While New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, waited for election results that would lead to the Labour party securing a historic landslide victory, her partner, Clarke Gayford, delivered home-cooked "fish sliders and venison bites" to journalists outside their home.
Gayford served up food during the 2017 election and said he wasn't going to do the same this year, but said it was a good excuse 'to sneak out and go fishing'.
As prime minister, Ardern inspired love and trust; now she has to do something with it
And the winner is … New Zealand. It was the happiness election – Covid fizzled out, lockdown was released, and a sense of gratitude and sheer joy buoyed Jacinda Ardern through a long campaign to Saturday’s landslide victory.
“Let’s keep moving,” Labour’s campaign slogan urged, but in reality it was much more a case of: “Let’s stick with what we’ve got, so actually let’s not, you know, move.” The alternative – National’s Judith Collins – was too appalling a prospect.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern condemns divisive elections during victory speech, saying polls 'don’t need to tear people apart'. Her words were interpreted as a veiled allusion to the divisive US election, which take place in two weeks.
The Labour party secured a landslide victory with its best result in five decades after Ardern emphasised kindness and cooperation during her first term, and told voters she needed a second term to deliver on her promises of transformational change
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern has secured a second term as leader after a resounding victory in the country’s general election. The Labour leader had led a coalition government since October 2017, ending nearly a decade of National rule. During her first term Ardern had to deal with responses to the Christchurch terrorist atrocity, the Whakaari volcano eruption and the Covid-19 pandemic. She gave birth to her first child, Neve, in June 2018
Continue reading...Judith Collins concedes as results show Labour on track for a large majority. Follow live:
A tweet from 2012 by Jacinda Ardern in which the newly reelected New Zealand prime minister is less than complimentary about the British prime minister Boris Johnson is being circulated once more on social media.
Are people really discussing Boris Johnson as possible candidate for PM? When I lived in London he was known as the gaffe man!
Thanks Helen.
David Seymour, the leader of the libertarian ACT party, has been pictured arriving at his election celebration on a boat – with his party set to win 10 seats, tied with the Greens.
David Seymour arriving at the Act party by boat – exclusive photo by our man on the ground, @duncangreive pic.twitter.com/6jsTPVoQm3
Brutal scenes. @JohnJCampbell offering Nikki Kaye lollies as consolation #NZElection2020 #nzpol pic.twitter.com/jOdSTZUr8f
Continue reading...New Zealanders give Labour more votes than at any other election in past five decades
Jacinda Ardern will govern New Zealand for a second term after the Labour party secured a historic landslide victory in the general election, attracting so many votes it could become the first party in decades to be able to govern alone.
Ardern’s deft handling of the Covid-19 outbreak and resolute belief in science and experts was credited with earning the trust of New Zealanders, who cast early votes in record numbers, giving her party more votes than at any other election in the past five decades.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern is on track to be re-elected as the prime minister of New Zealand. The Labour party looked set for a landslide victory, attracting so many votes in the general election it could become the first party in decades to be able to govern alone.
With more than 90% of the vote counted, Labour had secured 49%, with the opposition National party on 27%. Addressing supporters, Ardern said: “Tonight New Zealand has shown the Labour party its biggest support in 50 years.”
Continue reading...PM tours shopping malls in Auckland, while Collins takes final chance to attack Ardern’s record
Political leaders in New Zealand put in a frantic final day on the campaign trail before Saturday’s vote, with Jacinda Ardern, the Labour leader and prime minister, making a whistle-stop tour of shopping malls in the largest city, Auckland, where she was greeted by hundreds of fans who clamoured for selfies.
It was a more muted day for Judith Collins, the leader of centre-right opposition party National, who opted for a handful of events with party volunteers and reporters as she made a last attempt to poke holes in Ardern’s track record. A final poll on Thursday showed Collins’s party languishing about 15 points behind Labour.
Continue reading...Judith Collins has the look of a defeated woman as Labour heads to likely victory
Long time no see. Jacinda Ardern left it late, but turned up at last night’s fourth and final debate of the election campaign as the prime minister. Ghostly versions of herself made weird, kind of shifty appearances in the previous three debates. God she was terrible, an anxious mess, uptight, easily thrown, unable to say anything memorable or with much conviction. She got better or at least less terrible as the debates dragged on and last night, back at the TVNZ studios where the series began, she was in the ascendant. She looked like she knew what she was doing. She looked like herself.
Who was the person sitting beside her in the mauve lights of the studio, though? Someone who only had a faint resemblance to the National leader, Judith Collins, someone who looked like she had the fight taken out of her and had nothing left to give. God, it was sad to witness. It’s a lie that it’s lonely at the top. It’s a lot lonelier at the bottom, and that’s where Collins seems right now at the end of a campaign that has turned into a nightmare, with the prospect of a sound thrashing on Saturday.
