A piece of clothing that descends from the codpiece and is designed to promulgate white male power should be optional

Last week it was reported that the Speaker of the House, Trevor Mallard, had decided to keep the requirement that male MPs wear neckties in the New Zealand parliament’s debating chamber after asking members of parliament to write to him about what constitutes appropriate business attire in the House.

If there was ever a year to change New Zealand’s anachronistic parliamentary dress code, it should be 2021, when the new parliament is the most diverse and inclusive ever, including 48% women, 11% LGBTQ, 21% Māori, 8.3% Pacific, and 7% Asian New Zealand members.

‘Don’t be a dick’ was one useful motto we came across in our podcast examination of how to be a modern man

In a Wellington cafe, one of New Zealand’s most respected academics talked about the disconnect between his feelings and the way he knew he was supposed to be: “I could not understand why anyone would see putting your head between two other men’s buttocks as being the high point of New Zealand culture. I was staggered by it. But I never said that, of course – I just buried those thoughts.”

Jock Phillips would go on to become the national historian, but as a boy growing up in the 1960s he knew the wisdom of keeping his cranium down in a land where rugby was next to a religion.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern helps cook breakfast on the national holiday, which celebrates the signing of the treaty of Waitangi on 6 February 1840 by Māori chiefs and the British Crown

Māori memories of past epidemics meant iwi were instrumental in forcing Jacinda Ardern’s government to act quickly

In the space of a few days in 2017 New Zealand’s Labour caucus made Jacinda Ardern their leader. In the space of a month the country made her their prime minister, and in the space of a few years the rest of the English-speaking world would turn to her as a global leader. That might sound cliché, and in a small sense it is, but it captures the adoration and esteem in which large parts of New Zealand and the world hold Ardern. She has apparently committed to a social democratic programme of old, from public housing to subsidised tertiary education, and – more importantly – she has dealt successfully with the virus. Global business leaders and others rightly rate New Zealand’s Covid-19 response as the best in the world.

But is it equally right to simply credit Ardern and her government for this success?