As Jacinda Ardern prepares to give her final speech to Parliament next week, Audrey Young talks to four former prime ministers about her record in office.
When Helen Clark woke up on January 19 this year, in the Swiss Alps, she knew something had happened to Jacinda Ardern overnight – in fact, she thought she may have died.
There were about 80 messages on her WhatsApp and 30 texts and as she started to open them, they said things such as, “Terrible news about Jacinda.”
Then she found a message from Ardern herself, explaining to Clark that she had decided to step down as Prime Minister.
Clark messaged the women’s breakfast she had been about to speak to at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos to say she would have to skip it to write a statement - many of the messages had been media seeking comment on the shock resignation.
“The feedback I got from that breakfast was that women were in tears and as I’ve travelled a lot in the last couple of months, women have told me they cried when they heard it, that she was their hero,” Clark told the Weekend Herald.
“She had this sort of appeal and empathy with a very wide audience of women around the world. People were devastated by it.”
Ardern had five full years as Prime Minister, taking power at the end of 2017 and resigning in January this year, saying she had nothing left in the tank.
Most people did not see it coming, not least former National Prime Minister Sir John Key, who himself suddenly resigned in 2016 after eight years as Prime Minister.
“I was completely shocked,” he said this week from the United States.
He thought then and still does think she would have been Labour’s strongest asset going into this year’s election on October 14 in a bid to win a third term.
And because she had come through some very difficult times as Prime Minister, he thought she would stay on to pursue the issues she had been passionate about.
“From an outside perspective, decision-making seemed to weigh quite heavily on her but for all of that I was personally really shocked when she resigned.”
Ardern was always seen as a reluctant leader, having served as Andrew Little’s deputy for six months before he was persuaded to stand down in favour of Ardern.
And 80 days later, after a campaign primarily against National’s Bill English and an election that gave New Zealand First the balance of power, Winston Peters announced his party would go with Labour and Jacinda Ardern would be Prime Minister.
The elation clearly remained evident when Governor-General Dame Patsy Reddy delivered the Speech from the Throne on the Government’s plans for the next three years, written by Ardern.
It reflected Ardern’s high ideals but it also made perhaps an amateur’s mistake of articulating utopia and impossibly high expectations.
“This will be a government of inclusion,” the speech went. “All who live in this country are entitled to respect and dignity; all are entitled to live meaningful lives; all are entitled to care and compassion.”
“This will be a government of transformation. It will lift up those who have been forgotten or neglected, it will take action on child poverty and homelessness… and it will build a truly prosperous nation and a fair society, together…
“This will be a government of aspiration. It aspires to make this a nation where all cultures and human rights are valued, where everyone can have decent housing and meaningful work… where we become world leaders on environmental issues and climate change.”
Ardern especially raised expectations on climate change, defining it as her so-called nuclear-free moment, and on reducing child poverty, by making herself the Minister of Child Poverty Reduction.
She quickly established an international profile by becoming not just an attractive young woman leader at age 37 but one who gave birth in her first year in office.
Across two terms she gave the green light to some major and contentious reforms in amalgamating 20 health boards into a centralised health system including a Māori health authority, centralising the polytech system, rewriting the Resource Management Act and restructuring the management of drinking water, wastewater and stormwater from the local level to four regions, including a board with an equal number of local government and iwi to oversee the boards of directors.
None has gone smoothly. But on one issue there is near universal acclaim.
It is Ardern’s handling of the 2019 massacre in which 51 Muslims were murdered at their mosques in Christchurch by a white supremacist.
Four former Prime Ministers share their verdicts
Each of the four former prime ministers spoken to by the Weekend Herald about Ardern, Clark, Key, Jim Bolger and Sir Geoffrey Palmer, cited it as a remarkable display of leadership.
At a time when the country and the world were reeling in disbelief and New Zealand’s reputation could have been shattered, Ardern intuitively found the right words to articulate the grief and to counter the doctrine of hate that had led to the attack. In the process, she enhanced New Zealand’s reputation in the Muslim world and her own personal reputation.
Key described her response as “exemplary and faultless” and it undoubtedly gave her what he described as an unparalleled profile.
“I think Jacinda has the highest and most stellar profile on the international stage of any prime minister in New Zealand’s history and her legacy forever, I think, will be the establishment of that profile,” he said.
There was one other factor that set her apart in his view - winning the 2020 election with an outright majority under the MMP system, “which most people believed was an impossible feat”, said Key, who came close to doing it on election night 2014.
“On the positives, they are just the two things you can’t take away from her. They are remarkable achievements.”
But that’s where the compliments on her achievements stop.
She had fallen short, he said, on the execution of her domestic political agenda.
“The reality is that most of the high-profile initiatives she had either went backwards or Chris Hipkins has essentially ripped them up.”
“I personally like Jacinda,” said Key.
“I think she is a nice person. She did her best and I think every prime minister goes there to make New Zealand a better country and the conditions for anyone are never easy and hers were particularly challenging.”
It was easy for people to be overly critical and he was not overly critical of her, he said.