Continue reading...Leader says she will resign if not re-elected but polls show Labour 15 points ahead
Jacinda Ardern has dominated the final leaders’ debate before New Zealand goes to the polls on Saturday, appearing confident and prime ministerial as she took on a subdued Judith Collins.
In a surprise admission, Ardern said if she was not re-elected, she would resign as Labour leader.
Continue reading...The ‘yes’ campaign has Jacinda Ardern’s support but opponents say they believe New Zealand’s most vulnerable will be at risk
On Saturday, New Zealanders will be asked to vote yes or no on whether Kiwis enduring “unbearable suffering that cannot be eased” have a legal right to end their life.
For Matt Vickers, the former husband of lawyer and euthanasia campaigner Lecretia Seales, the vote can’t come soon enough.
Continue reading...She is wildly popular in the polls but significant risk lies in Labour’s decision to pin all their hopes on their leader’s profile
On the lush green grounds of New Zealand’s oldest university, prime minister Jacinda Ardern is getting mobbed.
Half a dozen police officers clear a path through the heaving crowd in Dunedin, while her security detail tightly flank Ardern, and look increasingly tense as the crowd gets bigger and more demanding.
Continue reading...In the election Judith Collins is up against one of the most popular PMs in recent times
“I’ve been having an awfully fun time, can you tell?” Judith Collins, the leader of New Zealand’s centre-right National party enthused, to a campaign trail meeting packed with her admirers outside the South Island city of Dunedin. “I can’t stop grinning.”
It was true; she could not. Collins, the country’s opposition leader, is running in the 17 October election against one of the country’s most popular prime ministers of recent times, Jacinda Ardern, who is mobbed for selfies wherever she goes – with such large and closely packed crowds that security and Covid-19 precautions often appear to be cast aside.
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins both bring B-game to seemingly interminable show
Are we there yet? Is it election day? Is it possible to bring the date forward a little bit from 17 October? Not by too much – things have to be put in place, pens secured to pieces of string and the like. How’s tomorrow?
Election fatigue hit hard during Tuesday night’s leaders’ debate. It was a long programme. It could have been worse: it could still be going. Mind you, it feels like it still is and always will be; that the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, and the opposition leader, Judith Collins, will go at it unhappily ever after in front of a live audience in a dark room in Christchurch.
Continue reading...New Zealand's prime minister has wished the US president and his wife a rapid recovery after they were diagnosed with Covid-19 on Friday. She said the virus had had a 'devastating impact' globally and noted that several world leaders had been taken ill with it
Continue reading...Jacinda Ardern says her country will not open up until Australia records a month without community transmission of Covid-19
New Zealand will not reciprocate quarantine-free trips across the Tasman as the Australian Capital Territory joins Australia’s travel bubble with the country.
On Friday, Australia’s deputy prime minister, Michael McCormack, announced New South Wales and the Northern Territory would allow Kiwis to bypass the compulsory fortnight of quarantine on arrival from 16 October.
Continue reading...New Zealand and the United States both had leaders' debates this week, and some political junkies noticed a distinct difference in tone. In New Zealand, where the Labour leader and incumbent prime minister Jacinda Ardern faced off against National leader Judith Collins, the pair exchanged compliments in a debate described by Collins as 'robust and a win for politics'. Meanwhile, in America, president Donald Trump's attacks on his Democratic rival Joe Biden turned highly person
Quickfire questions led to dope-smoking and Trump-admiring revelations from Jacinda Ardern and Judith Collins
Queen Street! The main shopping drag in New Zealand’s biggest city, a valley that rolls down towards the harbour in downtown Auckland, is hanging in there, just, even in these stay-at-home Covid days, as someplace fun and weird and chaotic – rare virtues in New Zealand life at the best of times – after dark.
True, the only joint to get a feed after 9pm is up the hill at Denny’s. And one of the few signs of commerce is the homeless man with his cardboard sign reading: “Let’s beat Covid. We can do this. Please give me money.”
Continue reading...New Zealand's prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, has admitted to using cannabis 'a long time ago', in a heated televised debate with the opposition leader, Judith Collins.
Speaking during the 90-minute debate on Newshub, the Labour leader and incumbent PM chose not to disclose how she would vote in the forthcoming cannabis referendum, drawing ire from her opponent, the National party leader
Continue reading...If the country is to honour the pandemic’s spirit of collective solidarity there must be a genuine commitment to healthcare and education
New Zealand’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been a master-class in inclusive communication. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern described the country as a “team of six million”. The top public health official, Ashley Bloomfield, said: “The virus is the problem, not people ... people are the solution”.
But the policies arising out of the pandemic, especially in the run-up to New Zealand’s election on 17 October, have not always been as inclusive as the communication. There’s a mismatch between universalist rhetoric in the pandemic response, and policy offerings that seem to give up on universalism in public services.
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