to bring the news you will no doubt already have heard - that our wonderful World Famous Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, is not standing for re-election and is stepping away from Parliament.
To say we are saddened is an understatement.
However, we are fully supportive of her decision and we can understand when she says she doesn't have enough left in the tank for another 4 years.
She has done an amazing job over the last 5.5 years as our PM, and she has dealt superlatively with extremely difficult crises - a terrorist attack, a bio-security threat, a volcanic eruption and a pandemic (our death toll from COVID-19 is ~2400 in total - the UK and the US were losing that many people a day; and size of population notwithstanding, proportionately that is a significantly lower death rate than almost all other countries). She and her team are currently dealing well with local cost of living pressures brought on by the global financial crisis.
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| After the terrorist murdered 51 people. |
She has used her position to further and finalise Free Trade Agreements with the UK, with the EU, with the USA and countries in Asia.
She has established and delivered on policies to
- legislate to make the ownership illegal of semi automatic and automatic weapons - 6 days after the Christchurch shooting with legislation enacted within a month
- reduce child poverty here in NZ -
- Family Tax Credits, Working For Families tax relief,
- increased benefit payments
- increased the minimum wage
- legislated for a living wage
- remove food insecurity through the school lunch programme that provides a million lunches a day across the country in the schools where the most need exists
- address the housing shortage brought about by the previous government selling off most of our social housing (state houses) stock and investors buying multiple houses for renting out (or leaving empty for the tax break on mortgage interest and to build untaxed capital gains) rather than living in
- put much more funding into health so that District Health Boards are delivering health services rather than servicing debt
- put significant funding into mental health services to increase access to counselling, psychiatric services, ...
- create job and career opportunities for young people by restoring the apprenticeship schemes that used to exist and were abolished under previous governments
- provide for free the first year of tertiary education
- supported businesses during the lockdowns so they could keep staff employed and:
- pay wages,
- cover their expenses
- help cover their own income.
- AND MUCH MUCH MORE
We currently have, under her leadership and with her team, a significantly lower inflation rate than many of the countries we measure ourselves against and we have less than 3% unemployment.
She is extremely well respected around the world for her leadership style.
She is incredibly intelligent both emotionally and intellectually, and has a prodigious memory for facts and their mutuality and interconnectedness. She has been an incisive leader who has built a strong team that uses their strengths to advance the wellbeing on all New Zealanders. What's more she always acknowledges the contribution of her team and shares the kudos while taking on herself the slings and arrows, the vitriol and the misogynistic hate.
And FFS, has she received 1000 times more of those than anyone deserves - from the extreme right-wing that most of us didn't know existed here in NZ until 2021, from the gullible who have swallowed every recent conspiracy theory going without stopping to chew or ruminate. Much of the right-wing extremism has been imported from the USA and was starting to appear before our last election in 2020 - Cambridge Analytica made their presence felt at that time when they wanted to work with Winston Peters to upset Labour's election chances. That didn't work (landslide) but the door was opened, especially as anti-vaccination misinformation, lies and outright nuttery made its way in.
None of it was helped by the mainstream media who for some reason (probably the agenda of their owners) turned against the government and Jacinda in particular. Almost overnight they stopped being a help in getting information out to people and started being Trivial Pursuits competitors - who could ask the most inane and trivial questions? who could frame complex questions in a simplistic (not simple) way and ask it demanding a yes/no response - they played fast and loose with the truth, asked gotcha questions and all in all acted just like Fox News - that non-informative channel known by me as Faux Noise... They certainly stopped reporting and increased their opinion pieces dressed up as fact - but only loosely dressed: mostly the nakedness of their deceit was visible. And their editors, always with an eye to the ratings for 'news' as entertainment - not infotainment - were very skilled at leaving the factual stuff on the cutting room floor and only playing the bits that cast the government in bad light - regardless of the effect on the population.
But gosh, the 12 second soundbites were attention grabbing and sounded valid ...
And then there are the Opposition politicians - no policies, apart from if the government suggests it, there is an automatic NO - even if it was previously one of the their own ideas, e.g. the Three Waters legislation for clean and safe drinking water, waste water/sewage and storm water. (Note that the National govt when in power was keen to introduce water safety legislation - however their intent was to make it possible to privatise it ...)
OK, I need to stop - I am getting angry all over again.
I will finish by saying that Jacinda Ardern is the best Prime Minister of my lifetime and probably in the top 3 of all time - and I can't think who the other two are.
