Category Archives: Jacinda Ardern

Ardern makes good on child poverty promise, but a long road lies ahead

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Analysis: the PM has spent big on tackling social issues, but it will still take New Zealand only halfway to meeting her child poverty goal

When she came to power, the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, grabbed international headlines for her commitments to national wellbeing and solving social issues such as child poverty, homelessness and the mental health crisis. Until now, progress on many of those hallmark issues has been plodding – or at times non-existent – making critics sceptical of whether the rhetoric on wellbeing had lined up with reality. The budget will be welcomed by progressives, as evidence the government is following through on assistance for the country’s most vulnerable.

A multibillion-dollar income boost for impoverished families was a headline item in the country’s new budget, announced on Thursday. Ardern’s government looked to harness the momentum of a better-than-expected Covid recovery to spend big on social problems.

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New Zealand’s differences with China becoming ‘harder to reconcile’, Jacinda Ardern says

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Prime minister has been coming under pressure from allies to take a tougher approach towards country’s largest trading partner

New Zealand’s differences with China are becoming “harder to reconcile,” the prime minister Jacinda Ardern has said, as she called on China “to act in the world in ways that are consistent with its responsibilities as a growing power”.

Ardern’s comments were made as New Zealand’s government comes under increasing pressure, both internally and from international allies, to take a firmer stance on concerns over human rights abuses of Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang province. Last week, the Act party presented a motion for New Zealand’s parliament to debate whether the treatment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang constitutes genocide – a motion that Labour will discuss this week.

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New Zealand’s stance on China has deep implications for the Five Eyes alliance

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Analysis: Country has confirmed itself the weak link in the intelligence chain it joined with the US, UK, Canada and Australia

Jacinda Ardern, the New Zealand prime minister from the centre-left Labour party, has offended devotees of the Anglosphere by indicating she is not prepared to take her country into the kind of trade war with China that Australia has found itself facing.

Asserting her country’s sovereignty has potentially deep implications for the “Five Eyes” alliance, the intelligence sharing partnership that emerged after the second world war and blossomed in the cold war. Indeed some say New Zealand has confirmed itself as the weak link in the intelligence chain that it joined with the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia.

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Jacinda Ardern announces ‘trans-Tasman travel bubble’ with Australia in pandemic milestone – video

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New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has announced details of a trans-Tasman travel bubble with Australia, meaning Australians will be able to travel to New Zealand without needing to quarantine. Though most Australian states have allowed quarantine-free visits from New Zealanders for months, New Zealand has continued with enforced isolation for arrivals from its neighbour, citing concern about small Covid-19 outbreaks. The move to allow cross-border travel is one of the first such agreements since the pandemic prompted countries to block foreign arrivals to stop the virus spreading

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Targeting New Zealand’s property speculators is popular, but won’t fix the housing crisis

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Jacinda Ardern’s announcement will hit investors hard, but more needs to be done

Property speculators have become public enemy number one in New Zealand’s rampant housing affordability crisis. Those buying, selling and renting out multiple properties have become wealthy at the expense of those in the middle and at the bottom of the market, who are paying high rents and struggling to afford to buy decent housing.

It is no surprise therefore that the housing announcement by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues on Tuesday was firmly focused on reigning in those investors driving up the prices – with the most significant elements of the package designed to hit investors with increased tax responsibilities.

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Deportation of a minor: how a ‘corrosive’ policy sank cosy relations between Australia and New Zealand

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Jacinda Ardern has long criticised the policy and now the deportation of a 15-year-old boy has seen calls for Australia to be referred to the UN

They may be close allies, but the latest flare-up in a long-running diplomatic standoff between Australia and New Zealand has seen relations between the two nations hit an all-time low.

The source of the friction is a controversial deportation policy which Australia uses to deport hundreds of New Zealanders every year. Part of the country’s hardline and oft-criticised immigration policies, the dispute resurfaced last week when the Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton used a television interview to refer to the policy as “taking the trash out”.

