Sense prevails

The charismatic, effective, caring presence of outgoing New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern will be missed on the world stage this week when she hands over her post and Labour Party leadership to Chris Hipkins. She explained she is standing down due to burnout. She no longer has the energy to carry on with the job.

Born in 1980, she joined the Labour Party when she was 17. After university she served as a researcher in the office of New Zeeland Prime Minister Helen Clark and, later, worked as an adviser in British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cabinet office. Ardern, a declared democratic socialist, served as a member of New Zealand’s parliament from 2008 and became leader ahead of the 2017 election. Little wonder that she stepped down due to exhaustion: an action much older politicians rarely take.   

During nearly six years in power Ardern became a strong global actor in March 2019 when an Australian white supremacist shot and killed 51 and wounded 40 Muslims at two mosques in Christchurch. Ardern promptly went to the city where, donning a headscarf, she condoled with the largely immigrant Muslim community. She also declared New Zealand’s lax gun laws would change and delivered.

Six days later she announced a ban on almost all semi-automatic assault weapons, the exception being for farmers killing pests. She admitted that efforts to limit these weapons had long been stalled and declared, “The time for the mass and easy availability of these weapons must end, and today they will.”

As an immediate measure, the government proclaimed restricted access to these weapons until licenses were granted by the police but were denied. The ban was submitted to parliament on April 1 and adopted on the 10th. This mandated an official buy-back of all legally licensed banned weaponry within six months. The scheme was hailed as a success with the purchase and destruction of more than 30,000 weapons although thousands of illegal guns remained in the hands of recalcitrant owners who risked prosecution.

Ardern’s swift empathetic response to the mosque massacre and decisive action on semi-automatic weapons projected her onto centre stage in the global fight against gun violence. Her leadership contrasted dramatically with the total failure of US presidents to limit the purchase, circulation, and use of weapons of war that should not be in the hands of civilians. The US registered 617 mass shootings targeting four or more people during 2022 down from 690 in 2021 which was three times the number in 2018. So far this year, there have been seven in California, including the killing of 10 and wounding of 10 last weekend and the shooting of seven on Monday. There were 40,000 gun deaths in the US last year.

Her management of the covid crisis was regarded as her “greatest legacy,” epidemiologist and adviser Michael Baker told The Washington Post. In the newspaper, he compared her to Winston Churchill, who led Britain to victory over Nazism in World War II but lost the 1945 election.

As with the mosque shootings, Ardern took prompt action. She closed New Zealand’s borders, imposed strict quarantine for infected returning citizens, mandated snap lockdowns, and proposed mass vaccination. By the time she relaxed these measures, most adults in New Zealand had been vaccinated. As a result, there were only 2,500 fatalities among five million New Zealanders, the lowest death rate among Western countries.

Despite domestic and international admiration resulting in “Jacindamania,” Ardern had made enemies while in office. From the outset, as New Zealand’s third woman prime minister there were misogynists who resented having another female in power, particularly since, at 37, when was the youngest woman premier in the world and the youngest woman ever in this job. To make matters worse, she not only ran the country but also cared for her baby daughter. White radicals also rejected her embrace of the Muslim community after the Christchurch shootings.

Many semi-automatic gun owners did not favour her ban on assault weapons while anti-vaxers condemned her policy of imposing covid vaccination requirements for workers in some jobs as well as demanding the presentation of vaccination certificates when entering gyms, hairdressers, events, cafes, and resataurants. Her covid policies rather than gun controls made her a target for vocal, social media, and, even, physical attacks. The anti-vaxers and opponents of covid lockdown argued she is a “communist” who is destroying New Zealand by conducting state interference in private lives. Hundreds of mainly anti-vaxers  gathered repeatedly in 2022 on the lawns of parliament in Wellington to accuse her of over-reach and behaving like Hitler. Following the example of the rioters at the US Capitol on Jan.6, 2021, they raised hangman’s nooses and threw fences and furniture at police trying to restrain them.  Local commentators argued that the country’s generally tolerant and moderate political system had been undermined and the country polarised.

As these protesters did not behave with New Zealand decorum but followed the violent examples of right-wingers in the US and Canada, Ardern dubbed their actions as an “imported style of protest that we have not seen in New Zealand before.”

After her first election in 2017, her room for securing the Labour Party’s social objectives was limited by its coalition partner, the nationalist and populist New Zealand First party. Nevertheless, her performance during this term won her party a landslide victory in the 2020 election and she hoped for progress on longstanding domestic issues: eliminating the country’s inequality and high levels of child poverty. While she had some success, her great expectations were not met. A shortage of affordable housing and rising greenhouse emissions loomed large. Last November, Ardern indicated she would step down early in the new year although her party had hoped she would remain prime minister until the election in November.

Instead, she prepared the way for a swift and smooth transition to a new Labour leader who will serve as prime minister until the election and, perhaps, head a new government although voters seek change and the conservative National Party is ahead in the polls.

Photo: TNS