A woman of integrity and all it encompasses, a woman of compassion, empathy with a mind and an intelligence like a steel trap. A true leader - a leader who serves rather than dictates, a leader who uses power to rather than power over.
An amazing woman - she makes me proud to be a New Zealand woman, and I am privileged to have been living here during her tenure.
6 comments:
From abroad she has always appeared as the best leader in the world. Maybe you could send her over here to the UK to sort our lot out?
Mick
NB Oleanna
Issie and Mick,
She is a loss, and it is critical that she makes the call that looks after her. That in itself has so much integrity. Interestingly, her predecessor, Andrew Little, stood down before the 2017 election because he knew he would hold the party back.
Something about integrity and Labour politicians that I don't think even enters the thinking of conservative ones, does it?
Am feeling better today - we now have Chris Hipkins as PM. He was a very very effective Covid Response Minister. Personable, sharp, intelligent with a good sense of humour and, of course, he has a penis. As we know, that does help in that environment, dammit!
Mxx
Interesting perspective Marilyn. When I was in NZ last October visiting friends and family I only met one (my cousin in Kaitai) who was going to vote for her in 2023. The rest were unhappy, thought she would be gone before the next election and would be angling for a job with the UN.
Tom
Tom,
It's interesting how, even though there is a long list of work done by this government to improve people's lot and a huge amount of support for businesses and wage and salary earners during the lockdowns, and strong economic and employment performance with lower inflation than many countries with it forecast to drop this year and the lowest unemployment figures in years, people still have the perception that Labour can't manage the finances.
I think a number of people got tired of Covid ruling how we could operate, and a bit like after WWII (from what I have read and heard - not my lived experience, in case you were wondering...) people have struggled with the equivalent (though far less restrictive and draconian) of the ongoing rationing which trailed well behind the end of the war.
And unfortunately, people have been sucked in by Luxon's smooth talking (saying nothing of substance) and that he sounds like John Key - but no policies, no platform apart from if Labour is doing it, it is wrong.
He has not been challenged by the media to actually answer questions with specificity, and the amount of sycophancy is appalling from a group of self-called journalists (not even adequate bloggers, in my view) who should be holding his feet to the fire re what he and his team plan to deliver.
Each to their own, Tom, and I am not surprised that your friends and family hold similar views to yours, as do ours in the main...
However if there is a National/Act coalition come October, it won't be long before a number of those who are unhappy with Labour now become disenchanted with austerity in spending on Health in particular, when the tax cuts for the well off are not trickling down (who really thinks they will, honestly?) and when the assistance for low and middle income earners is stopped.
We are OK - we have enough to be pretty comfortable for the rest of our lives. But we don't vote for Labour just for us - we vote for Labour for those without our means, without the opportunities we've had, without the prospects of ever having them and who need a bit of a helping hand - to lift the tail and reduce need.
Cheers, M
Marilyn I never wrote I shared the views and opinions of my friends and family. I've never voted National!
Like you, some of them were critical of the media. But for the reverse reason, believing mainstream media were beholding to the government for funding and accordingly giving them an easy time. To my horror one claimed she no longer bothered with NZ media preferring to get her news from Sky!
NZ's Govt Debit as a percentage of GDP has gone from 19.2% in 2018 to a predicted 42% for this year. Therefore, I suspect no matter who is in government cuts will be made.
As for the opposition. Their role is to hold the government of the day to account and criticize everything. No doubt they will produce their manifesto prior to the election.
Tom,
I would have expected Luxon to have publicly floated some policy thinking shortly after he took over the leadership; however he hasn't apart from tax cuts for the most well off. He has said he will repeal and replace 3 Waters legislation - but like a lot of his pronouncements, they are dog whistles to racists, trying to drum up fear of co-governance. I didn't watch him yesterday at Ratana but I note he did the same there about no to co-governance and describing the government as confused/confusing about it. Interesting to note that Chris Hipkins described a number of the co-governance arrangements in Treaty settlements brokered by National - all of them different, all of them appropriate for the particular settlement. Really it is just about working cooperatively with all stakeholders having a seat at the table.
Re media being (partially) funded by government - they fund it less now than in the past, when it was all fully govt-owned and funded. One of the common conspiracy theories that arose during covid was about the media being bought by the govt and being on their side. I am not sure how that interpretation can be made unless what a listener is looking for is total denigration of the govt at every turn or totally ignoring them.
NZ media has slipped into being on the same scale as the Daily Mail in the UK and is starting on the same mendacious path as Faux Noise in the US.
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