New Zealand’s most powerful young woman is now Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern
ANALYSIS: Jacinda Ardern is New Zealand’s third female leader. The shock election result will bring a new agenda and possible difficulties with Julie Bishop.
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WHEN Jacinda Ardern seized leadership of New Zealand’s opposition Labour Party, she quickly drew comparisons with youthful, cosmopolitan leaders like Canada’s Justin Trudeau and France’s Emmanuel Macron.
But despite similar social media buzz about the 37-year-old’s progressive credentials, Ardern is set to take a harder line than either of those leaders when it comes to immigration, a hot-button issue at the September 23 general election.
Ardern has struck a deal with Winston Peters, the head of the nationalist New Zealand First Party. He is a staunch critic of immigration.
Ardern is now set to become New Zealand’s youngest leader since 1856 and only the third female prime minister in the South Pacific nation of 4.6 million.
Her dizzying rise to power began on August 1, when she took the reins of an opposition Labour Party headed for a crushing electoral defeat.
Ardern was not widely known outside political circles at the time but soon connected with voters, prompting a bout of “Jacinda-mania” that lifted Labour’s popularity 20 points.
Mr Peters says he has been offered deputy prime minister if that’s what he chooses, as well as portfolios to be decided in consultation with Ms Ardern. He would not reveal what those portfolios are.
Ms Ardern was not told in advance of the press conference, meaning she discovered she was prime minister via a live stream.
Mr Peters said the decision was owed first to the New Zealand people. The Green Party continues to have a confidence and supply agreement with the Labour Party, while NZ First will be in full coalition.
POLL SHOWS TURNING TABLES
The declining fortunes of Labour’s ally, the Green Party, raised the likelihood New Zealand First would decide the next government in the country’s mixed member proportional parliament.
Some political analysts believe Peters, a 40-year political veteran could be drawn to a statesmanlike-role to mentor political ingenue Ardern.
“He can play some sort of role in reality or at least in perception of assisting this new force in politics and tutoring this person,” said Bryce Edwards, a Wellington-based political analyst at Critical Politics. “I think that would appeal to him totally.”
Peters, meanwhile, sees imitation as a flattery.
“Labour, the Greens and the National Party were all for mass immigration, were all for calling New Zealand First racist,” he told Reuters earlier this month. Now, “they’re trying to catch up.”
The powerbroker’s decision, made almost four weeks after the September 23 poll, gives Ardern’s Labour Party the numbers to form a coalition government with Peters’ New Zealand First and the Greens.
“We had a choice to make for a modified status quo or for change ... that’s why in the end we chose a coalition government of New Zealand First with the New Zealand Labour Party,” Peters told reporters.
FENCES WITH AUSTRALIA NEED MENDING
Ardern said today that she would be coming to Australia as soon as she can.
She has already faced an international row with Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.
During the election campaign, Ms Bishop accused New Zealand Labour of conspiring against the Turnbull Government during the Barnaby Joyce citizenship saga, when it was first revealed he had Kiwi and Australian citizenship.
Ms Bishop warned she might not trust a Labour New Zealand government should it win the election, accusing the NZ Labour Party of colluding with ALP leader Bill Shorten to expose Mr Joyce’s dual citizenship.
Ardern fought back, saying the claims were false and a disappointment.
I value our relationship with the Australian Govt highly. I won't let disappointing & false claims stand in the way of that relationship
— Jacinda Ardern (@jacindaardern) August 15, 2017
“When the issue was raised on Australian soil that we had interfered, I was very quick to correct the record,” she said.
“Our relationship with Australia is too important to let politics get in the way of it.”
At the time, Ms Ardern also spoke to her colleague Chris Hipkins for getting too involved in the saga.
She never spoke one-on-one with Ms Bishop but tried to clear the air publicly.
Clearly, The Australian government and New Zealand’s new Prime Minister have some fences to mend after the diplomatic drama unfolded.
YOUNG GUN’S POLITICAL AGENDA
As a charismatic former president of the International Union of Socialists, has tried to distance herself from Peters’ rhetoric, which has included accusing Asian migrants of “imported criminal activity”.
Now Prime Minister, she originally pledged her government would be “bold”, “brave” and tackle rising inequality.
But she has no plans to drop Labour policies aimed at slashing the intake of foreigners by tens of thousands per year amid a migration boom blamed for everything from unaffordable housing to stagnant wage growth and overcrowded roads.
“My focus is on making sure we have an immigration system that works for New Zealand and also gives those who are migrating to New Zealand the best opportunities and best chance possible,” Ardern told Reuters.
