It takes a bizarre kind of chutzpah to translate a question about your failures into an accusation that the interviewer really meant you should have set your sights much lower.
Yet that was how Jacinda Ardern responded on Q&A after Jack Tame listed her government’s many shortcomings. As he put it: “KiwiBuild was a failure… the polytech merger is a disaster… the Mental Health Foundation has been highly critical… KidsCan says child poverty is the worst they’ve ever seen…”
He then asked: “When you compare your policy aspirations with the results your government has achieved, what have you learned?”
Ardern replied: “You know what, I would not ever change the fact that we have always throughout been highly aspirational. We have always focused on how we can make New Zealand better.”
The Prime Minister — looking characteristically pleased with herself — seemed oblivious to the fact Tame was suggesting she had actually made life in New Zealand worse.
Rather than answering the question he had posed, she continued to answer one he hadn’t, expanding on the value of being aspirational:
“In setting out a vision for what that should look like, you will still hear me talk about New Zealand as a place that should be free of child poverty. Absolutely, because anything less in my mind… anything less demonstrates that we don’t believe that things can and need to improve.
At that point, Tame chipped in with his own assessment: “An A for aspiration and an E for execution.”
Undeterred, Ardern went on: “What you’re asking me essentially is to shy away from aspiration… set targets lower… set out ambition that is lesser because then perhaps at the end your scorecard might say you achieved it because you set out to do nothing.”
In fact, Tame was asking her nothing of the sort. He simply wanted to know what the Prime Minister had learned from her litany of failures — which unfortunately have had the cumulative effect of propelling the nation’s wellbeing backwards.
In Ardern’s world, it appears that intentions count for everything. It’s almost as if she has not shrugged off her strict Mormon upbringing and doctrine, in which believers are saved principally by faith and grace, not works.
Intentions are apparently sacred to Ardern; results are nice to have.
For anyone watching her performance who is not imbued with a similar religious sensibility, however, it would be difficult not to prefer the simple, secular assessment made by the foreign editor of The Australian newspaper.
In an appearance on Sky News last month, Greg Sheridan described Ardern as being “as silly as a two-bob watch”.
He reckoned there is no political leader in the world who “talks so much nonsense so consistently” and “gets such lavish, wonderful praise for it”.
He highlighted one comment Ardern had made on her recent overseas tour while discussing China’s push for hegemony in the Pacific: “Don’t cast this struggle as one between authoritarianism and democracy.”
Sheridan remarked, “She might as well say, ‘Don’t describe the sky as blue and the trees as green.’”
An ability to talk smugly and seamlessly without making a skerrick of sense is one of Ardern’s principal skills. She has an astonishing capacity to not answer a question at length — while appearing to answer it in a stream of fluent gobbledegook.
After her Q&A appearance, many viewers would have been left wondering whether the Prime Minister can’t follow an argument or whether she is simply willing to say anything — no matter how stupid and untrue — to avoid answering a question she doesn’t want to.
When Tame asked whether Ardern agreed with Willie Jackson’s assertion that: “Democracy has changed. We’re in a consensus-type democracy now. We are not in a majority [situation] any more,” Ardern replied: “Well, I would argue that [with] consensus and majority aren’t we driving therefore for the same things?”
It should worry everyone if the nation’s Prime Minister really can’t understand the difference between majority rule and everyone eventually agreeing on a matter under discussion. However, it is equally possible that she understood the difference perfectly and was slithering away from what she saw as a trap.
As Tame continued to press Ardern about the nature of democracy, it became obvious she was determined to avoid answering his question of whether Maori are being given greater representation than non-Maori in the Regional Representation Groups that will set the overarching strategy for Three Waters.
Tame: “Most people’s definition of democracy is ‘one person, one vote’. So what I want to know is, under those regional representative groups, [do] you and I as Pakeha people have the same level of representation guaranteed as Maori people?”
Rather than admitting the undeniable fact that Maori will be given greater representation, and that the principle of “one person, one vote” has been abandoned in selecting the groups’ members, Ardern described Tame’s question as “overly simplistic”.
In a clumsy and obvious sidestep, she asserted that power still lies with councils — as if that was a reasonable response to a question about democracy.
“Power sits with ownership,” Ardern said, and ”the ownership of these entities sits with local bodies and government so it is not changing the ownership structures.”
Not only was it a clumsy and obvious jink, it also isn’t true.
As Dr Jason Smith, Mayor of Kaipara, responded on Twitter: “Kaipara District Council will go from 100 per cent ownership and accountability of Three Waters assets to 1 per cent ‘ownership’. Plenty of change.”
Constitutional lawyer Stephen Franks put it this way: “Ardern and her ministers (and the Water Services Entities Bill) say councils own the four corporations through shares. But the bill’s fine print expressly excludes every known legal right or power of share ownership.”
Tame wasn’t fooled by Ardern’s segue from equal representation to ownership but she refused to concede his point. When he again reminded her with a grin that she still hadn’t answered the question about representation, she looked annoyed.
She jiggled impatiently in her seat and scrunched her brow into a frown: “Well, I think it’s again because I don’t know if your question really is getting to the heart of the issue here.”
Of course, it was and she wasn’t.
Although Ardern is quick to pose as a dedicated champion of democracy overseas — including warning 8000 Harvard students in May that “democracy can be fragile” — at home she is far more evasive and equivocal when questioned.
As her passive-aggressive responses to Jack Tame showed, she really doesn’t like that fact being exposed.
Ardern replied: “You know what, I would not ever change the fact that we have always throughout been highly aspirational. We have always focused on how we can make New Zealand better.”
The Prime Minister — looking characteristically pleased with herself — seemed oblivious to the fact Tame was suggesting she had actually made life in New Zealand worse.
Rather than answering the question he had posed, she continued to answer one he hadn’t, expanding on the value of being aspirational:
“In setting out a vision for what that should look like, you will still hear me talk about New Zealand as a place that should be free of child poverty. Absolutely, because anything less in my mind… anything less demonstrates that we don’t believe that things can and need to improve.
At that point, Tame chipped in with his own assessment: “An A for aspiration and an E for execution.”
Undeterred, Ardern went on: “What you’re asking me essentially is to shy away from aspiration… set targets lower… set out ambition that is lesser because then perhaps at the end your scorecard might say you achieved it because you set out to do nothing.”
In fact, Tame was asking her nothing of the sort. He simply wanted to know what the Prime Minister had learned from her litany of failures — which unfortunately have had the cumulative effect of propelling the nation’s wellbeing backwards.
In Ardern’s world, it appears that intentions count for everything. It’s almost as if she has not shrugged off her strict Mormon upbringing and doctrine, in which believers are saved principally by faith and grace, not works.
Intentions are apparently sacred to Ardern; results are nice to have.
For anyone watching her performance who is not imbued with a similar religious sensibility, however, it would be difficult not to prefer the simple, secular assessment made by the foreign editor of The Australian newspaper.
In an appearance on Sky News last month, Greg Sheridan described Ardern as being “as silly as a two-bob watch”.
He reckoned there is no political leader in the world who “talks so much nonsense so consistently” and “gets such lavish, wonderful praise for it”.
He highlighted one comment Ardern had made on her recent overseas tour while discussing China’s push for hegemony in the Pacific: “Don’t cast this struggle as one between authoritarianism and democracy.”
Sheridan remarked, “She might as well say, ‘Don’t describe the sky as blue and the trees as green.’”
An ability to talk smugly and seamlessly without making a skerrick of sense is one of Ardern’s principal skills. She has an astonishing capacity to not answer a question at length — while appearing to answer it in a stream of fluent gobbledegook.
After her Q&A appearance, many viewers would have been left wondering whether the Prime Minister can’t follow an argument or whether she is simply willing to say anything — no matter how stupid and untrue — to avoid answering a question she doesn’t want to.
When Tame asked whether Ardern agreed with Willie Jackson’s assertion that: “Democracy has changed. We’re in a consensus-type democracy now. We are not in a majority [situation] any more,” Ardern replied: “Well, I would argue that [with] consensus and majority aren’t we driving therefore for the same things?”
It should worry everyone if the nation’s Prime Minister really can’t understand the difference between majority rule and everyone eventually agreeing on a matter under discussion. However, it is equally possible that she understood the difference perfectly and was slithering away from what she saw as a trap.
As Tame continued to press Ardern about the nature of democracy, it became obvious she was determined to avoid answering his question of whether Maori are being given greater representation than non-Maori in the Regional Representation Groups that will set the overarching strategy for Three Waters.
Tame: “Most people’s definition of democracy is ‘one person, one vote’. So what I want to know is, under those regional representative groups, [do] you and I as Pakeha people have the same level of representation guaranteed as Maori people?”
Rather than admitting the undeniable fact that Maori will be given greater representation, and that the principle of “one person, one vote” has been abandoned in selecting the groups’ members, Ardern described Tame’s question as “overly simplistic”.
In a clumsy and obvious sidestep, she asserted that power still lies with councils — as if that was a reasonable response to a question about democracy.
“Power sits with ownership,” Ardern said, and ”the ownership of these entities sits with local bodies and government so it is not changing the ownership structures.”
