Category Archives: Jacinda Ardern

The former National MP said the crowds aren't violent and he would feel safe walking his grandmother through the group.

"I've been telling everyone this is not going to be solved by violence and I can tell you they are not violent, they are being passive as. I mean there are barriers there that they could step over and challenge the police and no one is stepping over the barriers. They are standing behind them and singing and dancing."

King said the protesters were "average Kiwis" who were unhappy about the mandates.

"There are some average Kiwis that watched what happened the other day with the arrests and they jumped in their vehicles and jumped in their planes and came here.

"I'm telling you there's some ex-police, some ex-defence force personnel that have lost their jobs because of the mandates. There are people that have never been in trouble with the police but didn't like what they saw so if the police come in there being heavy-handed and arresting people it's going to be chaotic."

When asked whether chaotic meant violent, King said no.

But despite his assurances, the protesters were peaceful, Newshub reporter Jenna Lynch said some were "yelling at the cops already" this morning.

Lynch said the protesters have been "terrorising Wellingtonians" for a week.

"I think a lot of [Parliament] staff have been expressing concern that it feels like this is going nowhere. No one knows when it's going to end and it feels like there hasn't been any movement for a week now.

"Some of these protesters have been here, basically terrorising Wellingtonians, abusing school kids, making a mess of parliament's lawn, clogging up traffic and just making a nuisance of themselves for a week now."

It comes after tensions reached a boiling point last week with police arresting more than 100 protesters. Two officers were also assaulted and a 17-year-old girl was egged by aggressive members of the group.

Speaking on AM on Monday Ardern said they aren't trying to peacefully protest.

"I'm going to push back on the sense here that this is a group that we're seeing wanting to engage in political dialogue. We've seen some horrific behaviour down there and I'm not going to legitimise it," she said.

She said it's too soon to give a date for when vaccine mandates might end.

"As our cases are increasing, it's very difficult for us to put that date on it. But we do anticipate being able to move away from that in the future. When we can, we will. But when we're on the up side of a curve in an Omicron outbreak, now's not the time to do that."

The vaccine is safe and effective against the COVID-19 virus. Certain industries were mandated due to their exposure to vulnerable members of the public who are more likely to die or be hospitalised with the virus. The industries include health and disability workers, border workers, police and corrections and educators.

A study in 2021 by The World Health Organization suggested the COVID-19 vaccine had saved nearly half a million lives in less than a year.

It comes after New Zealand recorded a record 810 new cases on Sunday.

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Former National MP Matt King says protesters will leave if Jacinda Ardern gives date for when COVID-19 vaccine mandates will end - Newshub

But the sound hasn't deterred the protesters, who remain there on Monday. Many were videoed on Sunday dancing and singing along to Mallard's music.

National's COVID-19 Response spokesperson Chris Bishop called the Speaker's behaviour "unedifying, embarrassing and ineffective".

ACT's Seymour said he doesn't agree with how the protest has been carried out, but called Mallard's actions "pathetic" and said New Zealand deserves a more mature Speaker.

"Not only are Mallard's antics immature, not only are they ineffective, they have made a serious situation much worse. His petty behaviour has only encouraged the protesters further. Mallard needs to tell us whether he sought police advice before taking these actions."

Seymour questioned why the Prime Minister was "MIA" over the weekend, creating "a vacuum for Trevor".

The Prime Minister on Monday said politicians shouldn't get involved in how protesters are handled.

"I am not going to get into the way of managing a protest in its totality. Those, ultimately, very clear distinctions. I am going to be careful to make sure that I am not making judgements around the way we deal with protest at Parliament. It is a dangerous place to be when politicians dictating the way that police might choose to deal with them."

She didn't want to "legitimise" those protesting at Parliament.

"If this were a protest that was solely around the policies that are being used to manage a pandemic, then why is it that every journalist who stands out on that forecourt is being hurled abuse about telling the truth. There are signs calling for the execution of politicians.

