Unflappable Jacinda Ardern
New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern’s ‘politics of kindness’ and calm leadership in times of crisis have made her more popular than ever
IT WAS hard to imagine she could become even more popular than she was when sworn in as prime minister three years ago. Even then pundits called it Jacindamania – the wave of adoration that swept across New Zealand when she took over as the No 1 citizen of her country. But Jacinda Ardern, the youngest Kiwi prime minister in 150 years, has achieved what few politicians across the globe have in the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak.
She’s not only kept down crisis levels in the nation of some five million people but also seen her popularity soar at home and abroad thanks to the special brand of leadership she’s shown, especially in recent weeks.
The New York Times calls it The Jacinda Method – and it’s a heady mix of clarity and compassion that’s worked well for the 39-year-old as the coronavirus crisis rages on.
“She quickly became a leader who could talk policy from a podium, dress down a sexist commentator on camera, or post a Facebook video encouraging a rugby team while a cat on her lap struggled against a plastic collar the size of a lampshade,” the newspaper’s Damien Cave writes.
“Pandemics are often described as crises of communication, when leaders must persuade entire populations to suspend their lives because of an invisible threat. Watching Ms Ardern on Facebook – her favoured conduit – is a lesson in rhetorical blending: epidemiology brightened with empathy, law leavened with mom jokes. And it’s been strikingly effective.”
She recently showed New Zealanders again that she has nerves of steel when an earthquake struck during a live TV interview.
The prime minister was talking to the host of a breakfast news programme from the New Zealand parliament building in Wellington when the earthquake with a magnitude of nearly 6 hit.
“We’re just having a bit of an earthquake here, Ryan, quite a decent shake,” she told Ryan Bridge from Newshub in Auckland, smiling up at the ceiling.
A bit of an understatement. The earthquake was felt around the country, as far north as Auckland, but Ardern barely batted an eyelid.
“Don’t worry if you see things moving behind me,” she assured the TV host. “The Beehive [as the parliament building is nicknamed] moves a little more than most.
“We’re fine. I’m not under any hanging lights. I look like I’m in a structurally strong place,” she declared, and carried on. It was another standout moment for the prime minister.
“As many ducked under beds and tables, our prime minister rode the earthquake like a boss,” someone wrote on social media.
Another tweeted, “PM Jacinda Ardern reacts to an earthquake the way you and I react to a mosquito.”
SHE’S steadily won over her critics with her warm and inclusive leadership style. Last year, Ardern was widely praised for her handling of the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting in Christchurch mosques that claimed 51 lives in one of the world’s most peaceful countries (YOU, 28 March 2019).
She was quick to respond in support of New Zealand’s Muslim communities. “They [the victims] are us,” she said in a broadcast. “The person who’s perpetrated this violence against us is not.”
She also refused to name Australian far-right Islamophobe Brenton Tarrant (29) as the shooter. “He’s a terrorist, he’s a criminal. But he will, when I speak, be nameless. He may have sought notoriety, but we in New Zealand will give him nothing. Not even his name.”
Under her leadership this mass shooting immediately led to a change in the law – in less than a month the New Zealand parliament had banned assault rifles and some other guns.
Now the pandemic has made her even more popular as she invites viewers into her life via Facebook.
When she gave a live broadcast on the social media site recently viewers noted that she looked a bit tired, which would have been understandable given she’s steering her country through the biggest crisis in decades while also being mother to a 23-month-old toddler.
Yet with typical warmth she blamed
her beige curtains for her washed-out appearance and moved to a different spot.
“This is a fabulous chair,” she announced. “And this is a much better corner because where I was sitting before was right next to the nappy bucket, which I’m going to admit wasn’t the freshest place to be sitting.”
The nappies of course belong to her daughter, Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford.
Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford (42) thought carefully about their child’s name. Neve is the Anglicised form of the Irish Gaelic name Niamh, which means “brightness”. Aroha is Maori for “love”. Te Aroha is also the name of a mountain near Ardern’s hometown, Hamilton.
Clarke, who’s a maritime conservation activist and presented a fishing show on TV, has put his TV work on hold to take care of Neve.
The couple became involved in 2013 through their shared love of coffee and Kiwi hard-rock group Concord Dawn.
About the now famous love of his life, Clarke once said, “She’s definitely been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I didn’t know what it meant to work hard until I started seeing what she does on a daily basis.
“She’d be doing a radio interview at 5.40am and she’d had three meetings by the time I’d scraped myself together and had my eggs.”
ARDERN, the daughter of Laurell, who works in the hospitality industry, and Ross, a former detective and now a diplomat, was born in Hamilton but grew up in
Murupara and later Morrinsville on New Zealand’s North Island.
Her parents are devout Mormons but she left the church in her early twenties because she found it suffocating and its dogma clashed with her beliefs.
She entered politics at the tender age of 17, becoming an MP with the Labour Party just more than a decade later, and is now giving most politicians a “masterclass in crisis leadership”, says Suze Wilson, an expert in executive development from New Zealand’s Massey University.
Former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark is a fan. Clark, who led the country from 1999 to 2008, says what sets Ardern apart is that she’s a natural and empathetic communicator who doesn’t preach to people.
Instead she sends the clear message that she’s “standing with them”. “They may even think, ‘Well, I don’t quite understand why the government did that, but I know she’s got our back.’ There’s a high level of trust and confidence in her because of that empathy,” Clark says. But it’s not just likeability alone – she truly seems to care. Ardern’s popularity soared when she announced she and her cabinet would be taking a 20% pay cut for six months in solidarity with the financial hardships faced by many New Zealanders. And a four-day work week might be just the thing to stimulate New Zealand’s economy, she said to great praise. The country is largely dependent on its tourism industry, which has been hard hit by the pandemic, but Ardern hopes that if Kiwis have more free time, they’ll be more inclined to explore their beautiful country. She’s not done blazing trails just yet and is doing things her way. Her leadership style and what analysts call her “politics of kindness” – Vogue magazine called her the “ant i -Trump” – is going nowhere.