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Minor deported to New Zealand under Australian program Peter Dutton described as ‘taking the trash out’

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Jacinda Ardern, who says she ‘never agreed with the policy’, is seeking more information about the 15-year-old

Australian authorities deported a minor to New Zealand as part of a program home affairs minister Peter Dutton described as “taking the trash out”.

The New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, confirmed that one of the people deported from Australia earlier this month was under the age of 18, but said she was not aware of any further details about the case.

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Hemiandrus jacinda: insect named after New Zealand prime minister

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New species of wētā, a giant flightless cricket, is seen as ‘reflecting traits’ of Jacinda Ardern

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has received what may be her greatest accolade yet: a large insect named in her honour.

A new species of wētā – a giant flightless cricket that is endemic to New Zealand – has been named Hemiandrus jacinda for being Labour-party red in colour and “long-limbed”.

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New Zealand: Auckland to go into seven-day Covid lockdown

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Restrictions in country’s biggest city to be imposed after single Covid case of unknown origin was recorded

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said the country’s biggest city, Auckland, will go into a seven-day lockdown from early morning on Sunday after a new local case of the coronavirus of unknown origin emerged.

It comes two weeks after Auckland’s nearly 2 million residents were plunged into a snap three-day lockdown when a family of three were diagnosed with the more transmissible UK variant of coronavirus.

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Ardern orders inquiry into Air New Zealand’s work for Saudi Arabia navy

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Engineers for the national carrier, which is majority-owned by the government, worked on engines and a power turbine for the Royal Saudi Navy

Prime minister Jacinda Ardern has asked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade to investigate after it was revealed an Air New Zealand company worked on the engine of a Saudi Arabian navy ship.

The national carrier for New Zealand, which is majority-owned by the government, is facing mounting questions after a TVNZ investigation revealed some of its specialist engineers worked on two engines and one power turbine for the royal navy of Saudi Arabia though a third-party company in 2019.

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New Zealand needs urgent action to cut emissions, says climate change commission

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More electric vehicles, renewable energy and forests are among the steps recommended to help meet Paris accords

New Zealand needs to urgently increase its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if it is to meet its obligations under the Paris climate accords.

The country’s climate change commission – an independent body – has delivered its draft advice to the prime minister, on the vital steps that must be taken if it wants to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change.

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Watching New Zealand’s Covid success from bungling Britain has been torture | Todd Atticus

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Living between the two countries, I know that the British government’s best isn’t good enough

Like most Britons this past year, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit doomscrolling social media. But in between the muted festive lockdown celebrations, I also saw photos of crowded house parties, family barbecues and road trips to baches and beaches. My social feeds have split into alternate realities. Because although I’m a British citizen living in Oxford, I’m also a resident of New Zealand, where things really couldn’t be more different.

As a resident of two countries, with friends and family in each, I’m used to witnessing events and political developments in both places at once. Usually this experience is a rewarding one where new ideas and cultural differences cross-pollinate in my brain and expand the way I see the world. But in 2020 it’s been an exercise in frustration. The torture of watching how one country has handed the Covid pandemic so well, while living in another that has bungled it so badly, has been one of the defining characteristics of my past year.

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The secret of Jacinda Ardern’s success lies in her conservatism | Bryce Edwards

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The New Zealand prime minister’s appeal comes from adding compassion, something her rivals have been unable to emulate

The biggest misconception about Jacinda Ardern is that she is a pioneering progressive or socialist. This is especially so outside New Zealand.

Understandably the global media paint the prime minister as a counter to other, more rightwing or illiberal, leaders. Similarly many overseas progressive activists and intellectuals have seized on her as someone they can learn from in their search for a way forward for the political left.

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Jacinda Ardern: I try to turn self-doubt into ‘something more positive’

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New Zealand prime minister admits watching bad television to relax and says some people she admires most have that ‘gnawing lack of confidence’

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has revealed she suffers “imposter syndrome” and watches “bad crime shows” to wind down.

