Jacinda Ardern's book: A Different Kind of Power

Mainstream commenters seem to have no shortage of opinions on the author, without much evidence they've ever actually read the book.

Jacinda Ardern: A Different Kind of Power

In the book reviews and commentaries I’ve read on “A Different Kind of Power”, Jacinda Ardern’s memoir, there’s been a remarkably standard approach the various writers, journalists and commentators have taken, whether they loved or loathed her: ‘These are my views on Jacinda, and this is how the book fits in with my notions.’

They all quote the same few lines, and spend more time on their feelings about the person than on the book itself.

Reading the book, I was personally more interested in learning about the circumstances of her upbringing and her life story, and reading about the experiences she found formative, as a PM whose approval rating at 59.5% was the highest in New Zealand history, who faced unprecedented national catastrophes including a volcanic eruption, a mass murder, a pandemic, and a siege, and who left office exhausted, after years of misogyny and death threats, loved by some, vehemently hated by others, suffering a massive drop in approval, but tellingly still leaving office with an approval rating that remained significantly higher than any politician currently in parliament.

A complex character, she was criticised from the left because she didn’t go far enough on capital gains taxes and social services delivery, from the right because she went too far on social services delivery, vilified by the antivaxxers and antimandaters, glorified by millions of people in nations with rightwing governments and botched Covid responses, undoubtedly a gifted orator, a leader with an interesting backstory, and a good writer of memoirs.

But let’s focus on that last bit: the memoir itself.

Murupara – “The difference between what we are and what we could be is the greatest waste.”

Born in Hamilton, Jacinda grew up in Murupara, a poor, rural and remote community near the Urewera ranges that has a 90% Māori population. Her earliest childhood memories included formative interactions with Māori kids and aunties from the neighbourhood, including one child she befriended who would later go on to identify as non-binary, and not so kind episodes where her sister was beaten up at school for not fitting in. There were assaults on her father, the town police officer, and it was a trying time for her isolated mum who eventually had a breakdown, which she recovered from.

The experience in Murupara shaped her deeply: she understood the bone-deep poverty that rural Māori in her community lived in, recognised the good in people, and was not quick to condemn. She never lost her belief in others’ humanity, even when they were unkind to her. Life in Murupara didn’t sound easy (even after her mother made the children switch schools after the assault) but she still recounted it fondly.

Likewise she recounted tales of familial marital indiscretions and long-held family secrets that were only revealed to her years or even decades later. Instead of focusing on being lied to, she focused on how all humans are fallible, and felt sorry for what they must have been going through themselves to keep a pretense going for an entire lifetime.

Eventually, after years, the family left Murupara, where they had come on a whim of her father’s, who had gone there seeking experience and career advancement within the police ranks. The family then moved to just outside Hamilton, which was like a move to the big city for a girl who’s mum worked as a part-time cleaner and canteen worker, and earned near minimum-wage, having put her own educational and career aspirations on permanent hold to become a mother and wife, and later placing her own happiness on hold for years more while the family lived in relative isolation in Murupara.

From her father she learned patience and steadfastness, in her mother she saw familial dedication and determination tinged with a sadness at lost opportunities that she, as a young woman, didn’t want to emulate if she could avoid it. At the same time, she understood how for many women of her generation, there was little one could do to avoid it.

Life in Morrinsville and an entry into politics – “What if tiny moments of dehumanisation accumulate over time, becoming much more than the sum of their parts, and if so, what if we could do something about that?”

Jacinda eventually studied for a Bachelor of Communications at the University of Hamilton, after initially thinking that her family wouldn’t be able to afford university at all. She had interests in politics, but saw it as impractical, and not a realistic way of supporting herself.

Speaking about the 9/11 terrorist acts that felled New York’s Twin Towers, she’d explained her worldview to an angry American university professor, saying, “You can’t judge a whole group by the actions of a few. You can condemn violent extremism without condemning an entire people.

I don’t understand why no one is asking ‘Why?’.

If we don’t understand how terrorists are made, how will we prevent the next attack? If we don’t ask why, then aren’t we accepting this violence as inevitable?”