“I just think if you look at some of the big initiatives she championed around the plight of less-well-off New Zealanders or climate change or a number of other issues, it’s hard to say that any of those metrics got better.”
Key is referring to the so-called “policy bonfire” and the decision by Hipkins to ditch or delay a raft of contentious Ardern policies including the TVNZ-RNZ merger, hate speech laws, a social insurance scheme, lowering the voting age for general elections, a speed limit reduction programme, a biofuels mandate and a clean car upgrade scheme.
On child poverty reduction, the official statistics published last week under the Child Poverty Reduction Act passed by Ardern actually show a drop in all three measures of poverty since 2018 but that it is not on track to meet the ambitious targets it set for 2028. And while progress on reducing has flatlined in the most recent year, that can be seen as an achievement in the face of a cost of living crisis and soaring prices.
On climate change, the actual reductions in net emissions of four greenhouse gases between 2017 and 2020, according to the latest stats, have been negligible – approximately 55 million tonnes measured in carbon dioxide equivalent. And current projections suggest that current policy settings will get that down to just 16.9 million tonnes by 2050.
But there has been substantial progress under the Ardern Government in setting targets for reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions (to zero by 2050, except for biogenic methane; and 10 per cent below 2017 levels by 2030 for biogenic methane and a higher reduction by 2050), and in establishing the Climate Change Commission and carbon budget process to achieve the targets.
Former Labour Prime Minister Sir Geoffrey Palmer is unequivocal when asked where Ardern sits in the pantheon of Labour prime ministers.
“In my opinion, Jacinda Ardern is one of the most outstanding prime ministers New Zealand has ever had and I think her performance will be judged very favourably by history.
“I rate Jacinda Ardern very, very highly,” he said.
“She was, I think, the best communicator I’ve ever heard in politics. She was also very empathetic. She brought a style of political management that we haven’t seen here before and I think it was a wonderful tonic to a tired political system that is not performing very well.
“She put New Zealand on the map like no prime minister I can remember.”
Palmer acknowledged that progress on climate change and on child poverty reduction was not pronounced but much of the Government’s programme suffered because of the Covid-19 pandemic and, besides, frameworks had been put in place to tackle them.
“I think Jacinda’s prime ministership was knocked off course. It had a big set of policy priorities, poverty and all those other things, and it wasn’t able to do them because one thing the public doesn’t understand is the Government can’t do everything at once. It doesn’t have the resources.
“The number of things it has to do are extraordinarily wide and they have to keep all the existing services going but at the same time deal with the pandemic. No one has faced a pandemic like that.”
New Zealand was ill-equipped to deal with it and the health system was still reeling under the strain it imposed and continued to impose.
“You’ve got to be realistic. Politics is the art of the possible and you couldn’t have done more than she did to try and get on top of the pandemic.”
He said the Covid pandemic was an unbelievable thing that no one had ever had to deal with before and all of the systems of government had to concentrate on it, to the exclusions of almost everything else.
“The flu epidemic of 1918 killed about 9000 people in two months but the way in which the Government behaved in relation to Covid kept the death rate down here extremely low compared to international comparisons.
“I don’t think many prime ministers have had to deal with the number of crises that she had to deal with. "
Jim Bolger was prime minister from 1990 to 1997 and in his day he was best known for his competent political management and the advances made in the Treaty of Waitangi settlement process.
Within 24 hours of his own election, he faced a crisis with the potential collapse of the BNZ, which had 40 per cent of New Zealand’s commercial market on its books.
He chaired a task force early in the term of the Ardern Government on fair pay agreements.
But he said her record in government had been shambolic.
“It is not the Opposition that has absolutely taken the knife to her policies, it’s her successor.”
Bolger criticised the political management of reforms that the Ardern Government started in centralising the health system and the polytechnics and overhauling the Resource Management Act and the Three Waters reforms.
“All disasters,” said Bolger. “It has just been a shambles. It’s sad but true.”
“I lifted the pension from 60 to 65 and it certainly wasn’t welcome but you can manage these things - I was re-elected the next time as well.”
He acknowledged she had had some big issues to deal with and there had been no equivalent to the mosque shootings.
He praised Ardern’s response to the massacre and said the empathy and outreach to the Muslim community had been “100 per cent”.
But he is highly critical of her impact on race relations in New Zealand which he puts down to a lack of leadership.
“If you look at the broader issue of race relations, and primarily because of how she mishandled the introduction of co-governance, she has left New Zealand’s race relations in a much worse position.
“Her policy failure, her inability to explain what she meant with co-governance, has meant we are going to be more divided on race than we have been for years and years and years.
“That is evident everywhere now. People are anxious, concerned, worried, uncertain …and that’s frankly just a failure of leadership in a vital area of society. And Jacinda didn’t provide it.”
It was essential to take people with you on such issues to explain what you mean and what your goal is.
Sadly because of that, the debate on race relations would almost certainly be one of the negative aspects of this year’s election campaign.
“We are now quite divided on racial issues and that is tragic. And it is going to take quite a while to build back.”
