- Warning: This article contains violent and offensive language and imagery
Jacinda Ardern believes in taking small, slow steps to big changes, but it's ineffective. Each step is hard-fought, exhausting and often decreases people’s enthusiasm for change
Opinion: History will record that Jacinda Ardern was a highly effective Prime Minister across a range of economic, social and political issues – not just in her handling of the first 18 months of the Covid pandemic which combined all three in extreme ways.
In two terms her government has made some progress on our economic management, social inclusion, housing and infrastructure, plus climate and some other sustainability challenges such as resource management and fresh water.
But the Covid pandemic was the massively all-consuming challenge that exhausted her and much of her political capital. Worse, a deluge of vile, misogynistic and hateful social media has widely poisoned discourse in this country, just as it has worldwide.
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The impact in Aotearoa has been studied with great depth and insight by the independent Disinformation Project. Four months ago, for example, it published a paper titled: Dangerous speech, misogyny, and democracy: A review of the impacts of dangerous speech since the end of the Parliament Protest.
Here's just one quote of such social media messaging from page 6 of the report:
“The only way to get rid of the fucking Cockroaches who squat at the expense of the good Kiwis is to grab the c*** by the scruff of the devil necks and fucking knife them – they won't go peacefully! They are killing Kiwis!! Rise up and get rid of those c***, starting with the fuck-ugly bloke Jacinda Ardern! Take back your country before they kill you all off!”
A long-time business friend of mine is a member of a WhatsApp group exclusively focused on exchanging deeply disparaging memes about Ardern. I believe him when he says he’s only there keeping a watching brief. From time to time, he sends me examples.
He says I’d recognise some of the names of the group’s all-business members. But he won’t tell me who; and I don’t want to know because I likely deal with some of them from time to time.
Yet the subject of Ardern keeps coming up. Typical was a conversation I had last year with a long-time successful entrepreneur I’ve known and admired for years.
He was deeply disparaging about Ardern personally and politically. “She’s never had a proper job,” was one of his blithe assertions. He added: “My wife and all her friends, who are normally Labour voters, hate her.”
Such responses to Ardern are deeply unfair to her personally and professionally. Yet, even if she wasn’t exhausted by the past five and a half years, she could never win back such people. She has wisely resigned. She has more than earned the right to apply her skills, energy and passion in fruitful new roles.
It’s up to all of us to demand more of ourselves and our politicians. Then together we’ll make the much bigger, more enduring changes we have to make to secure our future.
Yet, if Covid had never happened, her political instincts would still have hobbled her attempts to achieve greater change. Yes, a little-known side of her is she is an avid, creative policy wonk. She’s very at home with the architecture, mechanisms, and details of complex government programmes. Her conservatism, though, is her weakness. She believes in incremental radicalism – that is, taking small, slow steps to try to win voters’ appetite for more change.
But that is ineffective for two reasons. First, each intermediate step towards bigger goals is always hard-fought and exhausting. It often decreases people’s enthusiasm for more, not increases it.
Ardern gave three very telling examples of that just before Christmas. Her government put off the biofuels mandate; ignored the Climate Change Commissions advice on tightening up the Emissions Trading Scheme; and drastically weakened proposals on agricultural emissions.
Even worse, the Government paid only lip-service to its obligation under the Zero Carbon Act to give the Commission full and convincing reasons for not taking its advice. Thus in a few days it weakened the four most important components of our climate framework – the Act, the Commission, the ETS and agriculture policy, with the last alone accounting for half our emissions.
Second, only big, bold, rapid and sequenced changes will solve humanity’s extremely complex and interdependent economic, social, political, climate and ecological challenges.
That, though, takes myriad people – ranging from political, business and social leaders to members of communities and families – to be very active themselves, and very encouraging and persuasive with all the people they engage with. It’s totally beyond even the most compelling and dynamic Prime Minister to do that job. We all must play our parts. Even the smallest contribution helps.
Are we? Yes, there are some true leaders in every aspect of our lives across Aotearoa.
But as a nation our default setting has become timid and uninspiring in politics, business, and society at large.
For example, NZIER reported this week that business confidence is at its lowest level since 1970. Yes, there’s a risk of a shallow recession, of inflation lingering on and of labour supply remaining tight. But all three of those have been much worse at times over the past 50 years so that latest survey result speaks of our funk.
What’s missing from much of Aotearoa is an understanding of the greatest ever global changes in business, economics, society, climate and ecosystems – and an appetite for bold, innovative responses to them.
“This is the most complex, disparate and cross-cutting set of challenges that I can remember in the 40 years that I have been paying attention to such things,” Larry Summers, a former US Treasury Secretary and President of Harvard, recently remarked.
These are ‘polycrises,’ as Adam Tooze, an historian at Columbia University, wrote last October in his Financial Times column. It’s a subject I also explored in my Newsroom column last month.
Another example is the Disruption Index produced by AlixPartners, a global consulting firm. For its most recent iteration last month it surveyed 3,000 business executives around the world about their experiences.
Three-quarters said they are facing a high level of disruption from world events, and 70 percent think their jobs are at risk. Most telling of all, 98 percent believe their business models will have to change in the next three years.
The turmoil is even more intense in climate, ecological, social and political fields. Simply, humanity is profoundly disrupting itself and the planet.
No political leader here or abroad can change that trajectory on their own. Don’t delude yourself for even a minute that Labour, National, the Greens, ACT, the Māori party or New Zealand First can rise to that challenge in our general election October 14.
It’s up to all of us to demand more of ourselves and our politicians. Then together we’ll make the much bigger, more enduring changes we have to make to secure our future.
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