Performative Caring
SKY NEWS AUSTRALIA has reformulated Jacinda Ardern’s championing of “kindness” as “performative caring”. While the network has long displayed a strong right-wing bias, its derogatory re-casting of the New Zealand Prime Minister’s “brand” may nevertheless strike a chord with the growing number of her detractors on this side of the Tasman.
Sky News’ owners have a very real interest in undermining Ardern’s support in New Zealand. While she remains the Shaky Isles’ prime minister she will continue to remind Australian voters of what they do not have – likeable politicians. It’s a comparison Australian conservatives could do without. Especially when it encourages Aussie voters to focus on the extraordinary unloveliness of the Liberal and National parties’ leadership.
Hence Sky News’ willingness to do all it can to aid their ideological soulmates in the New Zealand Parliament. The sooner Ardern’s Gospel of Kindness is laid to rest, the sooner Australians can be reconciled to the unchangeable nature of the monstrous regiment of boofheads that has dominated their politics for decades.
It will be interesting to see if National and Act make use of the rhetorical gift Sky News’ Rita Panahi has given them. Of Iranian extraction, Panahi won her spurs as a right-wing political commentator by heaping criticism on the Islamic radicalism her family had fled. Now firmly ensconced in Rupert Murdoch’s stable of conservative columnists, Panahi’s ability to deliver political invective is not to be sneezed at. That said, however, echoing the Aussie sledges of a Kiwi PM may not be the most sensible way to win the hearts and minds of New Zealand voters.
Even if National and Act decline Sky News’ hatchet, there can be little doubt that the “performative caring” slur will spread rapidly: mostly by social media, but also through plain, old-fashioned word-of-mouth. That it will damage Ardern’s “brand” is indisputable. How could it not, when the Ardern Government’s successful demonstrations of practical kindness are so very thin on the ground?
Perhaps aware that it is not generally regarded as either fair or sensible for the journalists of one country to slag-off the prime-minister of that country’s oldest ally, Sky News’ morning line-up were careful to back their “performative caring” jibe with corroborative evidence. Panahi, in particular, pointed to Labour’s dismal failure to keep its promises to the New Zealand electorate. Not surprisingly, she homed-in on the Ardern Government’s failure to build the tens-of-thousands of affordable houses it had promised to supply.
New Zealanders could supply many more examples.
Where was the kindness – the empathy – in Health Minister Andrew Little’s blank refusal to acknowledge the obvious crisis gripping New Zealand’s health service? Where was even the most basic manifestation of political common sense? How is any government served by its ministers refusing to acknowledge truths plainly visible to the entire country?
Every New Zealander acquainted with reality knows that what the doctors and nurses are telling the news media is true. If they haven’t witnessed personally the tragic overloading of the country’s primary and emergency health services, then their family and friends have filled them in.
The fraught experience of operating well below optimum staffing levels is relived every day in their own workplaces. Between them, the Omicron variant of Covid-19 and the winter flu are infecting New Zealanders by the tens-of-thousands. Owners and managers are at their wits’ end, trying to keep their farms, factories, shops and offices functioning. They can all-too-easily imagine the stress of doctors and nurses struggling to do the same – only with the lives of their patients potentially at risk if they make the wrong decision.
Little’s refusal to accept the term “crisis” is, of course, entirely rational from a cynically political point of view. Were he to recognise it, he would then be morally obliged to take the necessary steps to fix it. And how could he possibly do that when the entire health system is in the midst of a complex restructuring process which he, himself, initiated?
To remove the enormous pressure on medical personnel would require immediate and effective action from the Department of Immigration, and the full co-operation of the gate-keeping professional bodies who have for far too long lorded it over the nation’s health system. With a clear-sighted grasp of the crisis, coupled with an iron will to overcome it, both of these objectives could be achieved. Now, if we could only lay our hands on a clear-sighted health minister with an iron will!
In 2020, Kiwis were bowled over by a government that actually delivered on its promise to fight the global Covid-19 pandemic with kindness. Astonished, they watched it slap down a business community demanding profits before people. Deeply impressed and appreciative, New Zealanders rewarded “Jacinda” and her Labour Government with an extraordinary election victory. And why not? Their government had not only cared, it had performed.
That was the secret sauce; the cipher key; the magic formula: telling people what you were hoping to do – and then asking them to assist you in making it happen. So long as the people remain at the heart of a Government’s performance, it cannot fail. If objectives aren’t being met, then go out and ask citizens for their help, listen to their advice, and back their assistance with dollars. For a few months this is exactly what Ardern did. It worked. And the country loved her for it.
The problem, of course, is that listening to the people can get a government into all kinds of trouble. It is also extremely difficult to sustain. It requires a very special political talent to recognise the voting public as the country’s most important interest group, especially when everybody else in the circle of power is telling you that it’s the business community, Treasury, the Reserve Bank, academic experts, the news media.
Turned out Ardern simply didn’t have enough of that special talent. Turned out 2020 was a fluke. Six months of genuine kindness was the most “Jacinda” could summon forth. And when she could no longer make it, she faked it.
Sadly, “performative caring” sums up Jacinda Ardern and her Labour Government very nicely.
Covid the original was launched upon an unsuspecting population with terrifying tales of a super infectious killer, so infectious that one needed to be at least two metres away from a stranger with masks to have any hope of seeing the following month above ground and woe betide you if you touched a surface, ungloved, that the virus had landed on. Experts were rolled out, virologists, mathematics boffins doing the numbers adding to the daily terror updates. The 1.00pm briefing from the pulpit of truth, stopped the nation. Society was duly shut down and police patrolled the streets to harass any escapees from their home detention. The Team of 5 million kicked in. Be kind everything! Our government appeared to respond in the dark and did their best, but…
Not satisfied with that by 2021 with a government almost bemused by how much power they had at their fingertips, failed to push vaccinations then sealed Auckland off, from the world, for 4 fucking months, with the vast majority of quarantine facilities helping spread the disease from that city, just to allow every munchkin in the rest of our fine nation to get double vaxxed, but in relative pure freedom to that of Aucklanders who werent allowed to get a coffee, (we were gifted the freedom of a picnic with known people, mind!)
No one thought to ask why 99.9% of infections never progressed past a week off work! Times between vaccinations changed like the PM”s earrings. People sacked who disagreed, then shunned to the feral fringes of civilised society. The team of 5 million was never spoken of again.
Grant printed money like no tomorrow and a trillion dollars of wealth was quietly, but quickly, transferred to the wealthy.
And then it turned out people weren’t dying of Covid in anywhere near the numbers it appeared, many (but not all) were crook, very crook of anything else but, and happened to also have or pick up covid. A man was shot and murdered in New Lynn. His death was counted with the covid deaths as he also, probably unknowingly, had it. And during the halcyon months of Aucklands imprisonment, the wheels fell off.
Kindness was a PR line from a master of PR, our PM. Like “Climate Change is my generations nuclear free moment”. Just ask the thousands of families in squalid motels. Kindness was also applied to law enforcement, just ask the endless victims of our governments foray into that field.
“Kindness” was pure unadulterated horse shit. Like most other PR sales campaigns from history, it’s well past its used by date!
What you are telling us is that our medical professionals don’t know what they are talking about. If that is the case then I guess you probably want to keep well away from out GP’s and hospitals. Maybe you might want to invest in some tin foil to wrap around your head.
What you are telling us is that our medical professionals don’t know what they are talking about. If that is the case then I guess you probably want to keep well away from out GP’s and hospitals. Maybe you might want to invest in some tin foil to wrap around your head.
No, triple vaccinated plus the flu vaccination and I bought into it fully. But as time went on some things said and done by our “medical professionals” didn’t make sense.
And all the kindness shit as it turned out didn’t either.
I still do and in I think the alternatives of what was done would have been worse.
‘Performative Caring’ sums up New Zealand employers and the New Zealand propertied class very nicely.
It sums up the entire neo-liberal system nicely, from the people who have been further enabled to rort us since the demon Lange ruined this country’s government and economy, to the crooks making up those governments.
Those who think that immigration would solve the health staff shortage should note that Oz, Canada and USA all have similar problems (worst ever situation).
Well duh! I would say the political landscape in NZ is filed with performative caring. Go back and look and you will find more examples of refusing to acknowledge challenges faced or reluctance to set targets. Also tell me one thing you have actually heard from the opposition parties that would stop people “doing it tough” despite professing concern?
Nailed it again Chris.
Reminds me of when on a visit to the USA I quickly became irritated by the, “have a nice day” you would receive constantly. My wife said she would rather have an insincere kind comment over a sincere grumpy one any day.
However it does wear thin after a while and although we would generally choose kindness over the alternative. If delivered in word only then eventually we see it for what it truely is and crave substance over the fluff.
‘Performative kindness’ is rather a good phrase for Jacinda’s approach to things- much better than say, ‘virtue signalling’.
Just look at the response to the Christchurch counterjihad attack. Jacinda did plenty of turning up to public events and mewling. Lots of inconveniencing of responsible gun owners. But what did she do about the hate speech from the Islamophobes who inspired the attack? Absolutely nothing. They even invited Juliet Moses to attack Muslims at the hui on the anniversary of the attack!
Xray’s first paragraph is a fair enough history of the pandemic. But i have more sympathy for Jacinda except for refusing to talk to protesters .
The failure of the vaccine to live up to expectations was not foreseeable to her any more than to any of us, and except that she knows what they had to sign up to to comply with the WHO recommendation/instruction which i would dearly like to know. The mandates and now continued pressure to booster with a vaccine that is now starting to reveal itself as being not just ineffective but counterproductive can only be explained by whatever is in this agreement.https://www.naturalhealth365.com/official-uk-data-confirms-covid-vax-increases-risk-of-death-of-any-cause.html
D J S
Recalling one of Sky News presenters moonlighting on Brisbane’s MMM radio station about 3:30am, Tuesday 19 July a caller phones in claiming that two hours after a lady hit a tree and passed away, he too was traveling cautiously (40-50km) and hit the same tree.
The caller recounted how the road was very slippery. He’s traveled that road so knew to be cautious but still hit tree because it was raining.
The radio host closes the conversation with “ah, so it was the trees fault.”
You just can’t write this shit.