Dame Jacinda Ardern to give Yale graduation ceremony address
Former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern has been announced as Yale University's 2025 Class Day speaker.
In a statement, the US Ivy League University said Dame Jacinda was widely praised for her inclusive and empathetic approach to leadership during her term as New Zealand prime minister from 2017 to 2023.
Ardern championed women's empowerment and led the country in navigating significant challenges, including the 2019 Christchurch terror attack, a volcanic eruption, and a global pandemic, the Yale statement said.
"With a people-first approach grounded in kindness, she helped New Zealand achieve one of the lowest losses of life during the pandemic among developed nations; led an administration in which New Zealand reached a historic 50% representation of women in Parliament and on government-appointed boards; and secured historic international trade agreements. Ardern is also the second woman in history to have given birth while leading a country," the university said.
"Today, Ardern is an active advocate for climate action, serving on the board of The Earthshot Prize and as a distinguished fellow at Conservation International, helping provide solutions to climate change and environmental challenges.
The former prime minister is attending the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, US Correspondent Logan Church reports. (Source: 1News)
It noted she served as Angelopoulos Global Public Leaders Fellow at the Hauser Leader Centre for Public Leadership and as a senior fellow of the Women and Public Policy Program both at Harvard University, and mentioned her work as patron of the Christchurch Call to Eliminate Violent Extremism Online which she created in 2019.
Class Day celebrates Yale's graduating class with a programme of student performances, awards, and long-held traditions. This year's ceremony will be on May 18.
"To have a visiting dignitary on our campus is always an exciting moment, but for our graduates to hear from this particular world leader - someone who embodies empathy and excellence, character and commitment, innovation and inclusion - will be special indeed. I look forward to listening alongside the Class of 2025 as she shares her wisdom and perspective with us," Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis said.
Dame Jacinda said it was deeply humbling to be this year's speaker.
"Not only for the privilege of spending time with a new generation of leaders who will shape the future of their communities and countries - but because they will also change what leadership itself will look like," she said.
Previous Class Day speakers include former US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
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The Spinoff
6 hours ago
- The Spinoff
Jacinda Ardern steps back into the global spotlight
As the former PM's memoir hits shelves, Penguin is hoping her enduring star power can turn A Different Kind of Power into a bestseller, writes Catherine McGregor in today's extract from The Bulletin. A different kind of memoir Jacinda Ardern's long-anticipated autobiography, A Different Kind of Power, is officially released today. Framed as a deeply personal account rather than a political exposé, the memoir chronicles Ardern's rise from small-town Morrinsville to global leadership – and her abrupt, self-authored exit from the world stage. The book's launch has been accompanied by a major international publicity push. Ardern has appeared on CBS's Sunday Morning show, sat down for a reflective interview with The Guardian, and featured on the mega-popular The Rest is Politics podcast. At home, she's been interviewed by Seven Sharp's Hilary Barry and the NZ Herald's Kim Knight, among others. The media blitz is not just about selling copies, but reinforcing Ardern's core message: that kindness, empathy and even self-doubt have a place in leadership. More personal warmth than political revelation Early reviews suggest that A Different Kind of Power offers plenty of feeling but not a lot of drama. Frances Stead Sellers of The Washington Post (paywalled) praises the memoir as a 'clear and compelling case for compassion' that suffers at times from 'its author's earnestness', while The Post's editor Tracy Watkins describes the book as emotionally resonant but light on backroom revelations – especially when it comes to a post-mortem on pandemic decision-making. 'If, like me, you're looking for fresh insights, or signs of regret over some of the decisions her government made, you may be disappointed,' Watkins writes. Newsroom's Steve Braunias, in the most deeply read and incisive review so far, is more generous. Like other reviewers, he comments on Ardern's sometimes cloying focus on empathy throughout the book – but also highlights a 'pitiless' nine-page section on a certain New Zealand politician. 'Ardern introduces him to an American public who had hitherto never heard of the vainglorious sap and parades him as the villain of A Different Kind of Power,' he writes. Today is probably a very bad day to be former Labour leader David Cunliffe. A big bet for Penguin Commercially, A Different Kind of Power is a major gamble. According to a fascinating story, again by Steve Braunias at Newsroom, Penguin is rumoured to have paid Ardern an advance of $1.5 million, meaning the book will need to sell at least 140,000 copies globally to break even. Publishing experts believe it's possible, particularly with Australian rights in play and a high-profile North American book tour scheduled. Braunias speaks to writer and book editor Paula Morris, who points out that the advance may also include Ardern's upcoming children's book, Mum's Busy Work, due out in September, which will make earning it back a far easier task. Comparisons are already being drawn to Spare by Prince Harry, which reportedly required 500,000 print sales to recover its costs. As with Harry, Ardern is a polarising figure, and that may well help drive both publicity and sales. (As an aside, Newsroom is the place to be for Ardern-book completists this week, with not one but three reviews scheduled, from Braunias, Janet Wilson and Tim Murphy.) Not the first Ardern book, and not the last word This isn't the first time Ardern's life has been turned into reading material. Jacinda Ardern: A New Kind of Leader by The Spinoff's own Madeleine Chapman was a bestseller, as was Michelle Duff's Jacinda Ardern: The Story Behind An Extraordinary Leader, which in 2019 inspired the bizarre #TurnArdern campaign. The Covid-era tome Jacinda Ardern: Leading with Empathy earned a withering review from Toby Manhire, who said that 'it was written by two authors trying hard to tell the story of a country without visiting it'. At the time, Ardern said it was 'awkward' to have her life story told via unauthorised biography – perhaps she was thinking about her own authorised version even then. Ardern's book won't be the last word, either. Her story has also been told in Prime Minister, a feature documentary about Ardern's time in office, co-directed by Michelle Walshe and Lindsey Utz. While no NZ release date has been confirmed, it will play in this year's NZ International Film Festival. Outside of the NZIFF programmers, few people here have yet seen the film, but a close reading of the trailer by The Spinoff's Alex Casey reveals mic drop, teary moments, and many obligatory Aotearoa-landscape drone shots.
Newsroom
8 hours ago
- Newsroom
Jacinda, the first review
Announcing the winner of the YA book awards. Much of Jacinda Ardern's new memoir reads like an experiment in Young Adult literature—the heartwarming story of a Mormon who lost her faith but held onto her values, and even now continues her lifelong mission of knocking on doors to spread the message that love and a left-wing vote conquers all. The door is America. A Different Kind of Power is written with the American market in mind—she informs readers that Whanganui is 'a town on the west coast of the North Island'—and aimed at a particular kind of young, liberal, educated American idiot eager to drink the Kool-Aid that Ardern goes around dispensing in her various meaningless roles in the US as an ambassador of kindness. Be vulnerable, she advises throughout A Different Kind of Power. Be sensitive. Above all, be kind. I remember the first time I heard her articulate this sort of thing when she tried it on at a rather dismal Labour Party event in the Grey Lynn RSA in about 2011. Labour were in opposition, lost and afraid; Ardern was a list MP, optimistic and possibly insane. 'I've been thinking about a politics based on love,' she said, and even the party faithful looked at her like she was mad. She was an artist ahead of her time. The world has caught up with her and many will likely regard her book as a panacea in America's dark second age of Trump, and our own gormless time of Luxon. Her messages on how we ought to conduct our lives in good conscience and with empathy are well-meaning, sincere, decent, boring, platitudinous, worthless, floating above the page like ice-cream castles in the air. 'To the criers, worriers and huggers,' she writes in her dedication. The tracks of her tears salt the pages of A Different Kind of Power. She remembers watching a romcom as a teenager, and was torn apart by 'big, ugly, heaving sobs'. She remembers Labour losing the 2014 election, and crying herself to sleep that night, racked with 'big, despairing sobs'. Tears, she learns, are her superpower. 'Sensitivity was my weakness, my tragic flaw,' she writes of her uncertainties in her early political career. But the lesson of A Different Kind of Power is to treasure your sadness. Do not harden up; soften up. Dog does not eat dog; trust that bad dogs will die howling in the gutter, which is the lesson of the book's one extraordinary detour into vengeance when she singles out the only person that she sticks it to in 333 pages, David Cunliffe. Alas poor Cunliffe! He was last seen in New Zealand public life brooding on his Log of Doom, in 2014, when he was photographed sitting on a washed-up log on Herne Bay beach the morning after he led Labour to its worst result since 1922. But now Ardern introduces him to an American public who had hitherto never heard of the vainglorious sap and parades him as the villain of A Different Kind of Power. In a pitiless nine-page section, Cunliffe is seen as a phoney ('It was hard not to be left wondering about his authenticity'), a weakling ('No one should build an office of people who simply agree with you'), not worth wasting her breath on ('That would mean dignifying his statement with a response'), dragging out his exit but finally leaving ('For the first time in a long while, I felt relieved'). They are among the best pages in the book. There are a lot of good pages in the book. It's a classy work of literature—it always helps when a memoirist can actually write, and Ardern tells the story of her personal life and political career with skill, wit, and seriousness, and with some particularly arresting passages told in second person: 'When you run for parliament, you wait to find out whether people will choose you, or first, whether your party will. But sometimes, deep down, you already know.' It's a radical departure from the junk of recent New Zealand political memoirs by such as Judith Collins and Steven Joyce, with their lousy prose, unexamined lives, and self-serving comms. Ardern rolls out self-serving comms, too, but she has a gift for bringing places alive, particularly the Murapara and Morrinsville of her childhood, and it's an intensely personal book. We learn of her mother's nervous breakdowns. We learn of her fertility treatments. We learn of her challenges as a parent. We learn of her falling in love and staying in love. Even more so than writing for an American audience, Ardern writes for women. You come to her book wanting to know about her life, especially her eventful six years (Covid, March 15) as Prime Minister. There never was a Prime Minister like her before and there never will be again; she was a disruptor, interrupting the same old political bullshit and since her departure the same old political bullshit has settled back into place. Perhaps she really only stood for a new kind of bullshit and heaven knows she had a genius for spin but the fact of the matter is that she ennobled the human spirit for a generation of voters. Ardern's book revisits the best and worst of her years as head of state. Her account of the mosque shooting is harrowing. A poor memoirist would present a familiar version. Ardern makes it new. There are small, powerful details, like sitting in a plastic chair in the Defence Force airport hangar in Christchurch after visiting the crisis centre. Labour MP Michael Wood gives her a polystyrene cup of tea. 'I'd been surrounded by so much grief. Now, on a plastic chair in the middle of an airport hangar, my own grief came flooding out.' And she reveals that she saw the shooter's 17-minute live stream of the attack. She opened Instagram and stumbled upon it. 'The video's presence in my feed had been so shocking, so viscerally horrible, I'd thrown my phone down onto the floor.' She keeps to her promise of not naming the shooter. She prefers to write of victims and survivors, heroes and sympathisers. Of course these are the saddest pages in the book. The happiest pages are about Neve, and the 'village' of family around her. The book opens with Ardern taking a pregnancy test while Winston Peters kept everyone guessing if he would form a government with either Labour or National in 2017: 'I was days away from learning if I would run the country, and now as I sat in a bathroom in Tawa, New Zealand, I was seconds away from learning if I would do it while having a baby.' Note the editorial geomarker of 'Tawa, New Zealand' for American readers. The book closes with walking Neve home from daycare and watching her daughter balance on the edge of 'the kerb'—the pavement nomenclature signalling she has resigned as Prime Minister, left New Zealand and moved to Boston. Neve informs her mum, 'But mum, we should never give up.' Ardern turns up the volume (swelling violins, a celestial harp) on these last pages of her YA epic, and writes, 'I could have told her I started a fellowship in empathetic leadership so I could keep working with other people who were in politics, but wanted to do it differently.' Instead, she smiles at her daughter, and chirps, 'You're right, Neve. We should never give up.' Readers will try not to throw up. And then there are the chapters on Covid. Again, she pulls readers close, shows us her own bubble, the silent 10 floors of the Beehive in lockdown Level 4, the sense of fear: 'I felt as if I were taking New Zealand into battle. Maybe I was.' She was. It ends with the Battle of Parliament Lawn. Ardern watches the Occupation from her window and realises something has changed, changed utterly. It's crystallised in a brief encounter in the ladies bathroom at Auckland airport. 'I was standing at the basin, washing my hands, when a woman walked in. She was maybe 50 or so, wearing a bright blue stretch top and large and plentiful jewellery.' And then: 'She moved purposely towards me.' And then: 'She stood next to me at the sink and leaned in closely, so close I could feel her heat against my cheek. I learned away slightly, my hands still under the tap. 'I just wanted to say thank you,' she said. There was a beat before she added, 'Thanks for ruining the country.' Then she turned on heels and disappeared into a bathroom stall.' Showdown at the Koru Club lavatories! Shaken, possibly to this day, Ardern reflects, 'What was happening? Whatever it was, it wasn't contained to New Zealand. Something had been loosened worldwide.' A terrible stupidity had been born. The book ends nine pages later. Ardern steps down as PM, heads for Boston's kerbs. Who was that old bag slash rebel saviour who so unsettled her at sinkside? It would be good to know. She helped change the course of history. Come forward, rattling your 'large and plentiful jewellery', and make yourself known! Equally, who is the unnamed National MP who Ardern describes as attacking her in parliament? 'She looked gleeful. She was an incredibly smart woman—self-assured and well respected by all sides. She wore tailored suits and sounded as if she were private school educated. But here she was, hair bobbing back and forth with a flushed face, pointing her finger in my direction…' Ardern is not big on names. She can't even be bothered naming Judith Collins when Ardern writes of slaughtering her at the polls in 2020. Only three journalists are mentioned by name: Barry Soper, disparagingly as you might expect, and Jesse Mulligan and John Campbell, glowingly as you would entirely predict. I make a cameo entrance, sadly unnamed, giving her a sound thrashing at ping-pong. She writes of her 2017 election campaign, 'I shook thousands of hands, gave even more hugs…I gave interviews, often many a day. I answered questions while I was still in my bathrobe, and in the back of cars, and on the emptied stages of community halls, and once while playing ping-pong as a camera clicked nearby. My opponent in that match, a journalist for the New Zealand Herald, also decided to test me about my visit to a Pink Batts insulation factory a month earlier. 'What is Pink Batts made from?' he asked. 'Fibre and recycled glass,' I responded. 'What kind of glass?' 'Offcuts from window glass.' 'And what temperature is the molten glass when it's heated?' I paused. 'Twelve hundred degrees.' He corrected me then: the answer was thirteen hundred. A campaign was a constant test…' I conducted a series of interviews while playing ping-pong with political leaders. Phil Goff was the best player, crushing me into the dust. David Seymour was the worst, flapping his arms like a goose. I enjoyed all of the games but the most enjoyable opponent was Ardern. I always liked her company; she held her whiskey like a good 'un, laughed at herself, was very funny. She kind of makes the same self-effacing joke twice in A Different Kind of Power but both times I laughed out loud. She describes her very first candidate meeting, in Matamata, when her mum and grandma were in the audience. 'My grandmother was not a Labour supporter, not at all. But as I answered the question about climate change, at least she wasn't booing me, like the other attendees. I kept my eyes on her for one more beat. At least I don't think my grandmother was booing me.' Later, she writes about her romantic life, when she lived in London: 'There had a been steady stream of bad dates, like the lovely journalist who decided to move to Africa–or at least I think he moved to Africa…' She is similarly disarming about all her relationships. 'For years my love life, if you could call it that, had been beset by both humiliation and constant failure. At university, I mostly dated Mormons. In London, I'd had two boyfriends who split up with me because of my career….Since entering parliament, the longest relationship I'd had in was three months.' And then she met Clarke Gayford. They were first introduced at the Metro restaurant of the year awards (she went 'with my friend Colin', curiously shaving off the surname of model Colin Mathura-Jeffree). They later have a coffee in Three Lamps (for American readers, a street corner in the Auckland suburb of Ponsonby). Then they go out to sea on his boat….It's very sweet, very romantic, and she writes straight from the heart, although sometimes with strange metaphors: falling in love, she writes, 'was a bit like running for parliament the first time'. There is someone else who she gives her heart to: Grant Robertson. It's a book of friendship. It's an entertaining story. Weird little Mormon kid becomes world figure. Such was her manifest destiny ('Sometimes, deep down, you already know'); as the youngest daughter of the town cop, she got around on a green Raleigh bike, and was moved to tears when she heard the evangelical call to arms of Cat Stevens' song 'Peace Train'. She was seldom naughty; the worst thing she can remember of her misbehaviour is the confession, 'I called my sister a cow a few too many times.' As an adult, the only job she had before becoming an MP was in politics. She volunteered for Labour's New Plymouth candidate Harry Duynhoven in the 1999 election, and writes, 'I paid attention to everything, every detail of the campaign.' I can well believe it. Ardern never does things by halves, or even by wholes; a theme of A Different Kind of Power is that she goes the extra distance, rabbits on, bangs the empathy drum through the streets of her book, all hear-ye hear-ye, a town crier literally crying her head off at the sorrows of the world but determined to face its evils with a sopping handkerchief and a set of wet slogans. It's a very Jacinda Ardern book, as in true to her idea of herself. It works. This is going to sell by the shipload and it may even help to make the world a better place. Everyone jump up on the peace train. A Different Kind of Power: A Memoir by Jacinda Ardern (Penguin, $59.99) is available in every bookstore across the land. ReadingRoom is devoting all week to coverage of the book. Tomorrow: a review by Janet Wilson.