"There is more than just an anti-vax rhetoric amongst some that are strong. I wouldn't want to, for a moment, legitimise some of what I have seen down there, because some of it is pure misinformation around the role of vaccines and indeed some people seem to believe we are mandating the vaccine of children, when clearly that is not true."

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Jacinda Ardern won't voice opinion on Speaker's protest tactics as Opposition accuses Trevor Mallard of 'embarrassing' behaviour - Newshub

Less than three months after being sworn in as New Zealands youngest female prime minister, Jacinda Ardern announced she was pregnant with her first child. I am not the first woman to work and have a baby, she said.

Six weeks after giving birth, she was back at work. Juggling motherhood while protecting Kiwis from Covid ensured Ardern, then 37, was lavished with praise, hailed as a feminist icon.

Four years on, however, Jacindamania appears to be fading fast and the woman voted the worlds greatest leader by Fortune magazine in 2021 no longer looks quite so assured: polls show her Labour Partys lead over the opposition has narrowed.

Jacinda Ardern, pictured with partner Clarke Gayford won plaudits for returning to work as prime minister six weeks after giving birth

DEREK HENDERSON/OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND VIA GETTY IMAGES

She has faced a backlash over the treatment of a pregnant New Zealander. Charlotte Bellis, a

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'Hermit kingdom' of New Zealand falls out of love with Jacinda Ardern - The Times

New Zealands Mori Party has called for the Queen to be dropped as the countrys head of state, on the day she marked 70 years since her ascension to the throne.

Mori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer called for a divorce from the British Monarchy on Sunday in a statement made as part of New Zealands Waitangi Day commemorations.

The day marks the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, between Mori chiefs and the British Crown on 6 February 1840.

Ms Ngarewa-Packer said New Zealand should undergo constitutional transformation that restores sovereignty to the tangata whenua, or First Nations.

The only way this nation can work is when Mori assert their rights to self-management, self-determination, and self-governance over all our domains, she said.

The party meanwhile criticised prime minister Jacinda Ardern for her statement in praise of Queen Elizabeth II.

Since the Queen took the throne as a young woman of 25, she has dedicated her life to service. We thank her for her dedication and inspiration, said Ms Ardern.

As Queen of New Zealand, she has always shown a deep personal interest in the life and wellbeing of our nation. On behalf of all New Zealanders I would like to wish her well for this historic year.

The Mori Party said it was an incredibly insensitive move".

A 21-gun salute will be fired in Wellington on Monday to celebrate the anniversary of the Queens accession.

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New Zealand's Maori Party calls for Queen to be removed as head of state - Telegraph.co.uk

When I was a student, there was a craze among a small group of my friends for a bestselling self-help book called Women Who Love Too Much by an American therapist whose name was Robin Norwood. We were all feminists, though at this point (it was the late 80s) the f-word was painfully unfashionable, and on our shelves was lots of seriously good if then already slightly retro theoretical stuff: Kate Millett, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar.

Also, of course, Our Bodies, Ourselves by the Boston Womens Health Book Collective, in its millionth (or so) edition. But somewhat to our embarrassment, it was Norwoods book whose spine was the most cracked. What can I say? At 19, and away from home for the first time, all we really wanted to know was how to stop wasting so much of our time and energy on horrible men.

The grandiloquently titled Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback sounds more Kate Millett than Robin Norwood; it promises something serious-minded and galvanising, even if the word fascism does, in context, whiff just a little of Rick in The Young Ones. But as I read Laurie Pennys searing critique of male dominance, it was Norwood of whom I thought. If the tone of this book is almost comically relentless if Penny, whose pronouns are they/them, says something once, they say it 54 times its also oddly reminiscent of a superannuated self-help manual, its assumptions seemingly based mostly on the experiences of its author and their friends, a focus group to whom every possible Bad Thing has happened at least once (so handy).

Men? Oh, theyre in terrible distress; theyre forever emailing Penny to tell them just how toxic masculinity is. Women? Well, theyre in terrible distress too, only theyre fighting back. To sum up: More women are asking if they might do something bigger with their lives than wear themselves out saving the world one man at a time.