Those plans contrast with French President Macron’s announcement that he would look into opening migrant processing centres in Libya, to avoid a dangerous trip for asylum seekers across the Mediterranean Sea.
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, meanwhile, has positioned himself as an alternative figure to U.S. President Donald Trump by touting Canadian immigration as a success story.
WHERE HER POPULARITY CAME FROM
According to Barry Soper, the political editor for New Zealand’s Newstalk ZB radio network, Ardern is a great communicator.
“What she has done, she has been able to communicate,” he told The ABC’s World Today.
“She’s very good at articulating, and that’s got her where she is at the moment.”
But he said there was also a push for political change in New Zealand/
“She’s struck a note obviously with the general public … so it’s sort of this sweeping mood for change,” he said.
Ardern also allowed glimpses of her personality to emerge, speaking of her liking for single-malt whisky and short-lived career as a music festival DJ.
She grew up in the North Island hinterland, where her father was a police officer. She credits the poverty she saw there with shaping her beliefs.
She was raised as a Mormon but left the faith in her 20s due to its stance against homosexuality.
After completing a communications degree, Ardern began her political career in former prime minister Helen Clark’s office before heading to Britain to work as a policy adviser in Tony Blair’s government.
She was elected to parliament in 2008 and in March this year became Labour’s deputy leader, saying at the time that she was not ambitious and saw herself as a backroom staffer.
But Labour’s top job was thrust upon her when her predecessor Andrew Little quit after the party’s polling hit 20-year lows of 23 percent.
“Everyone knows I have just accepted, with short notice, the worst job in politics,” Ardern said after becoming Labour’s fifth leader in four years.
KIWIS TO CRACK DOWN ON MIGRATION
New Zealand’s annual net migration of 72,300 is at record levels in a country of just 4.7 million people, ahead of both Britain and the United States on a per capita basis.
At the most recent census in 2013, a quarter of the population was born overseas. Post-war migration has underpinned New Zealand’s economic success, but has also become a lightening rod for nationalists such as Peters, as it has elsewhere.
Though Peters is considered more centrist than international nationalist figures such as Donald Trump and Marine le Pen by most political analysts, some Labour voters are uncomfortable with the increasingly negative rhetoric around immigrants.
Yael Shochat, a longtime Labour supporter since emigrating to New Zealand from Israel in 1998, welcomes Ardern as a friend and regular customer in her Auckland restaurant.
But she has told Ardern in person and in a scathing public letter that Ardern’s public linkage of infrastructure problems and immigration is misguided.
“It’s a bit worrying, we’re not sure we got through to her,” Shochat told Reuters. “Look at what’s happening around the world ... people in leadership have to be careful about what they say.”
Shochat said she seriously considered not voting for Ardern, but decided to reluctantly go ahead with her Labour vote.
Ardern says migration had “played a huge role in building the New Zealand economy and will continue to do so.”
But she wants to reduce housing and infrastructure strains in Auckland where she said there were already plenty of workers, compared to provincial areas crying out for skilled labour.
“Our concern is that our immigration settings haven’t been dynamic enough to differentiate between the skills gap that might exist in regional New Zealand that doesn’t exist in Auckland,” she said. “That’s why we’ve started talking about creating an allowance that we can ring fence those skills gaps and try and redisperse some of that pressure away from Auckland.”
The ruling National Party has also responded to jitters over migration, making it harder for low-wage workers to get skills-based visas and describing its approach to migration as “Kiwi first.”
A DEFINING CAMPAIGN MOMENT
Doubts about her temperament evaporated amid several feisty television debates with outgoing prime minister Bill English.
Voters also saw a steely side when a TV host told her that New Zealanders had a right to know her plans for parenthood before deciding whether to elect a young woman as prime minister.
“It is totally unacceptable in 2017 to say that women should have to answer that question in the workplace,” she responded, wagging her finger at the male presenter.
The campaign proved testing, despite her initial surge in popularity, as English rallied and launched a sustained attack on her economic credibility.
Her conservative rival dismissed Ardern’s appeal as “stardust”, claiming she would squander the economic gains achieved under National.
Ardern blamed a scare campaign on tax for a dip in the polls late in the campaign.
Ultimately though, the “relentless positivity” Ardern promised to maintain throughout the campaign allowed her to prevail against a tough rearguard action from English.
Her challenge now is to convert the optimistic promise displayed on the campaign trail into meaningful action while in office.
Originally published as New Zealand’s most powerful young woman is now Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern