Covid inquiry: Time to cut Dame Jacinda Ardern a break – Fran O'Sullivan
Fact: Ardern has agreed to give evidence to phase two of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Government's response to Covid-19.
If she cares deeply for her reputation – and I am sure she does, given the global acclaim that has come her way after her memoir A Different Kind of Power – she will agree to do that in public during the commission's hearings.
Ardern doesn't have to come back to New Zealand for that. If the commission calls her – and it should – it can take evidence via Zoom as is now commonplace in transnational court hearings.
Subjecting the former Prime Minister to running a gauntlet of personal and potentially physical abuse by insisting she gives evidence in New Zealand will just set off another wave of paranoid behaviour.
It won't help in getting to the facts and motivations which coloured prime ministerial decision-making in the Covid years in the dispassionate manner that is needed.
The economic trade-offs where the money printers went overtime and dollars were flung at business – critics lament that now. The country has a debt bubble to digest.
But it is notable that some critics come from companies that took the Government's financial handouts but did not remit them back when their fortunes improved. The shareholders were winners. The taxpayers were 'tail-end Charlie' here. Go figure.
Commission chair Grant Illingworth, KC, has said the inquiry will take public evidence from those affected by 'social division and isolation, health and education, and business activity'.
This is important so New Zealand can learn the hard lessons from the Covid-19 pandemic and craft strategies for when the next pandemic arrives, as it certainly will.
It will also provide a bloodletting for those who were most cruelly affected by the former Labour Government's Covid policies. Hearing from the 'victims' is long overdue. And there are personal stories aplenty, as most can attest.
The commission also wants to hear from key decision-makers (and experts) about major decisions and their consequences so lessons can be learned.
But the inquiry would be incomplete without hearing from Ardern, former Finance Minister Grant Robertson, former health supremo Sir Ashley Bloomfield and others within the tight Beehive circle that ran the country during the Covid years.
It is undeniable that Ardern's performances at the 1pm 'podium of truth', where she and Bloomfield updated daily on the latest Covid situation, were required viewing. Her most impressive attribute was her mastery of that press conference.
Her coining of the 'team of five million' (drawn from the late Sir Peter Blake's slogans to build public support for his America's Cup campaigns) to unite New Zealanders in 'fighting the virus' was also masterful. And it worked – at least in the initial phases of the pandemic response.
People stayed home. The hospitals were not overrun. Lives were saved – although it is noticeable that the current world Covid death rate statistics show that many other countries did better than New Zealand in the long run.
But Ardern's Covid honeymoon was quick to sour.
Just one year after she pulled off a historic victory by catapulting Labour to an outright win in the October 2020 election, Ardern's reign hit stumbling blocks.
Her Government's tardiness in getting sufficient New Zealanders vaccinated before the mid-August 2021 Delta outbreak helped pave the way for a punishing Auckland lockdown.
This was Ardern's toughest year as Prime Minister.
Cap that with the politically naive decision not to speak with protesters on Parliament's front lawn – instead of at least speaking with their leaders as commonsense former PM Jim Bolger advocated – and it is not surprising that the tide went out on her prime ministership.
It was obvious to anyone coming down from Auckland to Wellington during this period that our political leaders were in a bubble of their own.
I went to political journalist Tova O'Brien's farewell from the press gallery on the day we were finally allowed to travel domestically again.
It was a different world. No paranoia about drunk citizens hassling or mugging people and acting thuggishly, which had become all too commonplace in the Auckland CBD, where I had spent the past four months.
It was all bonhomie and drinks aplenty. The atmosphere also brought into sharp focus the lack of reality that coloured those 1pm press conferences to those watching from Auckland. Bizarre traffic light systems, for instance.
The Prime Minister's empathetic response to the March 2019 Christchurch massacre, where 51 Muslims were murdered at the Al Noor and Linwood mosques, had earlier propelled her to international superstardom.
The world's tallest building – Dubai's Burj Khalifa – had been lit up with a giant image of Ardern embracing a woman at a Kilbirnie mosque.
Her leadership was tested not just by the terrorist attack, but by the Whakaari/White Island disaster and the pandemic.
It's ironic that few thank her now for throwing so much money at the crisis.
That's the pain of having to pay all that debt back.
But there is room to examine all of this dispassionately – not try to (figuratively) hang her again as the more deranged attempted when they wheeled out their noose on Parliament's grounds.
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