Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Newshub
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Newshub
Opinion
EDITORIAL
When then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was asked at one of the earliest coronavirus media briefings whether she was afraid of the virus, she replied: “No, because we have a plan.”
It was that steady voice; the clearly structured sentences; the stare-down-the-barrel-to-the-camera at the nation that dragged New Zealandthrough the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Ever capped with an empathetic smile.
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
New Zealand’s 40th prime minister will be forever associated with the challenges she and the country faced - a terrorist attack, a volcanic eruption, and a pandemic.
Now, the plan has been revealed for Ardern’s next stage. She will be a special envoy for the Christchurch Call, to carry on her mission to counter violent extremism of the sort the Christchurch gunman ingested and promulgated. She will also be on the board of the Earthshot Prize, a recognition-based campaign to tackle our fix our biggest environmental problems.
When Ardern became prime minister, she most likely anticipated tackling climate change and child poverty in measures admired and appreciated. A deranged man with a semi-automatic arsenal on March 15, 2019 hijacked this; a phreatic eruption at Whakaari/White Island on December 9 diverted energy from it; and a coronavirus pandemic put paid to it.
Divisions that simmered in online chat groups and sports and social groups spewed into full frame as agitators whipped up anger at vaccine rollouts and mandates. Drawn into this also was a fear of co-governance and even the renaissance of te reo Māori. It culminated in the three-week encampment on Parliament’s lawn that ended in fiery confrontations on March 2 last year.
Police operation to clear protestors from Parliament. Photo / Mike Scott, File
Ardern’s early, incredible success at enticing New Zealand to compliance was her very undoing as the disenfranchised protested the length of time taken to lift restrictions and declare an impossible victory. Her attempted social reforms fuelled accusations of manipulation and duplicity.
While still lauded overseas as only the second leader of a country to give birth while in office; for the crackdown on automatic weapons; and for her eloquent oratory at international events, her core domestic support was in collapse.
Yesterday afternoon, her abdication was completed with her valedictory speech in Parliament.
Herald political correspondent Audrey Young has pointed out Ardern’s legacies are there in child poverty reduction and climate change. The critics are right in that she didn’t make the progress she wanted to in either, nor what the public expected. But Ardern put in place the legislative framework to ensure progress will be made by future governments.
In between crises, there was just enough time to lay the foundations for real change, sometime in the future. Her successor has attempted to ignite his chances of forming the next government by burning some of Ardern’s more peripheral progressive policies and has yet to swear allegiance to her core causes.
But a chance is there for her groundwork - as a social reformer and a young, child-bearing woman leader - to become the turangawaewae, the place to stand, for great leaders to come.
