Jacinda Ardern, former prime minister, former Labour leader - and soon-to-be former MP - spoke her final words in Parliament’s debating chamber this evening.
Her speech dabbled in the ironies of her political life: as one of the most private, media-sceptical prime ministers of recent times, she is probably the leader New Zealanders have seen the most of, the one they think they know the best; the one they spent weeks of their lives locked up with, and heard more from than their own families.
She used her final half hour in Parliament to try to put her own stamp on how people may think of her, to wrest back her story from the sceptics, and to try to convince people that what they might perceive as weakness was, in fact, strength.
For people who spend half their lives speaking in public - who sit in a building named for the act of speaking (a Parliament, from the Old French “parler”, meaning ‘to speak’) - so much of what MPs say doesn’t actually tell you what they think.
Even party leaders and prime ministers like Ardern, who delivered her valedictory statement at Parliament this afternoon, are constrained by party policy, Cabinet collective responsibility and the censorious tendencies of active political life.
But this is what valedictories are for - and Ardern’s specifically. Her speech symbolically shed, in roughly reverse order, each “hat” she had once worn: prime minister, Labour leader, Labour MP, until as her half-hour drew to a close, Ardern wrapped up as simply a daughter, fiancée and mum (Parliament actually allowed her to speak seven minutes into the 6pm dinner break).
The best valedictories let people in. Steven Joyce talked about the challenge of not being around for your children. New Zealanders generally keep out of their politicians’ private lives. A valedictory is an opportunity for an MP to take the public into the personal - but on their terms.
Prime Minister’s valedictories can be too different. They’re too close to the action still. There’s too much to defend. Too much temptation to enter the last word into Hansard.
Ardern’s, at its worst, began like this. In the first third of the speech, Ardern read a laundry list of her Government’s accomplishments: child poverty indicators, climate legislation, period products in schools.
These were significant, but no one listening to the list could forget it fell far short of the grand promises about housing and child poverty on which Ardern was elected. The word ‘Kiwibuild’ got no mention, nor did the shadow that hung over Labour’s first term: Winston Peters.
The speech dallied with catastrophe in this first section. It might have been dull, defensive, and unreflective.
But Ardern found her legs when she was able to find context for some of these achievements, which are not always easy to see.
“We won’t ever know the long-term benefits of banning conversion therapy, especially for our young people.
“Or what it means to our Pacific communities that we finally apologised for the dawn raids.
“There will be no list of the lives saved because of the banning of military-style semi-automatic weapons.
“We won’t know how we left women feeling about the ability to make their own choices when this Parliament decriminalised abortion, or when we improved pay equity, put period products into schools, or reached 50 per cent representation of women in Parliament,“ she said.
This was especially true of Covid, where Ardern urged people to remember the lives saved because of the response, rather than the pain and division with which it ended.
Ardern also thanked her team - as any valedictory must.
She wisely structured each set of ‘thank you’s by subject: Covid, the Labour Party, her offices.
Ardern’s Covid “bubble” - Dame Juliette Gerrard, Sir Ashley Bloomfield, Dr Caroline McElnay, Dr Ian Town, Grant Robertson, Julia Haydon-Carr, Le Roy Taylor, Andrew Campbell, Holly Donald, Brook Barrington, Rob Fyfe, Raj Nahna - were all thanked by way of anecdote.
Campbell was revealed as somewhat emotional, Nahna, described as “the guy with the hair”, had the fact of his impressive mane entered into Hansard (as Ardern revealed a high-ranking European leader once ruffled it during trade talks), Taylor was revealed as a former flatmate, and Ardern singled out Donald - the daughter of former Green co-leader Rod Donald - noting her father would be “so proud”. This clearly a vote of confidence in the staffer, who has found herself dragged into the Stuart Nash saga.
The speech excelled once Ardern had finished thanking people and put her legacy-securing to bed.
Here, she attempted to craft a new legacy - as a champion for the notion that anyone could give politics a go.
With trademark self-deprecation, she shrugged off insults about her sensitivity, not by disproving them, but by arguing that you could be sensitive and be prime minister.
Ardern conceded she herself needed convincing on this point, and confessed she once consulted Trevor Mallard on how to “harden up”.
Instead of hardening up, she described growing comfortable with this sensitivity - quite something when you consider Ardern has attracted more vitriol than any politician in living memory.
“I didn’t change,” she said.
“I leave this place as sensitive as I ever was. Prone to dwell on the negative. Hating Question Time so deeply that I would struggle most days to eat beforehand. And I am here to tell you, you can be that person, and be here,” she said.
“I would rather be criticised for being a hugger than being heartless, and so hug I did. A lot,” she said, to the laughter of the packed chamber and gallery - as full as it has ever been.
Ardern, famously private, famously media-unfriendly, opened up on her unsuccessful attempt with IVF coming at the same time she became Labour leader.
“I thought I had found myself on a path that meant I wouldn’t be a mother. Rather than process that, I campaigned to become prime minister. A rather good distraction as far as they go,” she said, noting that shortly afterwards, she became a mother - and she confidently said she had been a good mother, too, a rebuke to the unsubtle and unfair criticism political mothers face.
“But I leave knowing I was the best mother I could be. You can be that person, and be here,” she said.
Ardern finished in a far different place to where she started. No longer defensive. No longer fighting questions of legacy and delivery, or whatever other label might have attached itself to her administration.
Instead, she finished by listing the many labels, some underhandedly pejorative, that had been attached to her, and defiantly said they had never stopped her from leading or governing.
“I cannot determine what will define my time in this place. But I do hope I have demonstrated something else entirely. That you can be anxious, sensitive, kind and wear your heart on your sleeve.
“You can be a mother, or not, an ex-Mormon, or not, a nerd, a crier, a hugger – you can be all of these things, and not only can you be here, you can lead.
“Just like me,” she said, as her benchmate Grant Robertson welled up.
Ardern has never been able to extract from her leadership discussions of her identity. Her former faith, her gender, her being a mother, and even her sensitivity, have dogged her - often unfairly - from the second she took the Labour leadership.
It was a powerful decision, in her last seconds in Parliament, not to repudiate these identities, but to embrace them - and defiantly proclaim that if they had made a difference to her ability to govern, it was a positive one.
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