For the reader, especially the reader who has never read a book or a newspaper, never watched any television or seen a film, Penny has all sorts of revelations. For instance: there are now more women in the male workplace than for centuries. Patriarchy, in case you dont know, is a power system based on male dominance and consent is not an object you can hold in your hand (unlike some things Penny could and does mention).

It should also be noted that there are currently a lot of authoritarians around: Bolsonaro, Johnson, Putin, Trump, Jacinda Ardern No, not Ardern. Ha, I almost got you there, didnt I? Actually, Penny doesnt mention Ardern at all, nor even Angela Merkel. Anyway, moving on: things are grim because women are still judged far too much on their looks, ageism is very cruel, and male violence is just, like, everywhere.

But dont be disheartened. Penny has good news, too. Like them, we may eventually be able to overcome our addiction to predators with pretty eyes and a vacancy for a secret side-piece. We may even wind up loving ourselves instead of just waiting around for a man to find us lovable (for someone who identifies as gender-queer, and who therefore has some trouble with the word woman, which does not reflect her lived experience, Penny uses man with an abandon that is quite dizzying).

Heterosexuality is newsflash! in trouble, but good sex is still possible, once you stop looking to White supremacy and patriarchy to define its terms. Penny herself enjoyed a fantastically sexy weekend in Berlin in 2018 good clean (or not) fun of a kind no pearl-clutching Promise Keeper or chatroom-addled crypto-fascist is ever likely to experience.

Most crucially of all, something is now out in the world, I mean fighting to break out, as if from a shell: something wet and angry, with claws. By this, I think Penny is referring to the ongoing activism that was stirred by #MeToo, but I suppose it is possible Im troubled by the word wet that Ive got this entirely wrong.

Personally, my feminism is fiercer than it has been for decades. I dont disagree that things are still appalling for women, and in some senses I believe theyre getting worse. But the reader waits in vain for Penny to offer solutions to the injustice she describes, for serious analysis of any kind. The best they can do is to suggest that affordable childcare might be of help. No shit, Sherlock.

The chapter devoted to sex work is utterly enraging, and not only because Penny clearly knows so little about it (where are the interviews, the statistics, the thoughts of experts in this field?). Having painstakingly explained that many women enjoy sex that they do not, contrary to the old myths, only endure it, the better to keep their men happy Penny then accuses those women, feminists and others, who are critical of the sex industry of, yes, a sort of twisted envy, because why should some women get paid for what others have to do for free? Im afraid I clutched my own pearls (inherited, I should say, from a grandmother who left school at 13) at this point.

Having spent half of my life hoping for feminisms revival for it to be, if not fashionable, then proudly worn and meaningfully directed it is lowering beyond words to see a serious publisher describe this ill-edited, ill-considered drivel as a manifesto for the cause. This isnt feminism. This is a swizz.

Sexual Revolution: Modern Fascism and the Feminist Fightback by Laurie Penny is published by Bloomsbury (20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Originally posted here:

Sexual Revolution by Laurie Penny review playing fast and loose with the f-word - The Guardian

1. New Zealand to reopen borders as support for Jacinda Ardern wanes  Financial Times
2. Jacinda Ardern announces new plan to open NZ to the world  ABC News
3. PM Jacinda Ardern on reopening the border: 'It's a constant balance but one I think we've got right'  RNZ
4. Covid New Zealand: Jacinda Ardern reveals the EXACT dates when Kiwis can return home from Australia  Daily Mail
5. Christopher Luxon says Jacinda Ardern should resign if she backs down on COVID-19 border reopening dates  Newshub
6. View Full Coverage on Google News

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New Zealand to reopen borders as support for Jacinda Ardern wanes - Financial Times

February 4 2022Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is this morning visiting Auckland's newest vaccination centre on the city's waterfront to promote boosters.

It has been a tough start to the year for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, but after the rain came a shaft of sun with the announcement the borders would start to reopen.

She spoke to the Weekend Herald after that announcement about that decision, as well as the drubbing she has faced in international media, the polls, the cancellation of her wedding, MIQ and what lies ahead in the Omicron response.

