Oh no

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said she is resigning, in an unexpected announcement that came as she confirmed a national election for October.

[...]

“I’m leaving, because with such a privileged role comes responsibility – the responsibility to know when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not. I know what this job takes. And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple,” she said.

[...]

Over the past year, Ardern has faced a significant increase in threats of violence, particularly from conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine groups infuriated by the country’s vaccine mandates and lockdowns. She said, however, that the increased risk associated with the job were not behind her decision to step down.

[...]

Ardern became the world’s youngest female head of government when she was elected prime minister in 2017 at 37. She has led New Zealand through the Covid-19 pandemic, and a series of disasters including the terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch, and the White Island volcanic eruption.

“This has been the most fulfilling five and a half years of my life. But it’s also had its challenges – among an agenda focused on housing, child poverty and climate change, we encountered a … domestic terror event, a major natural disaster, a global pandemic, and an economic crisis,” she said.

Asked how she would like New Zealanders to remember her leadership, Ardern said “as someone who always tried to be kind”.

“I hope I leave New Zealanders with a belief that you can be kind, but strong, empathetic but decisive, optimistic but focused. And that you can be your own kind of leader – one who knows when it’s time to go,” Ardern said.

  Guardian

What a huge loss to New Zealand and to the world.

Always, the best people know their limits. Sadly, the people who don't are the ones who want the positions.

[D]eputy leader and finance minister, Grant Robertson, who would be considered a frontrunner, said on Thursday that he would not be seeking the position.“I am not putting myself forward to be a candidate for the leadership of the Labour party,” he said.

It will be an even worse loss for the world if right-wing zealots - who are on the rise and becoming more and more violent across the globe - get control of the government.

We'll all be moving to New Zealand

[Prime minister Jacinda] Ardern’s leadership of New Zealand through the coronavirus crisis has compounded credentials well established by her government’s deft and empathetic handling of the horrific massacre in Christchurch last year. When corona hit, the lockdown of the country was swift, draconian and effective; there have only been 21 deaths from the disease to date in New Zealand, and while the rest of the world grapples with a rising number of daily cases, no new cases have been reported in New Zealand in three days.

A mind-boggling 92% of New Zealanders laud their government’s containment efforts. According to latest polls, Ardern is the most popular party leader there in more than 100 years.

  Guardian

Understandable.

With an impending opportunity to restructure the New Zealand economy for post-corona reopening, Ardern is exploring a policy suite of uncommon ambition. Hard-hit tourism is New Zealand’s largest export industry, employing 15% of New Zealanders and contributing to almost 6% of GDP, and it was in the context of rescuing this industry that on Wednesday Ardern suggested – informally, in a Facebook Live video from the tourist town of Rotorua – that, should the country move to a four-day working week, more leisure time may allow the domestic tourist market to expand to meet the present shortfall.

Brilliant.

When Ardern explained that “there’s just so much we’ve learned about … [the flexibility] of people working from home, the productivity that can be driven out of that”, she was speaking to the lived, material reality of the most physically transformed workplaces in living western memory.

Because across the world, social distancing has resulted not only in record numbers of people working from home. It has staggered and rearranged shifts, reorganising the deployment of labour around continually improvised new systems of production, distribution and exchange demanded in a health and economic crisis. Economists have called it the biggest workforce change since the second world war, and parallel to the ongoing horror of managing an invisible, lethal virus that underscores every rearrangement, for some workers there have been surprising benefits.

[...]

Among a claque of western leaders yearning for “snap back” to the way things were before the virus – some pursuing “recovery” strategies of even lesser benefit – it’s New Zealand’s, conspicuously, who repeatedly shows the courage to snap forward.

I've long wanted to live in New Zealand ever since I saw a PBS garden tour show from that country. Fantastic envirronments and beautiful plants.

And now, a great leader.

A Tale of Two Countries

Link

Link

The impossible ask

UPDATE:

International incident

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has expressed regret over gossiping about a meeting with Donald Trump after it was reported the US president may have mistaken her for Justin Trudeau’s wife.