1News
a day ago
- 1News
Jacinda Ardern on her cancer scare and a chilling public bathroom encounter
The world's media is lining up to interview Dame Jacinda Ardern about her memoir, A Different Kind of Power – CBS, BBC, even Oprah. But as the former prime minister sits down to talk to Seven Sharp, she insists the impression she makes on Kiwis matters most. 'I'm sweating just as much as I did with Oprah,' she tells Hilary Barry in a conversation that traverses fertility, public hostility and the cancer scare that sparked her decision to resign. "The question for me was, could I keep going and do the job well?" – Watch this story on TVNZ+ In the middle of 2022 Dame Jacinda Ardern was standing by the stalls in an airport toilet when a member of the public approached her and delivered what initially sounded like a compliment. 'I just want to say thank you,' she said to the then Prime Minister of New Zealand. And then came the punchline: 'Thank you for ruining the country.' ADVERTISEMENT Hilary Barry quotes the passage to Dame Jacinda from her new memoir. 'People who thought ill of politicians had always been out there, I'd known that, but it felt as if something had changed recently, as if people's restraint had slackened.' Dame Jacinda picks up the thread. 'It's certainly not the case that I felt like I was in any personal danger but... there you are on your own by a toilet stall and someone comes in and has a go.' She didn't mind challenge or debate, she says. 'Those are the things you expect, but there was an extra layer that I just noticed in the latter part of my time in office, and I think other politicians, not just in New Zealand but around the world, globally, would say that they've noticed this as well... The former Prime Minister was asked by Seven Sharp's Hilary Barry whether she could return to New Zealand without being given a hard time. (Source: Seven Sharp) 'Was it the stress and the anxiety and the difficulty of Covid? Maybe... All I can say is, in the 15 years I was in office, I did notice a shift.' Covid 19. Vaccines. Mandates. The angry 23-day occupation of Parliament. Looking back, 2022 can seem surreal to any of us. But as Dame Jacinda tells Barry, Covid was far from the only challenge in an intense five years in office that included the Mycoplasma Bovis, the eruption of Whakaari/White Island with its devastating consequences, and the most horrific act of terrorism the country has ever experienced, the Christchurch Mosque massacre. Flowers and tributes are laid at the Botanic Gardens on March 18, 2019. (Source: Fair Go) ADVERTISEMENT 'It was a really hard five years for New Zealand and for those who had the privilege of leading New Zealand at that time,' she says. 'I've said many times, I could have kept going. But the question for me was, could I keep going and do the job well?' When a doctor discovered a lump in her breast toward the end of 2022, a thought that had probably been brewing for some time suddenly loomed large. 'Maybe this will be what allows me to leave,' Dame Jacinda remembers thinking. Although she adds: 'I want to be careful about not wanting to overplay it. Because women have these kinds of scares all of the time.' It wasn't cancer. That anxiety passed, but the other big question remained: 'What kind of state was I in if I was seeing cancer, not just as a devastating possibility, but as a ticket out of office?' Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announces her resignation (Source: Getty) IVF and secret Sunday scans When the prospect of being our next prime minister first arose in 2017, Dame Jacinda was 37 and, unbeknown to most, undergoing fertility treatment with her then-partner-now-husband Clarke Gayford. ADVERTISEMENT Jacinda Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford on election night, September 2017. Although the result was unclear on the night, Ardern went on to form a coalition government with the New Zealand First Party and Green Party with herself as prime minister. (Source: Getty) By the time Winston Peters had made his fateful choice of coalition partner, making her the world's youngest female head of state, Dame Jacinda had known for six days that she was pregnant. Two dizzying, life-changing moments happening within the space of a week – one nationwide news, the other still a fragile secret. It was 'fairly overwhelming,' she tells Barry. 'I tried my best to describe it on the page.' Dame Jacinda's first pregnancy scan took place on a Sunday night, her obstetrician booking her in under a fake name. 'It was like a covert operation, the whole thing. There were very few people who knew,' she says. 