every time she sees the paltry economic figures released and the rising un and under employment figures .She will be fondly remembering Luxon lecturing her on how poorly she was running the economy and the best he can get is 5% less growth .
Thanks JA and GR you did a stirling job under difficult times ,sit back and chill and watch what a real fucked economy looks like .
So many people are alive now and able to complain BECAUSE of Jacinda’s efforts. They make me sick.
As stated in the New Yorker, they have no idea what they escaped and therefore diminish its severity.
They have no critical thinking skills and not even a working imagination. Apparently, no friends in other countries who could tell them how things were for them. They are ill-educated, insular and dumb.
Winston Peters is a shameful man for encouraging this thinking and like Trump does, making it seem acceptable.
They gullibly believed his self-serving, un-scientific claims because they didn’t want a young woman telling them how it was going to be tackled.
The present govt. reflects their pathetic inadequacies. If the current leadership had half the guts Jacinda needed to do what she did, we’d be ok. But they don’t, so we’re not!
You tell them how it is Joy ,go you good thing .
The handling of the protest at parliament was political mistake by the government at the time and the one low point where empathetic leadership failed Jacinda. This may be why the anger runs so deep and appears counter-intuitive.
Those who lost employment and business because of the vaccine mandate should have been made financially whole by the government. A thoughtful, empathetic and kind government would have done that just like the did that for the rest of us.
As someone on the left I could not believe Mallards behavior was happening – it was embarrassing, petty and cruel – and Jacinda should have stepped in and made clear it wasn’t how she governed. But she didn’t.
That is not a justification for the right wing trolls but it an explanation about why they get traction.
This also is true CS. Lots of people had their lives turned upside down by the vaccines mandates, which did not stop people catching covid, so what was the point of forcing people to get a vaccine, which was totally counter to freedom over your body. What worked best was old fashioned stuff: masking, quarantine and social distancing. Having to get one new and unclinically trialed RMA vaccine after another and still catching covid ran counter to how people understood traditional vaccines to work. Also some people died from these vaccines for example astra Zeno a has been discontinued because of the rare but meaningful harm it caused young people
This also is true CS. Lots of people had their lives turned upside down by the vaccines mandates, which did not stop people catching covid, so what was the point of forcing people to get a vaccine, which was totally counter to freedom over your body. What worked best was old fashioned stuff: masking, quarantine and social distancing. Having to get one new and unclinically trialed RMA vaccine after another and still catching covid ran counter to how people understood traditional vaccines to work. Also some people died from these vaccines for example astra zenica has been discontinued because of the rare but meaningful harm it caused young people.
Excellent post Joy!!
Thanks for being such a vigorous defender and illuminator of the Jacinda years Bomber with facts and figures and astute appraisal.
The tax reform that didn’t happen was the big fail.
I think it’s a shame she doesn’t have the political confidence of Helen Clark, but there are obvious reasons for that, and it’s probably too soon to have written a memoir because its stirred up a lot of hate by numb nuts, well described here, I am she and her family could do without.
The counterfactual to all this is what if Jacinda and the Labour government had done nothing,no lockdowns,no mandates no vaccination programme no quarantine would there have been a parliamentary sit in because these things hadn’t happened. Probably because history will show the opposition and the right wing press fought the government every step of the way .Was there too much value on human life did it matter if a few oldies died would that have been fiscal prudence to make more money in the long run .We already know ACT in all its glory think this way. They don’t value human life in fact they applaud smokers for dying before they collect their pensions. ACT and this government with their actions in the health authority obviously don’t care much for Maori either whose health statistics tell us they die sooner than anyone else . Well said Joy New Zealanders had their finest hour with their violent misogynist attacks on Dame Jacinda and we should all feel very much ashamed for letting not only the looney tunes but the supposedly up standing kiwi men and women who let them get away with it . Look where we are now in 18 short months Seymour et al running the country on 8.6% of the vote a gutless bald man who calls himself a leader and Peters the leader of the looney tunes.
It’s so irrational. Jacinda as Prime Minister under our system would not have a great amount of control over other aspects of the Covid19 policies, quite narrow I would think. Others would dispense the fringe services, requiring finance, benefits and special grants, which would have made life somewhat manageable.
But Jacinda still had the same troglodyte Labourites behind her (that is how I have come to view them though I used to be a Labour worker and supported the left through Values, New Labour, Greens.) The Left should have made more effort, But I remember the 1980s and a boy walking to school, his hands over the rear seam of his shorts, apparently hiding a hole from malicious eyes. His sort of difficulties still continue but Labour have gone astray and now too are hiding their own backsides.
I understand people’s anger and disappointment about what happened during Covid19 which could have been made easier. it hurts that so much money was paid out to the big companies that have deigned to come to our tiny country and buy up everything that we built ourselves, and which seemed suitable for their interest and profit-taking.
They got a payout much larger than they needed to help them keep their businesses going, but also to reimburse them for a drop in takings resulting from the special government regulations (which the trade treaties signed up to by Labour and National exposed us to, the simple-minded yob politicians under their important suits). Even though some corpse were not affected from the NZ controls they did not return most of their pay-out.
