Jacinda Ardern's book A Different Kind of Power casts her as the empathiser-in-chief

The Australian

3 days ago

When a smiling Arden talks about empathy, it's easy for people outside New Zealand to lionise her out of ignorance.
You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.
You can now listen to The Australian's articles.
It could be worse. At least Jacinda Ardern is not a smiling assassin seeking vengeance for her own failures – like some of our former prime ministers.
Also, I am not going to lie. The former New Zealand prime minister's new memoir, A Different Kind of Power, is a good read. It is interesting to learn how different people make it to the top.
The new junior adviser to prime minister Helen Clark, in the lead-up to an election, was asked to join a meeting to explain a recent hearing about inexplicably high failure rates in education. After the meeting ends, Clark asks Ardern: 'How do you say that name again?'
'JA-CIN-DA AR-DERN,' says the young staffer in slow motion.
'No,' the dour Clark says matter-of-factly. The prime minister wanted to know how to pronounce the name of the bureaucrat who fronted the hearing into education results.
Ardern hasn't changed much since those early days in politics. While undoubtedly admirable in many ways, she still seems to have one thing firmly on her mind: herself. Like teenagers who claim they are 'empaths', only to talk endlessly about their own character traits, if you have to tell the world you are full of empathy, it's possible you're full of ego.
There is nothing wrong with that. Ellen DeGeneres built a squillion-dollar TV career on telling people to be kind – even if behind the scenes she didn't meet her own standard.
Still, far better than talking about your endless stores of empathy, why not do something for those you feel so deeply towards?
Former prime minister Helen Clark is greeted by Jacinda Ardern in 2017
It's true Ardern made headlines around the world for donning a scarf and declaring 'they are us' after the terrible Christchurch massacre. More important than that image of her hugging one of the survivors of that terrorist attack was her quick action to ban high-powered semiautomatics and assault rifles in New Zealand.
Alas, that image – not the action afterwards – has come to define Ardern.
Though there is a post-political career as roaming Empathiser-in-Chief, it is hard to work out what she's doing with all that empathy – except talking about herself as Empathiser-in-Chief.
After the halo falls off at home, what's a woman in her 40s to do except explore greener pastures abroad, seducing people not across the finer details of one's legacy.
Ardern is a smart, polished, engaging and articulate woman who knows there is a big market for talking about feelings. It's far too dry and logical an enterprise to think about what to do with all those feelings.
Right on cue, Katharine Viner at The Guardian in London and the ABC's Sarah Ferguson, both seasoned journalists, helped attach a new halo to Dame Jacinda.
Ferguson's interview last week on the ABC's 7.30 program, replete with softball questions and fangirl goo-goo smiles, sounded like a taxpayer-funded book launch for Ardern.
One might have expected at least a little prodding of a former politician who claims to have the secret to better political leadership, while trying to flog a book about that political panacea.
Instead, one could hear book sales ticking over as Ardern was given some 24 minutes to talk about taking pregnancy tests as she negotiated with Winston Peters to become New Zealand prime minister in 2017, and fearing that morning sickness would seize her in the middle of her first Queen's speech.
When Ardern talked about her apparent confidence gap, Ferguson responded with: 'I think this is a very profound thing.' Ferguson directed a 'thanks, sister' at Ardern's female critics.
Ardern had free rein to explain her big issue: 'I want to bring into question these old assumptions about the character traits we want in politics. I do think people are seeking more kindness, more empathy.'
Having found a length, Ardern finished by saying she wrote the book 'in the hope that a few more people who might identify as cryers, huggers and worriers might take up the mantle of leadership, because I'd say that we need them'.
Jacinda Ardern
Hook. Line. Sinker. Ferguson positively beamed, concluding: 'Here's to cryers, huggers and worriers the world over.'
Here's to taxpayers asking if this is the best use of the ABC's prime-time news and current affairs slot.
It's one thing to laud Ardern's political career and position as a role model for women who seek to combine family and career. She certainly did that – for a time.
But Ferguson showed zero curiosity about Ardern's actual contribution to New Zealand as a self-styled empath. A not uncommon judgment is that Ardern is much more highly praised outside her own country than inside it. By the end of her time in office, Ardern was wildly unpopular at home.
As Oliver Hartwich, executive director of The New Zealand Initiative, wrote in this newspaper in May, Ardern was so 'drunk on Labour's parliamentary majority after the 2020 landslide, she embarked on an ambitious agenda of structural reforms that nobody had actually voted for'.
Massive and ineffective overhauls of the control of water, planning and other resources, coupled with divisive Maori co-governance arrangements, led the way.
Climate change initiatives and centralising health bureaucracy while hospital waiting lists grew continued the rot. And, of course, draconian Covid lockdowns whose only match in the Western world was found in equally left-wing Victoria, compounded Ardern's unpopularity.
'What do these initiatives share?' wrote Hartwich. 'They were ideologically motivated, bureaucratically complex, and failed to address everyday concerns of voters. While Labour restructured everything that moved, New Zealanders worried about immediate concerns. Inflation surged to 7.3 per cent. Mortgage rates doubled. Grocery prices soared.'
The parallels between Ardern and Gough Whitlam are uncanny. Both sainted by the ideological left and, by any objective measure, failures.
Even more than Whitlam, Ardern escapes rational hard-nosed critique. Her unparalleled media and communication skills partly explain this. The haughty Whitlam had witty repartee down pat, but when a smiling Arden talks about empathy, it's easy for people outside New Zealand to lionise her out of ignorance.
Ellen DeGeneres
Official photos from Dame Jacinda Ardern and Clarke Gayford's wedding. Picture: Felicity Jean Photography.
And Ardern can rely on the Fergusons and Viners of this world to keep people in the dark.
There are, however, big questions at this time of massive geopolitical tension as to whether Ardern is right that what we need is more kindness and empathy in our leaders.
Tapping into Vladimir Putin's mummy issues might not help Ukrainians, for example. Not to mention the obvious empathy gap among Ardern's fans towards Jews killed, maimed and taken prisoner in the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas.
There is another question, mostly for women, to contemplate. Is promoting this feminine stereotype in the interests of women, let alone the world?
Ardern's real skill is tapping into a zeitgeist that prefers posturing over doing, trading on every positive attribute ever ascribed by women to themselves.
Unashamed about it, there is no hint of a confidence gap here. She wants a new paradigm to judge political leaders by. Never mind whether it works.
Call it The Empathy Standard, if you will. Her new book is not John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, or Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France but it is a plea for a new ideology, albeit half-formed and emotional rather than logical.
In a 2023 photo, then Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern is photographed with Vice President Kamala Harris. Picture: X / @VP
The problem with the politics of empathy is you become a sucker for the politics of grievance. The classic example was Ardern's response to Maori claims for separate race-based rights, causing deep divisions in her home country.
But only certain grievances, mind you. Ardern famously refused to speak with protesters during Covid lockdown.
Arden's empathy schtick, when properly distilled down, seems to mean feeling warm and fuzzy towards people you agree with.
Where is the political revolution in that?
Read related topics: Jacinda Ardern