Jacinda and the parochial death of NZ compassion
In 2022, a few months before she quit as prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern was standing at the sink in the toilets in Auckland airport, washing her hands, when a woman came up to her and leaned in. She was so close that Ardern could feel the heat from her skin. “I just wanted to say thank you,” the woman said. “Thanks for ruining the country.” She turned and left, leaving Ardern “standing there as if I were a high-schooler who’d just been razed”.
The incident was deeply shocking. Ardern had been re-elected in a historic landslide two years before. She enjoyed conversation and debate; she liked being the kind of leader who wasn’t sealed off from the rest of the population. But this, says Ardern, “felt like something new. It was the tenor of the woman’s voice, the way she’d stood so close, the way her seething, nonspecific rage felt not only unpredictable but incongruous to the situation … What was happening?”
The incident came at a pivotal moment: Ardern sensed that the tide was turning against her and she was grappling with whether to go. “Something had been loosened worldwide,” she says, with rage everywhere, public servants being followed and attacked, as if they were “somehow distinct from being human”. We all recognise this rage, but Ardern was at the centre of it, representing progressive politics, tough Covid measures, empathy, emotion, anti-racism, femaleness; a symbol of a different time, more rational, kinder, when rules still meant something. When there were many female leaders – Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Sanna Marin, Mia Mottley, Mette Frederiksen, Tsai Ing-wen.
For all these reasons, Ardern is now missed by progressives, at home and abroad. At her height she had blazed a global trail, modelling a different way of doing politics – wearing a headscarf and embracing weeping bereaved families after the Christchurch mosque massacre, then reforming gun laws in 10 days; taking decisive action on Covid that meant New Zealanders were able to party again while the rest of the world could barely go out; leaving celebrities from Elton John to Stephen Colbert starry-eyed with her poise and wit and humanity. It was Jacinda-mania, and everybody wanted a prime minister like her: young (elected at just 37) and a woman, she offered a different vision of national identity for New Zealand – straightforward, compassionate, diverse, globally desirable – and a different way to lead a country – youthful, human, decent. She had a hunky feminist boyfriend and was pregnant when she became PM; and she was going “to bring kindness back”.
And then, out of the blue, after six years in office, in January 2023, she dramatically announced her resignation. How could she have done this to us, her fans wailed, at a time when the world is falling apart before our eyes?
The shock the rest of the world feels towards our post-covid bitterness towards Jacinda is a timely reminder of what arseholes we are and we never give Jacinda her dues…
Does she now think she went too hard with restrictions and vaccination mandates? She says that New Zealand “came out of Covid with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world and fewer days in lockdown than nations like the UK, and during this time our country’s life expectancy actually increased”.
She gets little credit for this. I guess it’s hard to get credit for things that didn’t happen; you can’t really prove a negative, prove how many people didn’t die. Oh you can, she says, firmly. “Twenty thousand. Four times my old town. It’s a lot of people.” There’s a long pause. “How do you feel remorse about that?”
…it wasn’t like we were forced to storm the beaches of Gallipoli was it folks? You were asked to stay inside and the Government paid you, Lynch her now!
As her book launches and the documentary plays, the NZ Hate Trolls have lost their shit at her popularity and I love watching their impotent rage.
Cry more Hate Trolls, your tears are delicious.
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:
I think the nation is still 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 babysat 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.
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.
She deserves the success of her book and documentary, the screams of feral outrage from her mutant detractors only adds to the ambience.
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Jacinda speaks of “a different time, more rational, kinder, when rules still meant something. When there were many female leaders – Angela Merkel, Theresa May, Sanna Marin, Mia Mottley, Mette Frederiksen, Tsai Ing-wen….”
But take another look at those names. Angela Merkel was rational enough, but kind?? Theresa May? Neither rational nor kind. Sanna Marin? The vain warmonger who dipped into public funds to pay her rather massive household grocery bill?
There is one common factor that unites these leaders, apart from the fact that they are female, and it is neither rationality nor kindness. It is vigorous and uncritical support for the NATO war machine.
And the ‘NATO war machine’ is simply an extension of the capitalist elite. The company she keeps reveals all….
I enjoy reading this Blog because you tell it the way you see it both the good and bad through your eyes. While your take is often at odds with mine it gives readers plenty to ponder and in some instances I have changed my opinion.
well done TREV good financial figures eh.
The figures dont lie and you can not take them away .The last government was outstanding at managing the economy and National hate that fact hence the slash and burn rampage which Trump is now following .
Still the haters and swamp dwellers along with the rich pricks still attack her because she was really successful I bet the greedy corporates wish that NZ still had the great level of growth ,and the construction industry are lamenting voting them out because they swallowed all the racist bull shit from the right .You all had it made then and here we are today with a small town every month leaving the country and 200k unemployed and 300k under employed .Along with that 40% of business cant pay their tax bill and owe $9 billion to IRD who is about to close them down .In the space of less than 2 years we have gone from growth th recession and from caring to full blown hate .
Jacinda would redeem herself in my eyes by doing just one simple thing: speaking out against the Gaza genocide. That would be a kindness. It would show compassion. But she needs to do it now. Not in ten years time, when everyone will be saying how appalled they were.
So true. But maybe she has put herself and family in the firing line enough. She did well and it ended badly and she never seemed to want that role in the first place. Must be weird living in Trumps America.
Jacinda has made a home and current job in tye States with a despot in charge who would jump at tye chance to show the World he is a tough man by throwing her out of the country. She has given up much for her country she does not have to prove herself to anyone.
Ii did not like much of what she did while in charge but I feel sure what she did she did with good intent
The consensus seems to be that Jacinda will not take a stand against genocide, and we have a couple of commenters here explaining why she should not. To me that speaks volumes about the moral fortitude of a certain type of New Zealander.
No human being would chose to live in the USA.
Great article covering the complete picture. The parliament lawn protests were terrible and at the time I was thinking just go and talk to them – come up with policy to put some of these people right again. Letting it go on and on with no positive action by the government was probably what lost Labour the election in 2023.
Those protesters should have been given the time of day Jacinda and Winston together or even all the party leaders together.
Agree. Excellent article too. Once Winston went down they all should’ve. Instead they tried to punish him which was very stupid on top of the other stupid things they did, blaring music and water hosing being the very worst response.
Agree CS.
If the protesters were given limited time on consecutive days – first day, to be talked to from afar asking them to put down their three most important points on paper and hand them in, given small piles of paper and pencils, renewed every 10 minutes for an hour – so one group didn’t pick them all up and throw them around – then to put their notes in a strong covered slotted uninflammable? bin . Then returned to next day for discussion, each note read out and briefly discussed and with show if hands as to whether really well said and important. Lengthen time as people settled down, and they would be asked if stated changes would help the situation (and these be put in place or explained why not.) People could be chosen, granted right to speak for 3 minutes about most important activity, to form a queue, no names no packdrill. I think that might have detoxified the whole thing. People were hurting even before they were being isolated and protected from the virus spread.
But Martyn on behalf of the people very affected, those living in dangerous, hating, drug-infested, poverty-ridden conditions, locked in with the bills not paid and hardly enough food and not getting time away from each other, already living on the edge of breakdown or depression, the only motivating thing likely to keep them going was anger.
Most of us ‘don’t know how lucky we are’ in fact. People I have worked beside with a social target, are not necessarily understanding and kind. Most are thoroughly bourgeois, even the mainstream religious. I have one great exceptional religious person in mind and he is Maori.
So please don’t run down the ordinary ranters and haters completely, only the poseurs. Jacinda did her best by us all but she would be limited by her colleagues lack of understanding. And my limited uni studies on social policy made the point that the result of legislation introduced for good purposes, can be blunted or miss the mark because of the procedures and attitudes adopted by the servient government approach or by contractors with little interest in outcomes and no need to be courteous or even aiding or helpful to those receiving the ‘largesse’ or service.
There is something about the character of people in this country which has changed since the 1980s.
It is although the cruelty of capitalism has seeped into the souls of Aotearoa.
Rob Muldoon was called ‘Piggy’ and reviled by many( including myself) but one saw him at airports and on the street without bodyguards or police escort and most people accepted he was allowed a private life outside politics.
If anyone remembers the 1970s in Wellington they will remember the student parties where masses of people showed up at whatever raged at student flats and hovels.
As long as people came with alcohol the door was open.
I am not exaggerating when I say gang members and police met and socialised and sometimes members of parliament also showed up.
Rob showed up at our place in Oriental Parade on a Friday night(somebody invited someone who knew somebody who knew somebody- people who were there will remember how it was) had a whisky and chatted before a taxi took him to the airport.
Nobody took the occasion to insult him. Not the time or place.
Part of this is obviously nostalgia for a vanished time but it is true much of our common decency has been eroded and I blame capitalism.
RESTORE STATE SOCIALISM IN AOTEAROA! DEATH TO CAPITALISM!
I blame social media and obviously escalating neo liberalism.
I wrote this blog over a week ago just in case I got a chance to say my piece. Well I have, thx Martyn. I’m sick to death of hearing nasty, unfair comments and accusatory rubbish about Jacinda Ardern. She was, by far, one of our very best PM’s, head and shoulders above our current disasterous PM, what’s more she had a portfolio and was extremely busy, plus handling Covid in a brave and exemplary fashion. Of course she didn’t get everything right – who has? The rest of the world saw how well NZ did with covid and were so proud of her. How could she stay in NZ when her family were being threatened? Appalling that an inquiry has never been held to identify those responsible. Her name will still be out there when people are saying Simon Who, John Who, Christopher Who? So the “haters” need to stop the SH&T and move on. Personally I am extremely proud of her achievements and what she did for our country and its people. Such a shame that this destructive CoC is hell bent on destroying our lovely NZ all for the great God MONEY and their puffed up egos.
And to boot, Mike Hosking’s horrible ‘Breakfast Opinion’ this morning on Jacinda’s book, denigrating her yet again. How anyone can listen or contribute to his horrible sideshow beats the hell out of me. Sadly Hosking you have a short memory but I am old enough to remember the details of how you fell off your pedestal – most of your “sheep” wouldn’t have a clue! Time you backed off and started to deal with the “real problems” facing NZ now, which are this failing, arrogant, egotistical PM and his dumb assed, greedy followers.
You forgot to mention the sad twisted Michael Laws, the over inflated Sean Plunket and all the other pathetic little You Tube wankers such as Whangarei Tim.
wow you have taken my thoughts and put then directly at the nasty haters who were fueled in their hate by members of the current government .
The politics of kindness.
But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house.
Yesterday’s woman trying to rewrite history. Her spin will never stop.
The most outstanding global PM in modern history.
Martyn collected you Ennius with a great quote…
“the screams of feral outrage from her mutant detractors only adds to the ambience.”
Your own spin will never stop.
Ha. Doubt it. The Daily Telegraph and the Spinoff (left and right) were not fans of the book. I love it when socialists make millions and their fan girls ignore the obvious incongruity. Ardern’s kindness is as deep as a puddle. Ask the innocent workers who lost their jobs.
Innocent workers, now there’s a conspiracy. Those same innocent workers anger that was as deep as a puddle.