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This was published 4 years ago
Meet Judith Collins, the woman determined to defeat Jacinda Ardern
She's had her image projected onto the world's tallest building, called out Donald Trump for his criticism of New Zealand's coronavirus response and won worldwide praise and recognition for her handling of the global pandemic.
But Jacinda Ardern's opponent in New Zealand's October 17 election is Judith Collins, the leader of the National Party, who believes the Prime Minister has a key vulnerability Collins will be able to exploit on election day.
"One of the things we are seeing is an enormous arrogance from the government, which after only three years in office is displaying all the arrogance of a third term government," she told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
"So for instance Jacinda Ardern announced some weeks back that she wouldn’t be bothering to put out policies, or words to that effect anyway, because they were going to make the election all about COVID."
Ardern, before the second outbreak of COVID-19 in Auckland, told voters not to expect a "large-scale range of policies" from Labour — the pandemic would be the government's focus.
"So having politicised it, she has now put herself in the unenviable position of having to then defend every single COVID cock up ... that’s the problem, that arrogance," Collins said.
Collins, a political veteran and former minister who only took the leadership of the Nationals on July 14, said New Zealanders were beginning to work out there was a big difference between what Ardern promises and what she delivers.
The Opposition Leader took over when Todd Muller stepped down for health reasons and faces an uphill battle to defeat the popular Ardern.
Horizon Research polling from August 27 showed 54 per cent of voters trusted Ardern to manage the economic recovery from the pandemic compared to 26 per cent for Collins, though Collins' support was higher than the 19 per cent Muller managed.
Similarly, Roy Morgan polling from August 8 — before a second wave of coronavirus in Auckland — showed Labour led National 53.5 per cent to 26.5 per cent, though those numbers are likely to tighten as the election nears and potentially also because of the second lockdown.
Collins has focused her attack on Ardern in recent weeks with detailed questions in Parliament about the still-unknown source of the Auckland outbreak, deficiencies in testing of front-facing border staff, and a mistaken Health Ministry directive — since withdrawn — that all 700,000 people in south and west Auckland had to be tested for the disease.
New Zealand's handling of the pandemic has been widely praised, with just 1406 cases and 22 deaths in a country of about 5 million people, but Collins offers scant praise.
"We have as a country been saved by the fact that we are so far away from any other country. It’s not that hard to keep isolated a country that already is isolated," Collins said.
"We are a 3½-hour flight from anywhere to any part of Australia, and 3½ hours to a Pacific Island."
"A lockdown is not hard to do, the issue is coming out of that."
National has released a range of policies including $4.4 billion over 10 years for school infrastructure, a new Border Agency modelled on Taiwan to co-ordinate the management of COVID-19, with more to come such as changes to the Resource Management Act ("a huge brake on the economy") to facilitate the rollout of new major projects.
Though she is coming from a long way back, Collins says she will leave no stone unturned to snatch an unlikely victory.
"People are starting to get grumpy and they are grumpy at the government because they have promised big and not quite actually achieved anything much," she said.
"People have drawn some comparison between Jacinda Ardern and Justin Trudeau, [both are] somewhat more popular overseas than necessarily at home."
"Ms Ardern, she shows a lot of empathy for people, her university degree is in communications, so she is very good at that but ultimately organisation? No. Running a team? No. She is down to a few ministers that she puts confidence in. Does she have any experience in business? No, she does not. What is her experience? It’s all in politics."