JACINDA ARDERN: New Zealand’s PM takes tragedy, motherhood and turning 40 in her stride

Jacinda Ardern has quite the year ahead: an election, a 40th birthday, perhaps even a wedding. The New Zealand Prime Minister tells Emma Clifton about coping with national tragedy and juggling the top job with motherhood.

It’s a slight running joke that Jacinda Ardern is not one for introspection – not because she doesn’t see the value of it, but because at this stage of her life, there just isn’t time. The New Zealand Prime Minister has inadvertently become quite an expert in one-upping her previous year. And of course, 2019 has been no different. “It’s been a big one,” Jacinda admits. “But it’s been rewarding.”

In the weeks before Christmas, The Weekly has a brief but action-packed opportunity to spend some one-on-one time with the NZ Prime Minister to talk about the personal and public challenges of the past 12 months, her hopes for the coming year and her plans for the holidays. This year, Jacinda, her fiancé Clarke Gayford and their toddler Neve will be in the seaside town of Gisborne, surrounded by loved ones.

“The lovely thing about Christmas this year is my family are going to come over and be there with Clarke’s family. So my mum and dad, and my sister and her husband, and all my nieces and nephews will be there, which is really lovely. We’ll all be there together, so we won’t have to do a split Christmas.”

Neve, at 18 months, is turning into exactly the kind of child you would imagine a charismatic world leader and a popular television presenter to have: full of personality.

“With a father like Clarke, that was always going to be inevitable,” Jacinda says, smiling. “One of the things I’ve found most rewarding about this year is that she’s just developed … She’s her own little person, and that’s really lovely. You see snippets of who she’s going to be, and she’s curious and she’s funny. And she doesn’t need me,” she jokes. “Except for sustenance and nappy changes – and even then, she could take it or leave it.”

Clarke and Jacinda are big fans of dressing up Neve in adorable costumes for Christmas. Last year there were two holiday-themed onesies and this year Jacinda is taken with a miniature Santa suit. She pulls out her phone to show us videos sent to her by either Clarke or one of the proud grandmothers (Jacinda is very open about the fact that it takes a full family juggling act to make this work). In one video, a sleep-mussed but perky Neve walks wonkily forward to Clarke and bellows a very enthusiastic “HELLO” to the camera. “Look at that hair: straight out of bed,” Jacinda grins. There’s another video of her ‘playing’ the piano, before a photo of Neve getting ready to help Clarke in the garden. In it, she’s wearing a pair of

traditional pyjamas Jacinda picked up in Japan for her, a knitted dressing gown made by a friend and a pair of caterpillar-printed socks, her blonde head mostly obscured by a large pair of noise-cancelling headphones. “Clarke dresses her mostly,” Jacinda deadpans.

Jacinda is hugely grateful for home and family. “I just have this whole extra layer to my life now,” she says. “But I also wouldn’t have the chance to enjoy it as much if I didn’t have my family members helping as well. So I’m definitely grateful for my family.”

They have been the grounding influence to a professional life that has repeatedly run the full gamut from joy to adversity, and back again. In 2017, Jacinda became Labour leader, then Prime Minister in a three-month period. In 2018, she made global headlines when she announced she would be the second female leader ever to give birth while in office. In 2019, an image of her face was projected onto Dubai’s towering Burj Kalifa and Oprah Winfrey told the Women in the World Summit that all women should “channel their inner Jacinda”.

That’s a lot for any leader, let alone one from New Zealand – not a country used to grand gestures, nor making international headlines. Until, of course, they did.

The Christchurch mosque attack in March was, as she says, an event “no one wanted New Zealand to be known for”. But now it is, and as a result of the empathy and decisiveness with which she responded, Jacinda has become something of a global superstar.

The NZ PM has – for now – overtaken Lord of the Rings and the All Blacks as the topic most associated with New Zealand. When I bring this up, she starts to answer, “One of the things…” before pausing and then stating simply: “That was March 15.”

Jacinda is very clear about what she wants us to focus on when it comes to New Zealand’s Muslim community. “Just how incredible they were in their response,” she says. “One of the most memorable moments for me was the day after – the day after! – going down to Christchurch and just not knowing what to expect. Here was a community where some of the people I was going to meet were in the room during the attack. To arrive, and then have the same people who, the day before, I had seen images of covered in blood outside the mosque, thanking New Zealand … I found that overwhelming – to hear that kind of language – thanking New Zealand for their response, thanking New Zealand for reaching out. For me, that was the thing that set the tone for everything after, and that came from the Muslim community.

“I just hope we all remember that – we remember their response and the stories of their experiences as a community. Because there is discrimination and we have to keep up the work to weed that out, because that’s not how we want to see ourselves.”

Jacinda was recognised globally for her compassionate response as a world leader and her immediate work on gun reform. She became a ‘Mother of the Nation’ figure when New Zealand badly needed one, all while managing to keep her own emotions in check during a deeply overwhelming time.

“I had my private moments but when it came to the public ... no one needed to see me having emotional moments. They needed me to do a job, so that’s what I did,” she says, before adding quietly: “I definitely felt it, though.”

One week after the attack, when the Burj Kalifa was lit up with the photo of Jacinda in a headscarf hugging a woman, the real-life Jacinda wasn’t quite sure what she was seeing. “I thought it was photoshopped,” she recalls. “I remember thinking, ‘What an odd thing to do. Why has someone photoshopped my face onto a large building?’ We were still so focused on what we needed to do, I don’t think it particularly dawned on me.”

It was the same when Oprah announced Jacinda had ‘set a global standard of leadership’ at the Women in the World Summit speech in April. “That was one of those ‘whaaaat’ moments,” Jacinda says. “I was in the kitchen, trying to get breakfast ready. Clarke showed me on his phone. It was overwhelming,” she smiles, and shrugs. “And then I went back to getting breakfast ready.”→