Clouds gather as leaders meet
When Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison flies into Queenstown today for a two-day set of events with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern it was meant to be against the backdrop of Queenstown, a beautiful tourist town smashed by Covid-19; a trans-Tasman bubble fully operating and even a game of Super Rugby at the foot of the Remarkables.
It was going to be perfect. Leaders with beaming smiles, freed from the strictures of active Covid cases, and beautiful images of Queenstown beamed back into Australia to pique the interest of any Aussie keen for a winter holiday on the slopes.
Instead, if conditions in Queenstown yesterday are anything to go by, Morrison is likely to arrive to cold, wet, early winter weather; there’s a lockdown back home in Victoria; the rugby has been relocated to Sydney; and both he and Ardern are under pressure to make sure the travel bubble holds.
The remarkable thing about both Ardern and Morrison is that although they are extremely different people, they both have some key similarities in their backgrounds and are, in some key respects, similar political operators.
Ardern grew up in a rural household in the North Island. Her father was a policeman, later to become New Zealand’s high commissioner to Niue and now Administrator of Tokelau. She came from a practising Mormon family and did not drink until later in life. Eventually she became a staffer for then-prime minister Helen Clark.
Morrison was born into a practising Presbyterian family in Sydney’s eastern suburb of Bronte, which was not then as salubrious as it is now. He, too, was the son of a police officer, who would later become a local councillor and mayor. In a 2015 interview he describes a ‘‘strict’’ father who wouldn’t let him join the surf club because there was too much alcohol around.
ScoMo, now 53, is more than 10 years Ardern’s senior. He describes himself as an ‘‘evangelical Christian’’ and even let himself be photographed at church in the lead-up to the 2019 election.
Morrison got married at the age of 21 and went to work for the Property Council of Australia, Tourism NZ and Tourism Australia, before becoming director of the NSW Liberal Party. He eventually, and in controversial circumstances, won the seat of Cook in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire. It is an area of beaches, tradies and a place where former Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks rugby league star-turned fishing show host Andrew Ettingshausen opened not one, but both Bunnings Hardware stores in the area.
Ardern’s trajectory after childhood diverged sharply from Morrison’s. She worked in the local fish and chip shop while growing up, but walked away from the Mormon church and after university mostly worked in professional politics before becoming a politician, entering Parliament on the Labour list in 2008. After failing to win Auckland Central, she was jettisoned into the inner-city, cosmopolitan seat of Mt Albert.
In 2017 she won what most observers regarded as an unwinnable election.
One thing that has joined the two together is their keen emphasis on presentation – their political opponents would say cynically and opportunistically so. They both run slick media machines with a keen eye for photo opportunities and making big announcements. They both have created a narrative around themselves which is at once true and also not the whole story.
While both are incredibly ambitious and politically ruthless, Ardern puts herself across as the kind, common-sense leader. Her ability to empathise and read the public mood during crises has built a sure political foundation for her. ScoMo has created an image of the daggy dad from the ’burbs who wears a baseball cap, is also into common sense, and loves rugby league.
The politics of Covid has worked well for both of them, but now a lot of the headlines on both sides of the Tasman read very similarly: Both vaccine rollouts are too slow (they are more or less neck-and-neck), both economies are indebted and looking all right but not great, and both have similar but different China challenges to confront.
The two, who spoke frequently during Covid-19, coordinated a fair bit but also had an unspoken but clear competitiveness in their Covid responses. But there is also clear respect for each other as politicians. Both understand what statements are intended for domestic audiences: Be it around Covid, deportees or even asylum-seekers.
Bigger geo-strategic concerns aside – which will feature heavily tomorrow – the big aim of both on this trip will be to reassure both publics that the transTasman bubble is a going concern.
Ardern and Morrison are both incredibly ambitious and politically ruthless.