This is part of self-employed and micro and small Kiwi business anger at our poor PM Jacinda. So impacted were they, they just looked at her most seen image when they should have looked at the nit-wits and treasonable turncoats behind her.
PM Jacinda did as much as she could despite the efficiency and market touters who wouldn’t give a tiny tear for the externalities like ordinary bright Kiwis trying to run their own micro businesses or exist on low wages for survival, and all the poor people struggling with everyday needs for themselves and family.
Vaccines and disease and the body being a sort of factory which will keep making stuff that keeps us safe until some new thing comes along. Vaccines have been wonderful for people, and we should be aware that life doesn’t come with a guarantee of good health.
People who didn’t know polio and the efforts to control and eradicate that wouldn’t understand vaccines as they don’t understand anything else much. I know some and they are lovely people but their goldfish bowl outlook is a bit straitened, never last in Cook Strait!
June Opie and polio is quite a story.
Opie, Alice June Norma – Bio. – TeAra.govt.nz Te Ara Encyclopedia of New Zealand
https://teara.govt.nz › biographies › opie-alice-june-nor…
Opie spent the next 10 weeks in an iron lung, which encased her body from the neck down and controlled her breathing. Once she was strong enough to breathe on …
corpus.nz https://corpus.nz › inert-body-alive-page-june-opies
The inert body alive on the page: June Opie’s – Corpus
June Opie was twenty-three when she contracted polio on her way to England from New Zealand in 1947. She spent two years in a London hospital, where she initially had no friends or family. Against terrible odds, June recovered from full-body paralysis and learned to walk again, albeit on crutches and with both legs in callipers. Her autobiography, Over My Dead Body, was published in 1957. It became an international best-seller in just ten days….
The Spinoff https://thespinoff.co.nz › society › 16-11-2020 › the-virus-that-stalked-children-remembering-new-zealands-polio-years
David Hill remembers his childhood friend Doug, who contracted polio a decade before the vaccine became available. As summer approached, New Zealand braced itself for a return of the virus….
And tuberculosis – I have just been looking at wonderful photos from Gordon D. Valentine – came to NZ to try to get over consumption but died at 38.
(We have been looked after but haven’t understood how important it is to be an adult citizen and not just a grown-up child. One in seven deaths in Dundee? I think book said were from tb.)
There was a great book written by USA Betty MacDonald called The Plague and I about her battle with TB and the doctors on her behalf.
Amazon https://www.amazon.com › Plague-I-Betty-MacDonald › dp › 0295999780
The Plague and I: MacDonald, Betty: 9780295999784: Amazon.com: Books
Thus begins Betty MacDonald’s memoir of her year in a sanatorium just outside Seattle battling the “White Plague.” MacDonald uses her offbeat humor to make the most of her time in the TB sanatorium―making all of us…
If covid had been called smallpox
I had no time for Ardern, but why people don’t leave her alone is a mystery. No one is forced to buy the book.
My opinion? The best Prime Minister this country had, at least during my lifetime, except possibly Norman Kirk.
Like Kirk, Ardern’s premiership was cut short, his by illness and death, hers by an extremely vicious and well funded ad hominem hate campaign, by the Right and Far Right, tolerated and even supported by the Centre Right.
Any restriction of free market forces is seen by the Right generally, even if it is to save lives, is something that must not be tolerated. And so a vidious campaign to derail the leadership of Jacinda Ardern was unleashed.
The huge muliple crisis the Ardern administration had to tackle, were not limited to the Pandemic, there was the horrific Christchurch terror attack, the Whakaari White Island disaster. the Cyclone Gabrielle floods (the last under the Hipkins administration).
That Ardern wasn’t able to surmount the tremendous political hate campaign directed against her personally, (admittedly there are few mortals that could have withstood that sort of pressure), was a disapointment to me personally, and probably a lot of other people too.
My other criticism, and this applies to Hipkins too. When you are taking on the profit driven neo-liberal system you can’t afford to take half measures, or you will leave your supporters behind.
In the depths of the Lockdown, when everyday people were facing economic hardship caused by the pandemic and the measures imposed to combat it, the big banks were making record profits, there were no covid restrictions put on them. When small businesses couldn’t trade and workers were sent home to isolate they still had to pay their mortgages and rents. There should have been a rent and mortgage moratorium. And let the big foreign owned banks feel some of the pain. It’s not like they couldn’t have afforded it.
In the aftermath of the pandemic when people still needed relief and the health system had been brought to breaking point, when treasury even advised a wealth tax, to fund our social security and health infrastructure, under pressure from the Right Hipkins ruled it out with his notorious ‘Captains Call’, opting for austerity and belt tightening instead. Ad pretty much sabotaged Labour’s chances of a third term. If right wing austerity under a Labour administration is so good, why not have the real thing under National?
My issue with Ardern was that she was not nearly progressive enough, and a bit too populist.
Comments are closed.