Jacinda Ardern's year began with Omicron arriving and she put the country into the red setting of the new traffic light. She cancelled her own wedding to Clarke Gayford, and became the first MP known to have to isolate under the new rules, after a flight attendant on her flight tested positive.

Ardern said that call to isolate had come on what was supposed to be her wedding day.

"In fact, I got the phone call about 30 minutes before I was scheduled to walk down the aisle."

She laughs.

"There was quite a discussion between Chris [Hipkins] and Grant [Robertson] about which one of them would have broken the news to me."

"It just, it's life. That's all I can say."

She and Gayford had already decided not to have the wedding if they moved to the red level.

"There are lots of reasons why waiting was better."

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They are yet to set a new date.

As well as the Omicron outbreak here, there was a flood of negative coverage in the international media about the Government's response to it and the ongoing hardships caused by the lack of space in MIQ.

The latter was sparked by pregnant journalist Charlotte Bellis' attempts to get back from Afghanistan to have her child at home.

Asked if the flurry of international commentary had an impact on her or New Zealand's international reputation, she said she would address the New Zealand side of that question although the two are linked.

"New Zealand's reputation is never going to be defined by one media cycle, or one story. Our reputation is more than that, and if anything, I can tell you from the engagement I have with people and leaders overseas, they almost always make the comment to me about the standout role New Zealand has had in Covid management. That, I think, will be the legacy of Covid for New Zealand.

"Single media cycles I don't think reflect New Zealand's reputation. I don't think it changes the way people see New Zealand, and the vast majority of people see it very positively."

Bellis' case attracted significant international attention and appeared to bring to a head the ever-growing unhappiness with MIQ.

Some had credited it with forcing the Government's hand on the border reopening although it had said last year it would push that out from the original January timeframe to the end of this month.

Ardern insists the timing of the MIQ announcement was not for political reasons.

"The decisions we are making are always based on the evidence we have. We do not make our decisions based on the polls. That means I will absolutely accept the consequences of those decisions. I stand by them. We are doing it for all the right reasons.

"Of course, if the consequence of that is people feel like there is reprieve and relief then that's good too."

Those decisions were indeed taking a toll in the polls.

Those changed dramatically for Ardern after Delta arrived last August in the latest 1 News Kantar Public Poll, Labour was about 10 points down since the end of the pandemic's first year. Ardern had dropped to 35 per cent as preferred Prime Minister her lowest since 2017.

It was at about the same point that Sir John Key resigned as Prime Minister, saying he wanted to go on a high and that he liked to be liked.

Ardern laughs when this is pointed out. Asked if she thinks it is salvageable, she laughs again:

"Salvageable? That makes it sound as if it is terminal. I accepted a really long time ago, really early on in my career, that the right call isn't always the most popular call. Covid is that writ large. You are constantly having to make decisions that are tough and have a huge impact on people's lives. But as long as you're making them for the right reasons, then onward."

She will, however, be hoping that her announcement on Thursday that MIQ would start to disappear for returning New Zealanders and other travellers in stages from February 28 was a circuit breaker. That announcement did have something of a beginning of the end feeling to it, a sense of relief.

It marked the scale down of the MIQ system that Ardern herself said had caused the most "heartache" of any element of the Covid response for New Zealand.

But she also points out that MIQ had helped avert the bigger heartache of the death rates experienced in other countries.

MIQ had also become a big political headache for the Government and for Ardern herself. Asked if she hoped this week's announcement would be a turning point on the siege she has been under, she said it was "a massive milestone".

"I've been thinking about this moment for a long time. I remember the moment we closed the borders, thinking about the point at which we would be able to welcome people back. Even back then I used to feel quite emotional about it.

"I reflect on my own circumstances, and one of the reasons Kiwis have been such comfortable travellers, and comfortable with having periods of our lives where we have lived abroad is because we've had the ability to come home whenever we needed to. For that to have been on pause has been such a shift in our psyche. So this is a really important moment."

