Important first week ahead for Ardern

Jacinda Ardern has won the election, but it’s what she does between now and the end of the year that will set the tone for her Government for the year ahead.

Ardern spent the weekend cloistered with her advisers and kitchen Cabinet allocating portfolios and nailing down the details of coalition agreements. She is not sworn in as prime minister till Thursday so understandably kept a low profile.

But once installed, Ardern will have to move with urgency to bed in her Government and make the most of the honey moon period.

Her biggest priority will be erasing the images of the last month as Labour and National both danced to Winston Peters’ tune – in particular reasserting her own more positive and aspirational vision over the dispiriting gloom that hung over Peters’ speech last Thursday.

The first step will be a rolling maul of policies – Labour’s 100 day plan includes free tertiary education, banning overseas property speculators, implementing Labour’s family support package, increasing the minimum wage and getting started on a clean water package.

But urgency should also be given to drawing up terms of reference for Labour’s tax working group. Labour’s woolliness about tax damaged it badly on the campaign trial and it does not want that to carry over into Government or into the Christmas break and barbecue season.

Ardern’s challenges are not just domestic ones.

A trip across the Tasman must be a priority, even before the Apec summit in mid November. The news of Labour’s win has been cast as largely negative across the Tasman, where John Key and Bill English had an almost cult like following in the Australian business community for their success over the last nine years.

Successive Australian prime ministers’ made no secret either of their admiration for the Key and English government and their desire to emulate their success.

The New Zealand story is repeatedly held up as one of the world’s most dramatic economic success stories, and Australian media have been casting Ardern’s win as a financial shock that could throw out the economic gains.

Given New Zealand’s huge dependence on the Australian economy, Ardern can’t afford to let these perceptions take root and grow. But Ardern will have to do all these things without upsetting the fine balance between her widely different governing partners, the Greens and NZ First.