Ardern won a second term in a landslide victory in October after successfully leading her country through the coronavirus pandemic with fewer than 30 deaths.

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Jacinda Ardern declares ‘climate emergency’ in New Zealand – video

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New Zealand has declared a climate emergency and committed to a carbon-neutral government by 2025, in what the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, called 'one of the greatest challenges of our time'.

Speaking in parliament after its introduction, Ardern said the country must 'act with urgency'. Wednesday’s declaration also said the government would 'demonstrate what is possible to other sectors of the economy by reducing the government’s own emissions and becoming a carbon-neutral government by 2025'.

Thirty-two other nations have formally acknowledged the global crisis by declaring a climate emergency


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New Zealand once led the world on social housing – it should again | Bryce Edwards

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A return to a programme of mass state house building could fix the significant problem for those at the bottom of the market

Billions of dollars are currently being transferred to wealthy New Zealanders in the government’s attempts to stimulate the economy. The Reserve Bank has essentially committed to printing up to $128bn (US$90bn) of new money, lending much of it as cheap credit to banks, who then lend it to those who can afford to buy more and more houses, and thereby grabbing the capital gains.

The result is rocketing house prices, making accommodation unaffordable, especially for those seeking to buy a first home or rent accommodation. In fact, this week New Zealand was named as the seventh most expensive place in the world to buy a house.

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Despite her mandate, Ardern’s agenda will be resolutely middle of the road | Tova O’Brien

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Labour’s smart politics will come at the expense of its fundamental values, and be driven by its desire to stay in power

The prime minister of New Zealand has just begun a victory lap of the country, though Jacinda Ardern would prefer we think of it more as a “thank you” tour.

After a successful but gruelling six-week election campaign she is hitting the two-lane blacktop once again, deploying to the regions of New Zealand.

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Jacinda Ardern must use her mandate to tackle child poverty | Max Rashbrooke

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Covid has set back the PM’s modest progress on childhood hardship, meaning greater policy ambition is needed

As the New Zealand First party’s vote share evaporated on election day, so too did Jacinda Ardern’s last excuse for not making more progress on child poverty, her signature issue.

No longer able to blame inaction on her one-time conservative coalition partner, and possessing an absolute majority, the Labour leader now has a free hand on an issue dear to her heart. She may have labelled climate change her “nuclear-free moment”, referencing the 1980s Labour government’s famous opposition to nuclear weapons, but it is child poverty reduction, not climate change, that she has always taken as her “extra” portfolio.

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New Zealand Greens accept Ardern’s offer of ‘cooperation agreement’

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Deal with Labour stops short of a coalition but will see Green’s co-leaders, James Shaw and Marama Davidson, hold ministries outside of cabinet


New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has agreed on a governing “cooperation agreement” with the Green party, offering two ministries and agreeing to a handful of shared policy priorities for her second term – an offer they accepted late on Saturday.

Labour won the general election in October with an outright majority, meaning they could govern alone. But Ardern invited the Greens into a “cooperation” agreement, saying it would allow the government to benefit from the expertise of Green party members in areas such as the environment, climate change and child wellbeing.

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Ardern urged to review New Zealand Covid measures after election landslide

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Veteran epidemiologist calls for review, and openness to adopting measures suggested by political rivals, now that voters have given PM a mandate

Jacinda Ardern won New Zealand’s election with a commanding majority, in part attributed to her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic in her country. But a veteran epidemiologist is exhorting the prime minister to use the political capital gained in her decisive victory to scrutinise the coronavirus response by her government and officials, and adopt strategies proposed by her opponents before Saturday’s vote.

“New Zealand has shown it can be quite smart and flexible, but we can see we’ve got these blind spots and we need to have no blind spots,” said Nick Wilson, a University of Otago epidemiologist. “This is such an unforgiving disease and very few countries are doing it right so we need to smarten up our act quite substantially.”

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