I attended Jacinda Ardern’s press conference when she stepped down as prime minister, and saw a leader who was composed to the end. But when she walked away I caught a glimpse behind the sunglasses she wore as her bodyguards shepherded her through the media scrum. I saw a person who looked burnt out and broken, which was not surprising given the attacks on her were not just political, they were personal.
She has largely stayed out of the public eye since then, but that has shifted with the hoopla around her recently released autobiography and another political and personal attack, this one masquerading as an independent inquiry into the Covid response.
Ardern’s tenure was born out of a brilliant election campaign that had nothing to lose, compared with poor old Bill English trying to carry the dead weight of the incumbents after John Key gapped it when the numbers turned. Labour had burnt through a series of dull leaders and she was their last bright hope.
But that was part of Ardern’s problem – she is a very good communicator but she came into government with very little to actually communicate. How could she when she got the hospital pass of several failed Labour leaders and a cabinet full of lightweights? She managed to dodge the first tackle of the election but then got monstered at the bottom of the ruck in her second term of government.
Two of the biggest crises of Ardern’s time as prime minister were things that no leader could have prepared for: a massacre and a global pandemic.
Ardern’s ability to communicate and her natural empathy enabled her to rise to the occasion during the Christchurch mosque massacre.
Her decisiveness in the initial stages of Covid saved thousands of lives – compare New Zealand’s numbers with the US. But at what point did the lockdowns and other measures start killing the economy?
The loudest and most vociferous pundits were and still are men north of middle age who never coped with the idea of a woman younger than them in charge. But those shouty males will never deal with the responsibility of having to choose between body bags and GDP.
However, those who were hurling cobblestones and setting fire to things in the riot in front of Parliament were a different demographic and their rage was rooted in something else.
Many of them had been left behind for decades; the Covid restrictions merely rubbed their noses in it and made them susceptible to conspiracy theories. Ardern and her government were simply out of touch with what was happening to the most vulnerable.
Which brings me to what was perhaps Ardern’s greatest failure as a leader. She made much of addressing child poverty and appointed herself Minister of Child Poverty. I’m sure she was sincere about it but she didn’t have the courage to correctly diagnose the problem or prescribe any solutions.
The term “child poverty” is problematic for a start. Child poverty doesn’t exist in isolation from family poverty which doesn’t exist outside of poverty at a societal level. Deprived children are generations in the making. There have been decades of decisions that have an impact on Māori communities and their children, leaving many in serious poverty and with all the issues that go with it.
Ardern and the government she led fell into the trap of leaving the economic status quo in place while fiddling around the edges in the name of being kind. (National fiddles around the edges in the name of being responsible.) Labour wasted an outright majority. It failed to use that political capital to cut to the heart of some of the most persistent problems and come up with radical solutions.
The last time there was a radical overhaul of the economy was under David Lange, but it was driven by Roger Douglas. They were the first generation of Baby Boomers to get their hands on the levers of power and every government since has basically been kowtowing to this demographic, which has been the chief beneficiary of the status quo that formed around Rogernomics.
But what benefits that demographic is no longer necessarily in the national interest. The unfettered financialisation of the economy has created distortions around things like housing that largely benefit banks and old white people who own property (I saw this happening in the agriculture sector as well).
Do you want a decent retirement and good healthcare? Then who do you think will pay for it? But Ardern was too nice to deliver that kind of hard message.
And the failure is not entirely on Ardern’s shoulders. Grant Robertson, like a lot of Labour finance ministers, was more concerned about being seen to be competent than doing anything of lasting merit.
The impacts of Labour’s failure to take the opportunity to make significant change are being made worse by the current government, and it is biting the middle class.
But the greatest impacts of that failure are on the very people Ardern claimed to be prioritising – children. She failed the future of the country.