As she matured, she gained experience in local politician’s offices, and felt drawn to support LGBT issues, leading to a ‘dissonance between my values and my faith’, which led her to leave the Mormon faith. She worked as a researcher under Helen Clark, during a time when the nation got a tax credit for families, increases to the minimum wage, a national superannuation fund, and a free trade deal with China. She put in place similar measures when she was in power as PM, years later, focusing on issues like child poverty and substandard housing.

In the book she mentions the legislation for the Healthy Homes Standard that was started during her tenure. Interestingly and sadly, the final phases of that legislation have only now just become fully enforced, many years later. Progress, then and now, is slow.

Some things haven’t changed at alll: Another blast from the past was the story of the Kingmaker role of Winston Peters, who kept the country on tenterhooks, making the entire nation, and Jacinda, wait for a press conference to hear which party he would be going into coalition with, and by extension, who would be PM.

As Winston said on the day with his decision to support a Labour coalition government, “Far too many New Zealanders have come to view today’s capitalism not as their friend but as their foe. And they’re not all wrong. And that is why we believe capitalism must regain its human face.”

While his kingmaker role hasn’t changed, it seems his feelings on austerity have shifted.

The Disaster responses – Christchurch – Covid

51 people were killed on 15 March 2019 in the Christchurch mosque shootings. Within 3 days the Cabinet had agreed to limit public access to semi automatic rifles. The law was passed within a month. It was modeled on the Port Arthur shootings in Tasmania in 1996, where Conservative PM John Howard got a very similar law passed after 35 people were murdered. That law also passed within a month, with no further mass shootings in the decades that followed.

Within a year of the Christchurch shootings Covid had taken over the attention of the world, with images of overwhelmed ICUs and later overflowing morgues coming out of Italy, then London, then New York.

Government imposed border restrictions of some kind for a total of 28 months while the world waited for the development and then dissemination of vaccines that would ultimately go on to prevent 90% of Covid deaths.

[Author’s note: Auckland spent a total of 185 days under some form of level 3 or 4 restriction. The total cost to the nation was around $70 billion, and the success in lives saved was virtually unparalleled in the world, with death rates in NZ being 4-6 times lower than Germany, the UK, or the US. Only Singapore had a response as successful as New Zealand’s, at the same cost per capita, and with border restrictions lasting 7 months longer than NZ.]

On Covid’s Aftermath

“We don’t get to see the counterfactual, the outcomes of the decisions that we didn’t make, the lives that might have been lost. One thing I‘m certain of, is that I would want things to have been different. I would want a world where we saved lives AND we brought everyone with us.

When I think about that time I also think about this: we came out of Covid with one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, and fewer days in lockdown than nations like the UK.

And during this time our country’s life expectancy actually increased.

So when someone approaches me to tell me that they thought all of our choices were wrong, maybe expressing themselves less politely than that, perhaps even with fists raised and their face twisted with fury, or an expletive-filled rant, that’s when I remember that all those hard imperfect decisions saved 20,000 lives…and that the person in front of me might just be one of them.”

Message to a young girl

“Here is what I would say to everyone who doesn't fit the old mould: If you have imposter syndrome, or question yourself – channel that. It will help you. You will read more, seek out advice and humble yourself to situations that require humility to be conquered.

If you are anxious, and overthink everything…if you can imagine the worst-case scenario always…channel that too. It will mean you are ready when the most challenging days arrive. And if you are thin-skinned and are sensitive…if criticism cuts you in two, that is not weakness, it’s empathy.

In fact all of the traits that you believe are your flaws will come to be your strengths. The things you thought would cripple you, will in fact make you stronger, make you better. They will give you a different kind of power and make you a leader that this world, with all its turmoil, might just need.”

Epilogue – “Why bother?”

“Why should my daughter or anyone, feel hopeful in a world where there is climate change denial, where there is so much hate, vilification and extremism in the virtual world where we now spend so much of our lives, and when the politicians we elect to solve these problems increasingly propagate them. Or the solutions that are put in place are simply rolled back in new electoral cycles. Could I, after all that I had seen, give one solid reason why we shouldn’t all just give up?

[In my role as PM,] I saw moments of true darkness [...] but those were also the moments that show people at their most humane. Those are the moments that I saw it was possible for people to galvanise behind our collective humanity.”

Hopefully we can do that once more, to face this : galvanise behind our collective humanity.