He hoped that if Christopher Luxon got into power at the election, he was “preparing for a bloody hard journey because it is going to be hard work to rebuild people’s confidence”.
Helen Clark remains circumspect on the record of the sixth Labour Government on domestic issues.
But as the former No 3 at the United Nations, and with a lifelong interest in foreign affairs, she has taken a close interest in how Ardern has managed international relationships in an increasingly complicated world, particularly that of the US and China.
Clark acknowledges that it has become harder to manage the relationships as competition increases but managing them both was a cornerstone of having an independent foreign policy.
She understood why Ardern had “laid low” when Donald Trump was president of the United States to keep out of the firing line.
And she acknowledged that Winston Peters had largely been responsible for that relationship and Ardern herself had largely managed the relationship with China.
“Under Jacinda’s leadership, it has managed the China relationship quite carefully,” Clark said.
There was what Clark called “a bit of a wobble” in 2022 when Ardern’s visit to the White House resulted in a joint statement that Clark has previously said appeared to reflect only the US view of regional security and not New Zealand’s.
“The question is whether you want to continue to be known for having a carefully balanced foreign policy or whether you want to jump feet first into a camp where you are then really taken for granted as being part of group-think and not forming your own judgments and positions,” she told the Herald at the time.
It rankled in the Beehive but Clark is highly sensitive to any shifts in foreign policy emphasis, having kept New Zealand out of the invasion of Iraq 20 years ago and having simultaneously improved relations with the US and China on her watch.
Clark now says that Ardern “corrected” the perceptions from the White House visit in speeches that followed at a Nato summit, then at Chatham House in London and at the Lowy Institute in Sydney in which more balance was displayed.
The US relationship with China had not improved with the change in presidency from Trump to Joe Biden, she noted, and that had to be factored in as a long-term shift.
“What we can say is that fundamentally US-China settings towards China have changed and that New Zealand needs to keep its head in these circumstances on an ongoing basis.
“Because we have a long friendship with the US but we have important interests with China and that has to be managed in the interests of New Zealand’s overall relationships, not to under-estimate the importance of the economic relationship with both of them.”
Clark was complimentary about Ardern’s management of the relationship with Australia, especially during the Scott Morrison years, which had not been sympathetic to New Zealand.
But the decision by the Labor Albanese Government to whole-heartedly support Aukus, and the acquisition of up to eight nuclear-powered submarines, which she clearly does not welcome, would also have to be managed.
She said New Zealand’s independent foreign policy had been tested in recent years and the war in Ukraine posed potentially bigger problems - although New Zealand had taken a very clear position on the illegal invasion by Russia.
“But I have concerns about the way the United States is managing the China relationship in the context of the conflict with Ukraine.
“What is needed is for China not to become a full-blooded supporter of that war, which to date it has not been.
“That needs careful management and engagement and the US has upped the ante with China at the very time it needs China not to be moving closer to supporting the war,” she said.
“If China tipped over into very active support for the war, that is highly problematic, highly problematic.”
Clark said that while other New Zealand prime ministers had had an international profile, such as David Lange over the anti-nuclear policy, Ardern’s had been amplified by being at the height of the social media age.
She would be remembered for stepping up in national crises, the mosque murders and the first year of the pandemic management.
And of course, for her personal story.
“Being a young woman who came to office, only the second in the world after Benazir Bhutto to give birth to a baby in office - this will be seen as our new frontiers for women in politics.
“That’s why there’ll be a little bit of disappointment it didn’t go longer. But then because you’re younger and you’ve got a life ahead of you and your child’s growing up, there are different pressures too.”
So what did Helen Clark reply to Ardern’s text from Davos about her resignation?
“My response was you’ve done the right thing for yourself and your family. If you get to that point where you haven’t got gas in the tank, you’ve got to act on it.”
Jacinda Ardern’s career milestones
2008
Elected as list MP, re-elected 2011 and 2014.
2017
Feb 25: Elected MP for Mt Albert in byelection
March 1: Elected Labour deputy leader
August 1: Elected Labour leader
Sept 23: General election with NZ First holding balance of power.
Oct 19: NZ First chooses Labour as coalition partner.
Oct 26: Ardern sworn in as PM
2018
Jan 18: Announces she is pregnant.
June 21: Gives birth to daughter Neve, takes six weeks’ leave
2019
March 15: Massacre in Christchurch mosques leaves 51 dead.
Dec 9: Whakaari White Island eruption kills 22.
2020
March 23: Announces country in Covid-19 lockdown and manages response to pandemic from Beehive, largely without NZ First.
Oct 17: Labour wins outright majority in general election, NZ First voted out.
2022
February: Anti-vaccine occupation of Parliament grounds ends in riot after 23 days. Borders fully open in June but lockdown leads to chronic labour shortages and soaring inflation.
2023
Jan 19: Ardern announces resignation as PM
Jan 25: Chris Hipkins sworn in as PM.
Feb 8: Hipkins begins to ditch or delay several large Ardern policies.
April 5: Ardern due to give valedictory address in Parliament.
April 15: Ardern resignation from Parliament to take effect.