Not All Aussie Journos Are So Blind

As I’ve warned BFD readers many, many times, Australia’s media class is largely completely ignorant about New Zealand. Especially New Zealand politics. Put to the test, most of them would struggle to name many of the country’s recent prime ministers. Nor would they have the foggiest clue as to even the major parties, let alone the prominent minors.

Except, of course, for Helen Clark, maybe David Lange, and Labour (though they’d certainly spell it “Labor”) and the Greens. They’d have a vague notion of Winston Peters, but no idea who he is or what his party (supposedly) stands for. But you get the picture.
But their dull little eyes would light up, and they’d start waving their flabby little arms and drooling excitedly, at the mere mention of the word “Jacinda Ardern”.

So, if you’re wondering why these koala bears of little brain* are so gung-ho for their Socialist Barbie, now you know. They’re too stupid and ignorant to know better.

Australian journalists are weeping and wailing in disbelief that Kiwis so hated Ardern, for the same reason. The same reason that Brit journalists were so bewildered that Australians so emphatically threw a Labor government out on their ears in 2013. To paraphrase the execrable Rings of Power, they had not seen what we had seen.

Australian journalists simply had not seen what Kiwis had seen — because they chose not to see it.

Not all Aussie journalists are so blind, though.

Jacinda Ardern was a dreadful prime minister of New Zealand who failed in substance but succeeded wildly in image.

All her economic instincts were bad, all her strategic instincts were bad. She had a great desire to undo productive economic reform and remove or shut down the engines of economic growth for what should be a nation of limitless opportunity.

And… well, that sums it all up pretty neatly. Except for the nasty vindictiveness of her Covid regime.

Ardern did keep Covid at bay for a significant amount of time. That’s because New Zealand is an isolated island. We got much the same outcome for much the same reason. So did the leaders of Fiji, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.

Closing your borders was for a time the right thing for an isolated island nation to do. It didn’t require political genius.

Of course Ardern, from the left of her party, instituted one of the most draconian lockdowns outside China itself. Sometimes she made Dan Andrews look like a Milton Friedman/Ayn Rand libertarian.

There was a time when saucy, freewheeling Melburnians could get takeaway coffees from cafes, and New Zealanders could not even do that […]

Ardern talked a good game on human rights in the abstract, but under her leadership New Zealand was a tiny, frightened mouse when it came to Beijing.

Just like child poverty and refugees, when it came to the very things that Ardern most aspired to nail her achievements on, she failed utterly miserably.

Finally, damnation with faint praise.

She had one genuine achievement. She reacted with dignity and moral seriousness to the appalling Christchurch terrorist massacre.

Most democratic leaders do well in such situations. John Howard did after Port Arthur. George W Bush’s popularity soared as he comforted the victims of 9/11 at ground zero.

The Australian

In other words, she did what political leaders around the world and across the ideological aisle always do. Even her supposedly greatest achievement was, in fact, completely unexceptional.

And that’s it.

What a “legacy”.