The decision to push play again has always been Ardern's to make caught between the growing cries of those caught overseas, sometimes in very distressing situations, and the significant number still at home who remained fearful of what the travellers would bring back in even after the vaccination rollout.

Ardern said when MIQ first came into being in April 2020, she did not imagine it would be two years before it started to wind down. She also points out that back then, people thought a vaccine would be five years away.

"So things have moved more quickly than we expected, but also taken longer than we expected as well."

She said there was little doubt some things would have been done differently with the benefit of hindsight. However, they could never have had limitless capacity.

"They are hugely resource-intensive. They take thousands of people to run them. Not everyone wants to work in a managed isolation facility, so the idea you could have had limitless capacity and without increasing risk, isn't the case. I think no matter what, we would have had a system with pressure in it."

The original promise had been that the vaccinations would take over as our main form of defence rather than the borders. But vaccination rates did not top 90 per cent until the end of last year, and then Omicron came along and made early boosters more important pushing the planned January border reopening out.

She said the past month had been critical to give people the time needed to brace for Omicron.

Many have voiced scepticism about whether the Government will stick to the dates if Covid-19 throws another curveball.

Bellis is among them, telling the Weekend Herald she was now considering whether to give up her MIQ slot in early March and wait for the March 13 reopening to allow her to isolate at home. She would rather isolate at home, but the MIQ slot is certain and she fears the reopening date is not.

Ardern still has to negotiate through the Omicron outbreak. Masks, rapid antigen tests, disrupted workforces and, perhaps most of all, the natural wariness people have about it.

Although the red setting means businesses can still operate, even Finance Minister Grant Robertson has pointed to the deterrent effect that the fear of getting Covid-19 or having to isolate was having on human behaviour.

Ardern hopes that will pass.

"It's a transition and I think it is a significant one. We have been Covid-free but we have now the privileged position of having been Covid-free for the most dangerous elements of this pandemic. Now we have protection other countries did not get the chance to have and we are meeting a variant that does not pose the same risk as other variants have."

"When you look overseas, it seems to be that deterrent effect lasts for a period of time that isn't necessarily associated with the number of cases. So only time will tell, but what we are seeing overseas is people adapting, as they always do, to the circumstances they find themselves in and making risk assessments."

She is philosophical about being blamed for people's disgruntlement, saying she has long learned to accept she will wear the blame for everything from the weather and sports outcomes to Covid.

The collateral damage of Covid-19 is everywhere: inflation, house prices, her goal of fixing inequality and child poverty are all things she will now face being blamed for.

Asked if it has felt like she has been on a war footing for the past two years, she says "yes, it does".

And now?

"Like I"m still on it."

She won't say when victory might be declared, but this week was "progress".

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PM Jacinda Ardern on the borders, Omicron and her wedding - New Zealand Herald

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has warned that the Omicron strain of Covid-19 will take off eventually.

At a new vaccination centre on Aucklands waterfront on Friday, Ardern said there was no time to waste in getting vaccinated, and also urged Kiwis to prepare to self-isolate.

With the winding down of MIQ, and the increasing likelihood of catching Covid-19 in New Zealand, she said people would not be able to rely on quarantine if they needed to isolate.

Home isolation would become the new normal, and she said that could require making a plan about what to do if you live with vulnerable whnau. Ultimately, she stressed the importance of getting booster shots which was the main protection from Covid-19.

Chris McKeen/Stuff

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern stressed the importance of booster shots while visiting a vaccination site in The Cloud on Aucklands waterfront.

More than 1.4 million people had been boosted by Friday, which was more than a third of the adult population. Ardern said that, with boosters now available to almost everyone, she hoped to see that number rise dramatically over the coming days.

READ MORE:* Covid-19 NZ: Border reopening to begin from late February, to proceed in five stages* Covid-19 Omicron: Border opening and future of MIQ to be revealed* Extra 100,000 Mori become eligible for booster shots on Friday, PM announces

But when Aucklands newest vaccination centre, at The Cloud, opened on Friday morning there were no crowds rushing through the doors.

Over time we expect to see that urgency increase, because hundreds of thousands of people became eligible today, she said.