'It was a strange time. You want to be really joyous, but I also knew that I had to demonstrate that my key focus was doing my job. The fewer people who knew the better.' When the reality of balancing new motherhood with a massive role first hit home, Dame Jacinda did as anyone would do and turned to an older woman for advice. Except, in her case, it was Queen Elizabeth II. 'She just very matter of factly said to me... 'Well, you just get on with it'. And to a certain extent that's absolutely true,' she says. 'The only thing to do was just put one foot in front of the other and just get on with it.' This probably wasn't the moment the Queen told Dame Jacinda to "get on with it". (Source: Getty) ADVERTISEMENT The weight of the world Covid 19 came along in the final year of Dame Jacinda's first term in office and her high-profile handling of the situation was widely credited for her landslide victory in October 2020. Jacinda Ardern is interviewed after claiming victory during the Labor Party Election Night Function at Auckland Town Hall on October 17, 2020. (Source: Getty) But two years later the 'shift' she describes had occurred. The pandemic had now divided New Zealand and even Dame Jacinda's ardent supporters could see a change in the once charismatic leader. 'You told your chief of staff before you resigned that you felt like you'd become a political lightning rod, a flashpoint,' says Barry. 'Do you still feel that way as far as New Zealand is concerned?' As prime minister, Jacinda Ardern became the focus of much of the anti-vaccination movement of 2022. (Source: Getty) Dame Jacinda doesn't quite answer the question, returning instead to the 'flashpoint' era following the height of the pandemic when she felt she'd become 'a reminder of a really difficult period for everyone'. ADVERTISEMENT 'I did believe, rightly or wrongly, that perhaps if I removed myself, that might bring down the temperature,' she says. 'And then that would be good for politics, it would be good for my party and perhaps it would be good for the election as well.' Dame Jacinda and Clarke Gayford, directly after her resignation. (Source: TVNZ) And maybe good for Dame Jacinda too. She resigned at the beginning of 2023 and is now based at Harvard University in Massachusetts, where she occupies a range of educational and international roles. 'You look like someone, and I hope you don't mind me saying this, who no longer has the weight of the country on their shoulders,' Barry tells her. 'Does it feel that way?' Dame Jacinda agrees it does. That feeling of a heavy load off was immediate, she says, happening the minute she walked out of Government House. 'That's not to say it hasn't taken a bit of time to decompress.' She's still not good at relaxing. 'I don't really sit still but maybe I'm coming to terms with the fact that might just be my personality... Worrying about the world, thinking of what I can do to be useful... But that's very different from carrying the day-to-day responsibility.' And worrying is something Dame Jacinda has always done. Her memoir tells of her mother taking her to the doctor as a thin-skinned child who experienced anxiety-related tummy aches. She once, to her embarrassment, cried in the classroom when the teacher played the children Peace Train by Cat Stevens. Decades later her tears would roll again when Stevens (now Yusaf Islam) sang that song in Hagley Park after the Christchurch Mosque Massacre. ADVERTISEMENT It was definitely not the only time she cried as prime minister. But that's the key message of A Different Kind of Power – leadership no longer needs to be associated with poker-faced stoicism. Jacinda Ardern hugs a mosque attendee in Wellington on March 17, 2019, two days after the Christchurch tragedy. (Source: Getty) 'A goal of the book is to try and encourage people who may have those character traits to stop necessarily seeing them as weaknesses,' Dame Jacinda tells Barry. 'If you over prepare, it's going to make you a better decision maker; if you bring in a bit of humility, it's going to mean you bring in the best advice.' The book is dedicated to 'the cryers, the huggers and the worriers'. Hilary Barry, happy to identify to at least two of the three, says after the interview that she reached for the tissues a few times while reading the memoir. It was a particular story from Dame Jacinda's childhood that got her. She was also fascinated by Ardern's apparent issues with a certain former Labour leader. And, Barry says, she laughed too, particularly at Ardern's account of practising at home for her job in a fish'n'chip shop by wrapping cabbages in newspapers. ADVERTISEMENT As the book makes clear: nothing wrong with a bit of anxious prep. "The question for me was, could I keep going and do the job well?" – Watch this story on TVNZ+ or catch it on Seven Sharp tomorrow night.
