Jacinda Ardern has been prime minister of New Zealand since 2017. Ardern is a good example of how an affable, anodyne politician can pursue highly divisive and polarising policies. Ardern’s premiership has been defined by her response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst New Zealand’s initial response to the pandemic in 2020 was praised across the world, and saw Ardern win a landslide election victory, the two years hence have seen New Zealand slowly creep up the death rate table.
The Ardern government has also been scolded by voters for a slow vaccine roll out and images of expatriates being unable to come home to visit dying relatives. Partly as a result, Ardern is now the least popular she has ever been, and her party, the Labour party, is now odds on to lose the next election in a year’s time. However, Ardern is still the recipient of uncritical levels of praise in the foreign media, and a healthy democracy is predicated upon us as citizens looking beyond favourable headlines, and judging politicians on results, not on our own biases.
I should say from the outset that I do not hate Ardern by any means, and this conversation is not designed to make you hate her, either; rather, it is supposed to be an objective look at a prime minister many New Zealanders have clearly fallen out of love with.
My guest today is David Farrar, who is a pollster and political commentator. David is the founder of Kiwiblog, one of the largest political blogs in New Zealand. We discuss Ardern’s rise in the Labour Party, her domestic agenda, of course, her response to Covid, and what the future holds for her struggling government.