All her economic instincts were bad, all her strategic instincts were bad. She had a great desire to undo productive economic reform and remove or shut down the engines of economic growth for what should be a nation of limitless opportunity.
Nonetheless, for a time, she was very successful politically.
She had one genuine achievement. She reacted with dignity and moral seriousness to the appalling Christchurch terrorist massacre.
Most democratic leaders do well in such situations. John Howard did after Port Arthur. George W Bush’s popularity soared as he comforted the victims of 9/11 at ground zero.
Nonetheless, as a leader you can’t fake it, you have to do it. She certainly did it and she deserves credit for that.
After that, well, the achievement cupboard is pretty bare. Ardern did keep Covid at bay for a significant amount of time. That’s because New Zealand is an isolated island. We got much the same outcome for much the same reason. So did the leaders of Fiji, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.
Closing your borders was for a time the right thing for an isolated island nation to do. It didn’t require political genius.
Of course Ardern, from the left of her party, instituted one of the most draconian lockdowns outside China itself. Sometimes she made Dan Andrews look like a Milton Friedman/Ayn Rand libertarian.
There was a time when saucy, freewheeling Melburnians could get takeaway coffees from cafes, and New Zealanders could not even do that.
In substance, Ardern was a flop. She didn’t do the things she promised to do when first elected in 2017. She promised the government would build 100,000 homes, it built barely 1000.
She was a big cheese on climate change, but New Zealand’s emissions, before Covid, went up.
Public service emphasis was meant to focus on the regions of the country. Instead, all power, and many more public servants, went to Wellington.
Ardern talked a good game on human rights in the abstract, but under her leadership New Zealand was a tiny, frightened mouse when it came to Beijing.
Of course, her government did nothing to revive New Zealand’s substantially non-existent defence forces.
It also frequently bugged out of any remote solidarity with nations and groups trying to hold China to account for human rights, or to moderate Beijing’s behaviour on strategic issues.
When Wellington finally joined in efforts to limit Beijing’s clout in the South Pacific, Ardern strenuously argued that the dispute must not be seen as a conflict between democracy and authoritarianism.
But her failure in substance did not much dim Ardern’s international star, for we live in an age of political cryptocurrency, paid out in celebrity bitcoin. Ardern was a perfect princess of woke.
She was young, unmarried, had a child in office and her partner was a stay-at-home dad, and she spoke the woke dialect with a native fluency. Naturally, Manhattan swooned.
The apotheosis of this reality-free Jacindamania came when The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd interviewed first Scott Morrison, then Ardern.
Dowd heaped contempt on Morrison, whom she accused of being Donald Trump’s poodle, and defining his political persona by hostility to foreigners and immigrants.
In contrast, Dowd lavished praise on Ardern – she was barefoot during their interview, her partner was a stay-at-home dad, wow, gosh, golly.
Dowd hailed Ardern as one of a courageous group of young leaders challenging Trump. Yet, as my colleague Paul Kelly observed at the time, Dowd did not mention a single policy of Ardern’s government. (Policies are so boring.)
Yet Morrison was actually pro-immigration. Under all Liberal prime ministers since John Howard, Australia has taken vastly more immigrants, per capita, than New Zealand has. Not only that, Australia takes far more international refugees, per capita, than New Zealand does.
But actually doing real stuff in the real world butters no parsnips in the virtual reality of celebrity land. In that strange universe, Queen Jacinda for a time reigned without challenge.
More Coverage
Human existence does not end in the tomb
Pope Francis wanted a simple funeral, and his coffin fitted the bill.
Serious security dangers marginalised in campaign
At some stage the nation could face a brutal reckoning over defence. There is a manifest need for more assets. Policies to lift productivity and revenue are needed to pay for them.
Jacinda Ardern was a dreadful prime minister of New Zealand who failed in substance but succeeded wildly in image.