Will Ardern’s halo slip?

Halo aside, ‘‘Jacinda Ardern is ordinary’’, shrugged the conservative Australian news website The Australian in the wake of the frenzy surrounding the prime minister after Christchurch.

Ouch.

And that’s not all. Ardern was accused on one of Australia’s highest-rating current affairs shows of merely copying its crackdown on gun laws.

It is not hard to understand why the Australians might be smarting. Columnist Judith Sloan refers to the ‘‘deification’’ of Ardern in a piece for The Australian, and that is not much of an exaggeration.

An image of Ardern in a hijab has graced the world’s tallest building in Dubai, and the world media’s reaction to her empathy, kindness – and yes, steel in so decisively announcing changes to the gun laws – has been extraordinary.

The headlines have been glowing, and social media has been filled with the lament of voters around the world who question why their own leaders can’t show the same qualities.

It is understandable that, in a world of

strongmen leaders, turbulence and chaos, Ardern’s leadership shines like a beacon to progressive voters worldwide.

But, as Sloan notes, it is also selective when it comes to Ardern’s domestic political accomplishments. On one issue, in particular, the glow surrounding Ardern is under strain, and that is in this country’s record on refugees.

With tens of thousands of Syrian refugees straining Europe’s capacity to absorb more, New Zealand’s announcement of an increase in its quota is little more than a gesture.

Sloan notes that, even after raising the quota, the Ardern Government still lags Australia, yet that country has been judged far more harshly in the wake of the Christchurch mosque attacks.

The point was also hammered in a BBC interview, when Ardern was asked repeatedly about her response to the mosque attack on the one hand, and New Zealand’s record and rhetoric on immigration and refugees on the other – in particular Labour’s coalition with NZ First, which has long railed against a more open border.

Ardern’s defence was that her Government

had raised the refugee quota to 1500 on taking office – though that does not take effect till 2020 and is still half as many refugees as Australia takes, per capita.

Questions like these will only get louder.

There is no question that Ardern has done an extraordinary job of leading New Zealand through what she herself referred to as one of our darkest days.

The country will heal faster as a consequence of her leadership. So too will our relations with some of our Muslim neighbours, whose leaders have praised Ardern.

But a consequence of such huge attention is that she has become the standard bearer worldwide for policies that her leadership over that time seemed to exemplify.

Once the realities of domestic politics intrude – and they have already, after a week-long political truce – those expectations may run far ahead of what Ardern can realistically deliver.

Because the extraordinary political circumstances that allowed her to announce new gun laws with nearunanimous support will likely never occur again – we sincerely hope.