Former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern appeared on US television recently and revealed what she misses most about politics. Photo / Good Morning America
Former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern appeared on US television recently and revealed what she misses most about politics. Photo / Good Morning America
OPINION:
Is galling too strong a word ?
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern back in her happy place on American television last week waxing lyrical about her favourite topics of leadership and kindness.
She appears happy. I am told by those who know the couple, they are.
There is some excellent money being made in an environment that is a world away from what she would be facing if she still lived here more than she does.
I thought it was interesting she is trying to reframe her departure from the big job.
She hadn’t in fact run out of gas, despite the fact she told us she had.
She just wasn’t doing as good a job as she thought she could.
Either way, it has become apparent this year what a gargantuan mess she has left behind, and in that is the galling nature of watching her espouse her latest version of hot air that marked her tenure.
It is in this area I feel most sorry for Chris Hipkins.
Make no mistake, he deserves all he is getting given he has been instrumental in this cluster for the past six years.
Having been Minister of Covid and Education and Police and State Services, his fingerprints are over most aspects of the country’s current malaise.
Also he took the job on voluntarily, so ultimately in a couple of weeks when the tide sweeps his party out of power, he has to carry that.
But what he took on looked nothing like what it has turned out to be, and that leads us back to Ardern.
As the cracks and implosions of this year started to show themselves, whether it was Nash or Allan, Tinetti or Wood, and their various trials, tribulations, mistakes or incompetences, it became stunningly clear how little management had been going on under Ardern’s so-called leadership.
The house of cards she had been running imploded at the first hint of a breeze. Whether she knew this, or was so absent she didn’t have a clue, doesn’t really matter.
The discipline, professionalism, organisation and experience needed to run a well-honed and successful Government was nowhere to be seen.
So poor old Chris watched his party crumble around him. At the same time he was trying to light his bonfire of hopelessly idealistic policies left for him by the former leader who had scarpered for a new life.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins speaking at the party's rally in Wellington on Sunday. Photo / Mark Mitchell
There is a lesson for us as well; well, for the 25 per cent who voted for Labour last time and most likely won’t this time.
Ardern is a study in how easily you can fool the punter.
She is likeable and engaging, but look at what she has left.
Beyond the smile and the buzz phrases like “be kind”, what do we have?
How can a country go from loving and lapping up someone so rapturously to where we are now?
The upside of her leaving is the anger that was building for this campaign has dissipated.
There was genuine and growing concern as to how ugly things could have become.
You will note that even Hipkins doesn’t actually appear in public, he turns up at well-orchestrated groupings and meetings.
He doesn’t wander the malls looking for votes; that is deliberate.
Perhaps the most astonishing account of him so far is the report of him the day of the debate last week, walking from a morning event down the street to the place he was to prepare for that night.
The people he passed in the street didn’t acknowledge him and he didn’t acknowledge them.
At a pedestrian crossing he stood next to two young people dressed in graduation robes.
The former Minister of Education, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, stood staring straight ahead without a word.
What the hell is the matter with him? How hard is it to say “congrats guys, what a great day for you”... or words to that effect?
Ardern in her heyday would have taken a day to walk 100 metres as the selfie seekers stopped her progress, but three short years later, if she had still been here, they would not dare let her anywhere near an uncontrolled public event such has been the turn of mood.
Maybe she was a leader for the times, as in the Covid times, maybe in the fear of the Covid times all we really wanted was a kind smile and some shallow reassurance, and in return we gave Labour 50 per cent of the vote and an unheard-of majority in an MMP environment.
As Covid faded, the fear vanished, and we sobered up to see what was really going on.
And what was really going on was a political house of cards, with the head conductor already on the bus out of town, heading for a new life where the questions aren’t as hard and the responsibility isn’t as heavy.
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