Not only was it a clumsy and obvious jink, it also isn’t true.
As Dr Jason Smith, Mayor of Kaipara, responded on Twitter: “Kaipara District Council will go from 100 per cent ownership and accountability of Three Waters assets to 1 per cent ‘ownership’. Plenty of change.”
Constitutional lawyer Stephen Franks put it this way: “Ardern and her ministers (and the Water Services Entities Bill) say councils own the four corporations through shares. But the bill’s fine print expressly excludes every known legal right or power of share ownership.”
Tame wasn’t fooled by Ardern’s segue from equal representation to ownership but she refused to concede his point. When he again reminded her with a grin that she still hadn’t answered the question about representation, she looked annoyed.
She jiggled impatiently in her seat and scrunched her brow into a frown: “Well, I think it’s again because I don’t know if your question really is getting to the heart of the issue here.”
Of course, it was and she wasn’t.
Although Ardern is quick to pose as a dedicated champion of democracy overseas — including warning 8000 Harvard students in May that “democracy can be fragile” — at home she is far more evasive and equivocal when questioned.
As her passive-aggressive responses to Jack Tame showed, she really doesn’t like that fact being exposed.
Graham Adams is an Auckland-based freelance editor, journalist and columnist. This article was originally published by ThePlatform.kiwi and is published here with kind permission.
10 comments:
Good to see Jack asking some hard questions for a change.
Maybe his PIJF funding just ran out.
Mind you, he lacks the killer instinct of a real political interviewer. You know, the ones that dare to allow the politician to ramble on for 5 minutes precisely NOT answering the question posed to them and digging an ever deeper hole for themselves, only for the interviewer to say, " and now perhaps you could try answering the question I asked you, rather than one you wished you asked yourself".
You are being too kind. The reason Ardern prevaricates is because she doesn't have any idea what the answers to the tough questions are. If our interviewers were really tough on her I believe she would look and sound truly incompetent as the overseas media have discovered.
She can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time but the truly critical thinkers she never fooled from day one.
The PM has ADHD, NPD, WEF, UNIPCC, WHO, UN, is a fan of PRC and is chock full of BS. Jack on the other hand is topped up with PIJF so you cant expect too much.
The great majority of people know that the PM is trying to seriously fool us all. If an election were held today she and the Greens and all the bad performers would go out or off the treasury benches immediately.
What we must do is keep telling our friends and family of the inaction, incompetence, inability and incapacity of this govt. to heal the land and help the people.
The next election is a long, long way off.
This is why Arden will be rolled before the next election. You can’t fight an election and not answer simple question in English. Voters are abandoning Labour in droves because she speaks in forked tongue. Compare her answers and David Seymour’s answers to a similar question. One is clear and concise the other is gobshite.
I have no opinion on whether Ardern is stupid or desperately and disingenuously defending the indefensible (didn’t see her interview) but these features are scarcely unique to her.
I’ve just watched part of Willie Jackson’s response in parliament to the claim that co-governance gives Maoris two votes in violation of the one vote one person democratic principle.
Apparently, one vote one person is not an essential democratic principle because, in no particular order:
National did a deal with Act over Epsom.
The US federal system gives individuals in some states greater voting power for the Senate than in other states.
MMP gives everyone two votes in NZ.
People who own more than one house have more than one vote in local body elections.
Stupidity or dishonesty? These are not mutually exclusive terms. Do I have to choose?
As the Aussies pointed out our PM talks a lot of nonsense & this article is a good example. Unfortunately, if the latest Poll is correct we could be facing another 3 years of this nonsense. Labour has dropped in the Polls but because of MMP she governs with the Maori Party & the Greens. The combination is 59% of the vote & National plus Act can only muster 43%. So, 'COME ON NZ' They must be voted out. Get in behind & get rid of the crazy undemocratic changes that are ruining our country.
Ardern is a socialist who prefers the same kind of dictatorship existing in some/many other socialist states. Continuation of the Party as government is the only real priority and socialists tend to do that by corrupting any democratic process, providing propaganda, avoiding and preferably banning any criticism or acknowledgement of shortcomings, and telling lies. We see all this happening through her leadership. Don't underestimate her, this is the most corrupt and dangerous government in our lifetimes. Her gerrymandering of democratic processes may well see her remain in power indefinitely.
I am so disgusted and ashamed of what Ardern and this Labour Government has done to New Zealand and the people.
It has become very racist and following communist doctrine.
The Labour party has to go and Ardern eliminated.
She has sold the soul of New Zealand.
They must be stopped by whatever means needed.
Who knows, just before the next election Labour wmight realise how unpopular she is and roll her in favour of someone more electable, like Andrew Little.
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