DAVID WHITE/STUFF

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the border will start re-opening in phases, starting with self-isolation requirements for fully vaccinated citizens returning from Australia on February 27.

Dont wait. Once Omicron really takes off, there isnt that same period of time to get the full benefit of your vaccine. Please, dont delay. Get it today.

The Governments plan to open the border would not be delayed by low booster rates, she said. From late February, citizens in Australia and critical workers would start to be able to self-isolate rather than enter MIQ when they came to New Zealand.

In the future, we have to prepare for a larger number of cases. There will not be the same capacity to provide accommodation that we have in the past, she said, when asked if MIQ would be available for people needing to isolate from vulnerable whnau members.

The Ministry of Health confirmed on Monday that Omicron was the dominant variant present in New Zealand.

The Government then reduced the interval between a second dose and booster shot for people aged of 18, from four to three months. As a result, from Friday 92 per cent of people who had been vaccinated were eligible for their booster shot.

She said the Government was focused on ensuring health services would still be able to provide care when Omicron peaked.

This time of year does have some added benefits in terms of health measures because it does mean people are outside, able to social distance and have better ventilation.

All of that does help with management, she said, when asked if the Government was hoping Omicron cases would peak before winter.

On Friday, 209 new cases of Covid-19 were confirmed. The Ministry of Health also said it expected to achieve 90 per cent vaccination for Mori by the end of Friday.

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Covid-19: 'Don't wait', get ready: Jacinda Ardern says Kiwis need to rely on boosters with MIQ going - Stuff.co.nz

Millions of rapid antigen tests secured, how the OECD plan to cool the property market and Ukraine boosts its armed forces in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald

OPINION:

It has been a fraught fortnight for the Government, but the Prime Minister emerges from her isolation period now apparently hell bent on extinguishing the flames that are around her.

Top of that list has been the plight of Charlotte Bellis and MIQ, the borders and rapid antigen tests.

On Tuesday, after worldwide coverage about her difficulties getting back to New Zealand to give birth, the Afghanistan-based journalist Charlotte Bellis was granted a slot in MIQ for March.

It came just in time - just before a Government minister had to front in person to the media for the first time since her open letter was published in the Weekend Herald.

On Wednesday, an announcement on boosters is expected. That will almost certainly be a decision to move the gap from four months to three months.

On Thursday comes the announcement of when the borders will now reopen and returning vaccinated New Zealanders can isolate at home rather than in MIQ.

The boosters announcement indicates the border reopening dates may not be far away.

Speeding up the boosters would ensure more people were protected by the time that happened - and follows similar moves overseas.

The appetite within Cabinet for delaying the reopening for much longer is very low.

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The Bellis case was hugely embarrassing for it and was a bit of a catalyst on an issue on which the Government has come under increasing pressure.

Added to that, the bigger the community outbreak gets the more futile MIQ becomes. It becomes much harder to justify using MIQ rather than home isolation to try to slow Omicron's relentless progress. It would be little more than an illusory safety net.

The general view in Cabinet is also that with the boosters, and efforts to prepare people, the Government will have done all it can to keep people safe. It is time to move. Labour's hit in the polls will have helped them reach that conclusion.

Tuesday delivered the news on another area of trouble for the Government: a last-minute scramble had secured it a further 36 million rapid antigen tests, reducing the need to pilfer the stores of private businesses.

That is enough to cover the critical workplaces that the Government needs to keep up and running but not the wider population.

So the great political tidy-up has begun.

The border reopening dates will ease the inevitable questions about what happens to others in a similar situation as Bellis.

The Government was under increasing pressure on the inherent unfairness and increasing redundancy of MIQ. Yes, it has done its job and it did its job very well - in the past tense.

It may still be needed for future variants, to help delay local outbreaks. But two years on, with high vaccination levels and Omicron already in the community, the cost of it on people's lives was outweighing the benefits.

That won't be enough to stop all the criticism.

The Government will also remain under scrutiny over its handling of the Omicron outbreak.

On Tuesday, Grant Robertson called for people to put a bit of faith in what it was asking people to do, noting that the Government had twice before managed to get the country through outbreaks much better off than most countries.

But the Prime Minister's own brush with Covid-19 last week was a stark lesson in how difficult it will be to slow the spread of Omicron without the use of lockdowns, and just how disruptive the isolation regime will be.

By the time the flight attendant on Ardern's flight was tested and got the positive result, almost a week had passed. Anyone that attendant might have infected in that time had been going about their own lives. So the circle of close contacts ripples out.

It highlighted the chilling effect the prospect of isolation will be having on people the red light setting has its freedoms, but before enjoying them people will be weighing up the risk they will have to isolate if they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That is why a wider availability of RATs will become critical before too long to allow people to make those decisions on whether to visit a grandparent, and to allow all businesses to keep running.

The Prime Minister will need a few more fire extinguishers before this is over.

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Claire Trevett: Covid 19 Omicron outbreak - can PM Jacinda Ardern put out the fires as she moves on borders, Charlotte Bellis, boosters and rapid...

Politics

29 Jan, 2022 11:22 PM3 minutes to read

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was told to go into isolation on the day she was meant to get married. Photo / Hagen Hopkins-Pool

OPINION:

Saturday might have been the Prime Minister's wedding day - she was meant to get married in late January after all - but instead of walking up the aisle, sometime during the day she received a phone call informing her she was present at an exposure event, and had to go into isolation.

Ardern was not at her wedding on Saturday. She'd wisely made the decision to can it after putting the country under the "red" traffic light setting - critics can point to many failings of this Government, but Ardern does lead from the front and subjects herself to the same restrictions as everyone else (Boris Johnson, take note).

The fact she might have caught the virus while making an effort to appear at Waitangi despite formal celebrations being cancelled is also to her credit. In her first appearance at Waitangi as prime minister, Ardern asked that she continue to be held to account on her return. To her credit, after a year in which the Government's commitment to Te Tiriti has been shaken by a shaky vaccine rollout, she didn't use the cancellation of in-person commemorations as an excuse to shirk returning to Waitangi, even if it was just to record a video.

Her tendency to follow the rules will likely help her; she's a fastidious mask-wearer and is (almost) always seen abiding by whatever public health measures are in place.

That said, Omicron is incredibly infectious and if half of the population is expected to get it at some stage, we should hardly be surprised that our Auckland-resident, frequent-flying Prime Minister is among the first.

For a select few, the possibility of Ardern and the Governor-General, Dame Cindy Kiro, coming down with Covid is a good excuse to brush up on the order of precedence. For everyone else, her infection has no meaning beyond an opportunity to empathise with a hard-working prime minister who might have caught a virus she's been fighting in one form or another for two years.

It's easy to overreact. Ardern is young, healthy and boosted - she'll be fine. Every prime minister gets sick.

If she tests positive, it will cause difficulty for Cabinet and Parliament, Cabinet met virtually last week, so some ministers will have avoided becoming close contacts. However, Ardern had in-person meetings with some ministers, who will be close contacts and have to go into isolation. That difficulty shouldn't be overstated either, Cabinet met virtually in 2020. Everyone knew ministers would get Covid and infect each other before long.

The only meaning one can really attach to this episode is a symbolic one - if the Prime Minister and Governor-General can get Covid, anyone can. There's no outrunning this variant. It might encourage people to get vaccinated and boosted and prepare for a lumpy end to summer.

For most New Zealanders, Covid hasn't been an experience of illness or death. It's been an accumulation of private pains: cancelled weddings, and funerals, tangihanga, held over Zoom. There's a powerful symbolic value in the prime minister sharing in this pain with her own, private story (as private as prime ministers can be).

There's nothing really to do but wait, hope for a negative test, and wish the Prime Minister well if she tests positive. She's certainly earned a sick day (though it's hard to imagine her taking one).

Get used to that feeling - it will become familiar for all of us before too long.

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Thomas Coughlan: Jacinda Ardern told to isolate on likely wedding day, we wish her well - New Zealand Herald