Cogito Ergo Non Serviam
New Zealand Re-Elects Ardern
New Zealand's Labour Party has just won the latest election. It garnered 49% of the vote, and it will have about 64 of the 120 seats in the country's unicameral legislature. It is the party's best result in 50 years, and it is the best result since the nation switched to proportional representation almost a quarter of a century ago. The victory for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the result of one simple thing: competence. She and her cabinet have faced serious difficulties, and they managed to get the right things done to protect the nation.
A year and a half ago, New Zealand was the site of mass shootings of Muslims at prayer. She adroitly adopted the role of national grief counselor, and she made sure that the families of the victims received financial support. It is bad enough to lose a loved one in this way; a family should not suffer bankruptcy on top of that because the breadwinner is dead.
In December 2019, the country had a volcano erupt off its North Island. The White Island volcano is the area's most active, and it was quite a tourist draw. When it erupted, it killed 21 people and injured another 26. Again, she was the nation's mother (or sister depending on one's age), "To those who have lost or are missing family and friends, we share in your unfathomable grief at this moment in time and in your sorrow. Our duty," she added, "is to return loved ones."
The pandemic, however, was the great challenge, and she rose to meet it. Go early and go hard was the attitude, and when combined with the country's relative inaccessibility, New Zealand more or less crushed the virus. The theatres are open. The All Blacks beat Australia in a rugby match yesterday; 46,000 attended. Yesterday, the country had its first instance of community spread in three weeks. The country has a population of 4.88 million, and has seen 25 Covid-19 deaths.
When the EU and USA are shutting down everything in sight, and still have to bury a thousand dead a day, New Zealand's situation looks like a miracle. Indeed, in the recent debate with the center-right National Party's Judith Collins, the best line of attack that the opposition could muster was that the virus had re-emerged in August because of a breach in the border or quarantine protocol. One must give Ms. Collins her due. She tried. She argued that Ms. Ardern 'told us on June 23 everybody was being tested. What a lie. When she said she went hard and fast, she went slow and pathetic. And she lied to us about what was happening." Not many were convinced.
Ms. Ardern's platform is much like it was three years ago, making housing more affordable, improving the lot of children economically and addressing climate change. Now, though, she has the votes to ram through what she wants. The question is whether she will.
Morgan Godfrey, who is a commentator specializing in Maori issues, said, "The Labour Party is something of a contradiction at the moment, because they are more popular than at any point since the 1940s, but they are more cautious. They don't seem quite sure on how they're going to use that popularity. There's very little new thinking on housing, tax, Maori issues."
Oliver Hartwich, executive director of the New Zealand Initiative, a center-right think tank, said "When it comes to P.R., when it comes to her daily press conference in the Covid crisis -- taking the people along and explaining what she wants to do and what she wants to achieve, there's no one who comes even close to what Jacinda does. She's phenomenal and a genuine talent. Where she's not good, is on the details of policy, on the details of strategy, of execution, of implementation, of evaluations, of all the normal things that come along with government."
That may well be, but losing only 25 people to Covid-19 may be all the strategy and execution she needs.
© Copyright 2020 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.
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