Rita Panahi: Why Jacinda Ardern is looking desperate
Jacinda Ardern represents the Leftist ideal of woke agendas and supposedly compassionate politics but as New Zealand’s election sits on a knife edge, her criticism of Australia’s deportation policy is more about domestic politics than ethics, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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If the New Zealand public adored Jacinda Ardern as much as the media pack, she’d have no need for unedifying stunts to boost her popularity.
Ardern’s performance on Friday, during which she scolded a bemused Scott Morrison and criticised Australia’s immigration policy at a joint press conference, was purely for Kiwi domestic consumption, although it did excite her Australian fanboys and girls who rushed out gushing columns and tweets.
New Zealanders go to the polls on September 19 and despite the nauseating levels of adulation Ardern receives from the Leftist media at home and especially abroad, she’s no certainty of securing a second term.
Two polls published in the past fortnight reveal the election is on a knife edge; one poll had Ardern’s coalition narrowly in front while the other had them trailing the Nationals. Labour’s woes in New Zealand are largely due to unfulfilled election promises.
Grandstanding on the world stage is far easier than implementing policies that improve the lot of New Zealanders. The two biggest factors that saw Ardern become Prime Minister were her party’s immigration and housing policies. Ardern’s image as a progressive leader who champions tolerance, inclusion and diversity is somewhat at odds with the fact that she came to power promising to slash immigration.
Labour also promised to address the housing crisis by building 10,000 houses a year during its first term. Once in power the goal was extended to 100,000 houses over 10 years through the government’s flagship KiwiBuild scheme.
But after two years, instead of 20,000 new homes the government had built only 258. It wasn’t long before the targets were scrapped and deemed “overly ambitious”. The number of completed houses currently sits at 315, according to media reports.
Ardern became Prime Minister in 2017 after securing only 36.7 per cent of the vote by forming a bizarre coalition with New Zealand’s version of One Nation. The centre-Right NZ First party led by Winston Peters joined Labour despite the centre-Right Nationals securing 44.4 per cent of the vote.
At the time Peters justified his decision by pointing to Ardern’s housing and immigration policies and by declaring that capitalism had failed.
“New Zealanders have come to view today’s capitalism to be their foe, not friend,” he said.
That this peculiar marriage of convenience has lasted is either a testament to Ardern and Peters’ collaborative spirit or further proof that there’s no greater motivating force in politics than self-preservation.
The world’s media has been besotted by Ardern as they were besotted by Canada’s Justin Trudeau. Both represent the Leftist ideal of woke agendas and supposedly compassionate politics — just don’t look too closely at the detail. Take NZ’s much-lauded “carbon neutral by 2050” target that excludes the country’s biggest emitting industry, agriculture, which in 2017 accounted for about half of all greenhouse emissions. All that methane released by sheep and cattle will be omitted in a crafty loophole.
But no amount of glowing international press is going to drown out genuine concerns a significant portion of the electorate have about Ardern. So with the polls so close, she launched an absurd attack on Australia’s deportation policy last Friday: “Australia is well within its rights to deport individuals who break your laws. New Zealand does the same. But we have a simple request — send back Kiwis. Genuine Kiwis. Do not deport your people and your problems.”
Never mind the impertinence of a foreign leader coming to Australia and telling us how to run our immigration and border protection policies, Ardern’s statements lack any sense or substance.
Is she suggesting that there are two classes of New Zealand citizens? Those who are “genuine Kiwis” and those who despite being citizens of NZ are really Australian in spirit?
Sorry, Jacinda, but citizenship doesn’t come down to the vibe; one is either a citizen, and afforded certain protections, or not. We will deport non-citizen criminals to their home country regardless of whether they’ve been in Australia five minutes or 50 years. If New Zealanders living in Australia want the security and certainty that comes with Australian citizenship then they can be naturalised. If they don’t, then once their jail term is over, they are New Zealand’s problem, not ours.
Australia has deported more than 1600 criminals including paedophiles, drug dealers and bikies to New Zealand since 2014.
Ardern’s empty arguments become all the more absurd when you consider that New Zealand is also deporting non-citizens, mainly to its Pacific neighbours.
Some of those deportations also include people who have lived in New Zealand for decades and consider it their home and others who have no familial ties to the country they’re being deported to. New Zealand has deported more than 1000 people to the Pacific Islands, including Samoa, Fiji and Tonga, in the past five years.
The media will continue to give Ardern a golden run: she’s already graced the cover of British Vogue and Time magazine’sinternational edition and been the subject of dozens of fluff pieces. But it remains to be seen whether the international adoration will help with re-election.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist.