Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at Labour's campaign launch in the Auckland Town Hall. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at Labour's campaign launch in the Auckland Town Hall. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Jacinda Ardern dressed as she meant to go on at the Labour campaign launch – understated in a plain grey dress, with just a flash of red, evident only in her red velvet earrings.
There was naturally a rapturous welcome from party members for their leader and Prime Minister.
Butshe did nothing startling. The Labour flavour was present but not overwhelming and did not need to be.
It is the soft National voters who put their faith in Ardern during the Covid-19 crisis and who have yet to detach themselves from her that the launch was designed to keep. The best way to do that is to campaign as "Jacinda", not the re-election of a Labour-led Government.
National was mentioned briefly, but not by name.
"It's about whether we build a few roads, or whether we rebuild New Zealand, " Ardern said.
"It's about whether we stop and start again, or whether we keep up the momentum."
Labour was mentioned only five times (compared to 16 last election launch).
Country rock star Tami Neilson obliged in the Jacinda-strong Labour-light campaign launch by recounting her own life stories under lockdown with her six-year-old and eight-year-old boys and thanking Ardern for having a "huge source of comfort and strength" for her family.
Ardern's partner, Clarke Gayford, was very funny in introducing his fiancee – complaining about Cabinet papers in the bed being "worse than toast crumbs" and how hard it was to win an argument about the nappy bucket with the woman now deemed "the most eloquent leader in the world".
He has done it before, having introduced her at the 2017 launch, when she had been leader for three weeks.
Having now lived with the Prime Minister for three years, he was able to talk about her work ethic, her dedication to the job and the fact, as he told it, that he had never seen her once celebrate the role, not even privately.
Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford leaving the Auckland Town Hall at the Labour Party launch. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Ardern's speech was pitched to the soft National support.
She complimented the work of National predecessors John Key and Bill English for being good managers of the economy.
"I want to thank them for that," she said, silently putting them into a different league to the Judith Collins-Gerry Brownlee National Party.
Ardern also launched the first Labour policy of the campaign - a $300 million financial incentive for business to take on unemployed workers, or for those workers to start up their own businesses.
It was a scheme hatched by the previous National Government, continued by Labour but has now been turbo charged for the Covid-19 recovery. Who could oppose it?
Certainly not Business New Zealand or the Council of Trade Unions.
