Jacinda Ardern on Today. Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

PoliticsSeptember 26, 2018

Jacinda Ardern goes overseas, promptly emits beam of hope in our dark world

Contributing writer

Jacinda Ardern on Today. Photo by: Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

The NZ prime minister set foot in the US and immediately became a media sensation. Hayden Donnell looks at Ardern’s transformation into a beacon for our troubled world.

At home, Jacinda Ardern’s life is filled with stress, trouble, and Winston Peters. She’s somehow involved in a multi-week scandal involving a person that willingly donated a year of his life to Richard Branson. Audrey Young is forensically examining her texts. Her biggest opposition party is tweeting out apocalyptic visions of a tahr-less New Zealand ruled by gun-toting DOC rangers.

Overseas, Jacinda Ardern’s life is perfect. Everyone loves her. She goes on all the biggest shows. The best shows. She speaks on-stage at the UN. There’s no Leighton Smith. No Mike Hosking. In just three days out of the country, Jacinda Ardern has transformed into a beacon of hope in our dark world.

For Americans especially, our prime minister is a star shining high above the mound of fetid waste they’ve made their home. Progressive website The Daily Kos even gave its readers permission to enjoy a brief respite from their unending despair yesterday, saying Ardern’s visit to the US had shown there could be more to life than MAGA hats and unending assaults on the concept of shared reality. “In all the stress and diabolical degeneration of basic functions of US government, New Zealand is sending you Jacinda Ardern for a visit,” its story begins. “Take just a minute of your time to recharge your progressive batteries and draw a deep breath.”

Just don’t do it too close to this meeting room at the UN.

Ardern’s joint appearance with Neve at UN headquarters in New York has been lauded for its symbolic significance. Where in New Zealand, her small concessions to motherhood have been met with stern admonitions from the likes of Duncan Garner, overseas media have praised her for bringing Neve to the epicentre of the world’s bureaucracy.

ARDERN, GAYFORD, AND NEVE AT THE UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY. PHOTO: GETTY

The visit has been covered by Time, the BBC, CNN, The Guardian, and myCentralOregon.com. Buzzfeed posted an article which is literally just pictures of Neve, Ardern and Gayford at the UN.

All the stories touched on the fact that Neve’s presence normalises motherhood in the workplace. Jezebel said Ardern’s decision to visibly be a mother in the most public and esteemed of places was important for women everywhere. “She is expecting to be taken seriously in an elevated position while also visibly existing as a mom. You’re not supposed to do this. You’re supposed to compartmentalize, to not let one realm leak… into the next, to show that you can return to work entirely unchanged, just as a man might,” wrote Tracy Clark-Flory. “We probably need more babies at the UN – and visiting all workplaces – until it doesn’t look so weird.” That sentiment was echoed by former US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power.

The Today show also covered parenthood in its interview with Ardern. “What is harder? Running a country or taking a three-month-old on a 17-hour flight?” asked host Savannah Guthrie. “It felt at the time on par,” Ardern replied, sitting in front of a wall of pictures of herself and a New Zealand flag cropped in what looked suspiciously like the shape of Australia.

Christiane Amanpour covered similar ground on CNN. “Could you ever imagine that the perfectly normal act of a woman giving birth would be so incredibly viral all around the world and everybody would just want to talk to you about that?” she asked.

They went on to talk about other how other countries don’t think enough about New Zealand. Ardern complained that we’re often missed off maps. “Well I’m sure Peter Thiel can single-handedly put New Zealand back on the map,” Amanpour said, causing Ardern to make this face.

WHEN YOU SIMULTANEOUSLY WIN AN INSTANT KIWI AND SMELL THE WORST FART OF YOUR LIFE

Amanpour later tweeted a photo where Ardern is – for some reason – standing in front of a photo of herself.

It’s all good for Brand New Zealand! Ardern was also the subject of five paragraphs in the Washington Post, explaining why she refused to sign up to Donald Trump’s new war on drugs. This afternoon she met Anne Hathaway, and tomorrow she’ll be interviewed by Stephen Colbert. No-one has criticised her on the radio in three days. No-one there has mentioned the words “Derek Handley”. No-one has even asked her to think about the political implications of instituting a capital gains tax. To us, she’s PM Jacinda. But to people in the US, she’s proof that someday, somehow, they won’t have to spend their every waking moment screaming internally about Donald Trump, or at least that they’ll maybe eventually get even a single measly day of government-mandated paid parental leave.

Is it possible the prime minister won’t want to come home?

Keep going!

PoliticsSeptember 26, 2018

I am stunned by National’s somersault in backing Trump’s ‘war on drugs’

Peter Dunne

Contributing writer

As a minister in a National-led government I was proud to speak at the UN against pursuing an outdated and overly punitive approach on drugs. Now the bipartisan focus on drugs as a health issue seems to have been tossed aside by Simon Bridges’ party as a political inconvenience, writes Peter Dunne

Just two years ago I had the privilege as then associate minister of health of addressing the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on Drugs. That was while the previous National-led government was in office.

In my address I made the following comments: “Last year at CND 58, I spoke of the importance of three fundamental pillars of drug policy – Proportion, Compassion and Innovation. New Zealand has woven these principles throughout its approach to addressing drug issues, including them as central tenets in its recently launched 2015 National Drug Policy. But perhaps there is a fourth pillar that is missing – boldness. Incremental movement, if any, has been the norm for drug policy development for as long as I can remember – and the movement has not always been forward. As encouraging as the shift has been, the fact is that compared to the global narcotic industries, we are moving at a glacial pace, hamstrung by an outdated overly punitive approach.”

Earlier, I had expressed New Zealand’s considerable disappointment that the UN had not taken a stronger stand against the use of the death penalty in drug related cases.

These comments, as noted above, were all consistent with New Zealand’s National Drug Policy adopted by the Cabinet after much debate in 2015. The policy and the speech, and others I gave at the annual UN Convention on Narcotic Drugs meetings through to 2017 made it clear New Zealand rejected the “war on drugs” rhetoric and approach that had dominated international drug policy for too long, in favour of the more compassionate, health centred approach set out in the National Drug Policy.

I am delighted that the prime minister has repeated these messages and confirmed in reality the direction of the National Drug Policy in her address to the UN General Assembly this week, and that she has rejected outright the backward focusing approach of the president of the United States to try to reignite the “war on drugs” when most countries have been looking to move on from that.

However, I am more than extremely stunned that the National Party, which could have claimed the high ground and pointed out she was just copying policy already in place, has instead done a complete somersault on its previous position and apparently now supports the Trump proposition. It is hard to find – let alone justify – a credible reason for this about-face. Certainly the few public statements I have seen go little beyond the uninformed and the platitudinous. So it becomes difficult to believe that the driving principle behind this decision is anything but a perverse determination to take a different view from Labour, whatever that view might be, and no matter what your own government’s record on the matter. It is a very dark day for National’s ongoing credibility on this issue.

It all seems a far cry from when a New Zealand government minister could stand before the UN General Assembly just two short years ago, and say that our country believed that “responsible regulation is the key to reducing drug-related harm and achieving long-term success in drug control approaches.”

The bipartisan focus on drugs as a health issue seems to have been tossed aside as a political inconvenience, especially when knee jerk opposition for the sake of it is so much easier. That is to National’s ongoing shame.

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