[...]

“[Ardern] said that Donald Trump was confused for a good amount of time in thinking that she was Justin Trudeau’s wife.”

Ardern, when questioned about this, said she did not want to turn the issue into a “diplomatic incident”, or discuss everything that occurred behind the scenes.

  

Expect a nasty tweet about Ms Ardern shortly.

“Second-hand someone observed that they thought that it happened, but in all my interaction, certainly President Trump didn’t seem to have confused me when I interacted with him. But someone else observed this,” Ardern said, explaining the incident.

Ardern would not reveal who the person was who observed the alleged case of mistaken identity, but said it was not someone in her team, nor was it a New Zealander.

Whether it was or not.

Ardern then said she would not make the same mistake of sharing a backstage “yarn” again – as Chinese whispers had brought the story to the attention of the media, which was not her intention.

[...]

The friend [with whom she sared the story] – comedian Tom Sainsbury – revealed in a radio interview that Ardern had told her Trump was “not as orange in real life” and that he had been confused about her identity.

[...]

“Tom’s a mate of mine. I shared a story with him, he shared it with someone else, I can see how that then spirals ... it is a trifling matter.

“It was a bit of a funny yarn, something that I don’t want to cause a diplomatic incident over.

“I think I should never have recounted the story.” Ardern said.

A lesson in leadership the less orange one will never learn.

In a wide-ranging interview with Newsroom last week, Ardern described how she joked with Donald Trump when they first met, telling the US president: “No one marched when I was elected.”

She said the president didn’t seem to take offence, but only realised later that the remark could have backfired.

He probably didn't get it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Watch your back, New Zealand

The US doesn't like this kind of talk.

Jacinda Ardern, who is to become the nation's youngest leader [37 years old] since 1856, said measures used to gauge economic success "have to change" to take into account "people's ability to actually have a meaningful life".

[...]

Ms Ardern has pledged her government will increase the minimum wage, write child poverty reduction targets into law, and build thousands of affordable homes.

In her first full interview since becoming prime minister-elect, she told current affairs programme The Nation that capitalism had "failed our people".

"If you have hundreds of thousands of children living in homes without enough to survive, that's a blatant failure," she said. "What else could you describe it as?"

[...]

"When you have a market economy, it all comes down to whether or not you acknowledge where the market has failed and where intervention is required. Has it failed our people in recent times? Yes.

"How can you claim you've been successful when you have growth roughly three per cent, but you've got the worst homelessness in the developed world?"

[...]

"The measures for us have to change," she said. "We need to make sure we are looking at people's ability to actually have a meaningful life, an enjoyable life, where their work is enough to survive and support their families."

[...]

The Labour leader said her government would judge economic success on more than measures such as GDP.

  Independent

Good on them. I hope they have a roaring success, but if the capitalists who run the rest of the western world have anything to say about it (and they always do), there will be wrenches thrown in the works.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand

New Zealand’s prime minister elect Jacinda Ardern has laid out her priorities for the country, saying she plans to urgently address climate change, tackle inequality and improving women’s lives in the home and workplace.

[...]

“We have found allies in this parliament who wish to join with us in building a fairer New Zealand, ” Ardern told her caucus on Friday afternoon, where she was welcomed with applause, kisses and hugs. “A country where our environment is protected, where we look after the most vulnerable, where we support our families, where we make sure people have the most basic of needs, like a roof over their head.”

  Guardian

Here's hoping she means it and can do it.

The government’s 100 days plan would stay “broadly stay the same” she said, and would include raising the student allowance by NZ$50, banning overseas speculators from buying existing houses, setting up ministerial inquiries into the mental health crisis and historic abuse of children in state care, and passing the healthy homes bill legislating that rental homes be dry and warm.

[...]

Ardern told RNZ she would “absolutely” accept a call from Donald Trump, but he had not phoned yet.