A new godless government revolution
The Government has been in power for six months. It is a ridiculously short time to make any assessment but let’s join the party anyway.
Things like the handling of harassment at a Labour youth camp and foreign policy dithering got the Government off to a bad start but lessons have been learned.
Jacinda Ardern’s popularity remains undiminished and her recent jaunts around important European capitals have earned her well deserved plaudits.
The Government has a few runs on the board with its arrest of new oil exploration licences, changes in transport priorities and some regional development advances. Otherwise it has mainly been fighting fires, launching inquiries and formulating plans. Big changes in education, health and corrections are in the wind but nothing concrete yet.
As expected, the main constraint on any grand plans is money. What you can tell from a Government’s first six months is its tone and this is where it becomes interesting.
Just before she was sworn in as Prime Minister, Ardern said she had to transcend politics in the way she governed.
It certainly would and although Ardern talks about transformation rather than revolution, a Government based on kindness would indeed be revolutionary.
What we seem to have with Labour and the Greens – New Zealand First is a malign presence in the background – is a sort of godless Christian party.
Together they represent all the enlightened Christian values – essentially be kind to each other and the planet – without all the moralistic and judgmental nonsense about homosexuality and sex etc.
If Jesus was reborn in New Zealand he would walk straight into the Green Party.
Saint Ardern fits into this picture very well even though she is the leader of a party which sees jobs and fair pay as the basis for its existence. Somehow Ardern, who was brought up a Mormon, one of the kookiest religions around, transcends this.
So we have the closer relationship with Ma¯ori, an attack on dirty oil and a move away from ever bigger prisons. Poverty and homelessness are next on the list.
Government is about the exercise of power to achieve ends, which ultimately should benefit society, but kindness often has to go out the window to get things done. Governments tend to look after their own which means being unkind to those who do not support it.
Ardern also knows that kindness will not be enough to transform the lives of those people she is most keen to help.
Transformation with kindness seems to suggest that if those exercising power can just be kinder, things will improve greatly. So all that is needed is a bit of tinkering with structure, some re-jigging of priorities, a recalibration of policies but nothing too radical or fundamental. It will take a while for most of the electorate to see what the true ethos of this Government, run by well-off socialists, is all about. Who could be against kindness?
Ardern will find that ordinary working people might not be so enamoured with the idea.
They have a fairly skeptical attitude to the beneficiary class, the homeless, the socially dysfunctional, criminals and zealots who want to damage their income.
They prefer their kindness to be on the person-to-person level rather than as the main driver of Government. They know of course that the causes of crime and dysfunction are both social and economic but they are not so keen on dismissing the dark side of human nature. Bad decisions and self indulgence must carry their own moral hazard.
But kindness, like Christianity, might be one of those great ideas that just hasn’t been tried yet. It could be that Jacinda Ardern is exactly the person to lead the way – and what a trip it could be.