We didn’t ask to be reminded. We just luxuriated in not hearing anything more about her. But, she chose to write a book; she chose to remind us of what we lived through under her watch. When you suddenly pop up, painting a totally incongruent picture of yourself, it’s inevitable that we will remember things we’d almost forgotten.
And so it is that, suddenly, someone who no longer has relevance becomes the focus of attention again.
So, ‘the politics of kindness’. Let’s remind ourselves of what ‘political empathy’ actually looks like. Let’s remember what it felt like to live through it for six years.
Shall we start with 2019’s highly promoted “Wellbeing Budget”. The first wellbeing budget in the history of the world, apparently. A budget to focus not only on the economy, but human, social and natural issues alongside traditional financial metrics. I seem to remember hearing ostentatious claims of improved living standards and a holistic approach to governance. The birth of the ‘economics of kindness’.
At the forefront were words like inclusivity, diversity and equality along with the birth of dozens of new (and expensive) committees that were going to deal rapidly with issues like mental health, child poverty (reduction by 41 per cent by 2021), housing (remember KiwiBuild promising 100,000 affordable homes?), funding to support indigenous people with education, health and cultural initiatives and, of course, climate change with a commitment to sustainable energy and ending oil and gas exploration.
A commitment of $1.9 million was made for frontline mental health services. If you’ve tried to get access to mental health services since then, you’ll be painfully aware that progress, if any, has fallen far short of expectations. Suicide rates have not declined. Māori and Pacific Islanders’ health outcomes remain the same, but Māori did get the Matariki Day holiday. Children remain in poverty, housing prices rose by some 60 per cent while KiwiBuild built almost nothing and Taranaki was decimated by the ‘kind’ captain’s call to ban further oil and gas exploration. Meanwhile we imported 4.99 million tonnes of Indonesian coal from 2017 to 2023 to support electricity generation at a cost of $US446,544,000.
Just a reminder that while we were distracted by the rhetoric of the ‘political kindness’ and ‘wellness budget’ thing, Te Puni Kōkiri (the Ministry of Māori Development), under the leadership of Nanaia Mahuta, was secretly beavering away on the He Puapua Report and, at about the same time, the Three Waters Review was launched by the Department of Internal Affairs, also under Mahuta’s oversight.
The government of kindness also brought us free menstrual products in schools alongside an expansion of the free lunches programme, and, of course, we probably shouldn’t overlook the Healthy Homes Guarantee Act designed to make tenants comfortable and deliver a minimum standard for rental properties. This drove many landlords out of the market and increased rents for many tenants while significantly increasing costs for landlords. A classic case of well-intended changes with scant regard for the unintended consequences.
The tragic Christchurch Mosque shootings in 2019 were, of course, highlighted all over the world. Pictures of the prime minister donning a hijab and showing empathy to those affected were widely circulated. Perhaps the single, most-noted, event of her prime ministership.
Some of us viewed her emotive response as fitting for the moment, others perhaps not so much, but the international media fawned over her (and continue to do so). Her popularity was significantly enhanced by her prompt call to do something about firearms. The introduction of gun law reforms that were never going to have an impact on illegal possession of firearms was a political stunt that gained her kudos with the ill-informed but changed nothing. Criminals and gangs still have guns and legitimate firearms owners have to dance through hoops at the will of the police for no public benefit. More unintended consequences. Then, of course, there’s her “Christchurch Call” where she teamed up with that French oddity Macron to combat terrorist and violent extremism online. I wonder how that’s been going and if anybody actually cares?
Then 2020 brought us Covid-19, which many of us have already written about at length. Again, the international media luvvies saw her as a superstar but we all know what happened and how totally tyrannical that period of Ardern kindness really was.
I’m sure I’ve missed out plenty of ‘wellbeings’ and ‘political kindnesses’. We’ll all have our own memories. We should thank the former prime minister for her book: I think we all need a reminder from time to time of the tragedies we’ve been through, lest we forget.
Jacinda Ardern was the most inept, divisive and polarising prime minister in New Zealand’s history. But she did it with kindness. Isn’t that great...
I’m sure that, like me, you’d never have given much of this a second thought were it not for her putting herself ‘out there’ again.
