Asking the Questions $55M Can’t Buy

As I’ve often pointed out, Australian journalists know almost nothing about Jacinda Ardern. Phrases like “KiwiBuild”, “He Puapua” or “Three Waters” draw stares of blank incomprehension like so many newly discovered tribes in the deepest Amazon. But their innocent little eyes will light up should you utter the magic words, “kindness” or “Neve”.

Being almost universally left-leaning, such ignorance in Australia’s fourth estate is hardly surprising. Fortunately, not all Aussie journalists are so intellectually stunted. Some of them have even attempted to ask the New Zealand prime minister something approaching difficult questions.

Only to discover that the Princess is very selective as to whom she deigns give audience to.

Ardern has a reputation for picking carefully who she will take questions from – and for avoiding those who might prove difficult. She was no doubt wary that the Australian journalists might not have shown her the deference she has become accustomed to from what can only be described as a mostly tame New Zealand media.

Not “tame”: bought and paid-for.

During New Zealand’s “elimination” phase of Covid management in 2020-21, she reliably selected two senior television journalists – who were both seen as mostly sympathetic to the government – to ask the initial questions at her 1pm press conferences.

Her routine of selecting Tova O’Brien and Jessica Mutch McKay by name became a running joke on social media – “Jessica then Tova” one day and “Tova then Jessica” the next.

In March last year, she cancelled her regular weekly interview slot on commercial radio station Newstalk ZB, which New Zealand’s Prime Ministers had been appearing on for more than 30 years.

It’s not just Mike Hosking whom Ardern is hiding from now. She’s hiding from everyone except schoolchildren. Ardern’s public schedule has become something resembling a state secret, as she tries to avoid protesters by sneaking in and out of one school, then another. Her daily whereabouts only become public when she posts her standard vanity photos well afterwards.

Faced with questions in Parliament which she would prefer not to answer, or perhaps simply doesn’t understand, her common response is to announce she “rejects the premise of the question”. No one seems to know exactly what this means but she delivers it as a stern and authoritative rebuke nevertheless.

She seems to have adopted the phrase after it was famously used by film director Quentin Tarantino. She apparently thinks it makes her sound clever, and not at all like a witless child misappropriating what they mistakenly imagine to be profundity.

However, it is Ardern’s ability to not answer a question at length – while appearing to answer it – that is her most remarkable achievement.

As the Australian’s Foreign Editor, Greg Sheridan, pointed out early this month, there is no political leader in the world, in his opinion, who “talks so much nonsense so consistently” and “gets such lavish, wonderful praise for it” […]

He highlighted one comment Ardern had made on her recent overseas tour while discussing China’s push for hegemony in the Pacific: “Don’t cast this struggle as one between authoritarianism and democracy.”

Sheridan remarked, “She might as well say, ‘Don’t describe the sky as blue and the trees as green.’”

I don’t know, Kamala Harris would give her a good run for her money.

It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day. Every day it is time for us to agree that there are things and tools that are available to us to slow this thing down – Kamala Harris.

What is extraordinary is that the mainstream media in New Zealand rarely, if ever, comments on Ardern’s ability to seamlessly deliver what is sometimes little more than fluent gobbledygook in response to questions.

The Australian

There’s nothing extraordinary about it at all. The New Zealand legacy media’s unquestioning can be summed up in four words: Public Interest Journalism Fund.

The BFD, on the other hand, doesn’t take a cent from the government. Our only obligation is to you: our subscribers.