Jacinda Ardern, page 8
Before long, a reporter directed a question at Davis, the newly elected deputy leader. As he stepped forward to answer, Ardern stepped back, but not completely behind him. Deliberate or not, it showed how comfortable she was with being front and centre.
A reporter asked a question in te reo and Davis answered in kind. It was a rare moment in New Zealand politics and helped Labour look friendly to Māori, something the socially liberal party had struggled with, largely due to distinctly anti-Māori moves made by the previous Labour government under Helen Clark.
Ardern shut down suggestions that there were factions once again within the Labour party and admitted that she had recently been quoted as saying she did not want the job. ‘I have been asked to take on this challenge. I have accepted,’ she stated simply.
She answered questions around the Memorandum of Understanding that Labour had with the Greens, who seemed to be catching up to Labour in the polls, firmly: might they be a key to Labour forming government? ‘Transparency with the New Zealand public around who we would intend to work with if the public give us the opportunity and the privilege to be in government, I think that transparency is important and it remains. But I want to be very clear. This is a Labour campaign. We will be focused on Labour’s policies and ideas. I do not want to be drawn into conversations about other parties, plans or policies.’
The statement was delivered with force. This was no longer a flailing Labour Party, searching desperately for allies with which to join forces. This was the second most powerful political party in the country, and they were going to act like it. If any doubt remained at this point, this declaration made it clear that Ardern was very much in control.
Being able to handle a large press conference is a unique skill that few MPs possess, and even fewer possess intuitively. Often they, and the public, don’t find out whether they are good at it until they have to front the full press gallery and answer questions during a live broadcast. MPs will speak to reporters individually or in small groups, but the full gallery is a different beast. Many a politician has been undone by such occasions, most notably former National MP Jami-Lee Ross. Ross called a press conference in October 2018 to resign from the party and to allege that Simon Bridges, his party leader, had broken electoral law. Upon finishing his outrageously long prepared statement, Ross stood on the chequered tiles of Bowen House and answered questions for a further thirty-eight minutes. He didn’t know how to walk away, and wound up revealing a whole lot more than he originally intended. Ross, now an independent, spent much of 2019 sitting in the farthest corner of the debating chamber, alone. His chances of ever becoming prime minister are slim.
Ardern’s first major press conference was a completely different story. Her support crew behind her were visibly relaxing as she answered each question with aplomb. This was, they started to realise, unlike any Labour presser in the past five years. Ardern was genuinely positive and full of confidence. And it was starting to rub off on everyone else.
When asked about Labour possibly working with the Māori Party, Davis responded with the confidence of a deputy leader expecting to win an election. ‘If the Māori Party is still standing after the election, they’ll have to up their game if they want to work with us.’ Just a reminder: at this point, the Labour Party was polling at 23 per cent.
The decision to promote Davis, the most senior Māori MP in the party, to deputy was clearly tactical but nonetheless welcomed by Labour supporters. Labour had positioned themselves as a socially liberal party committed to raising New Zealand’s standard of living, an issue faced disproportionately by Māori. But Labour had a fraught reputation with Māori. The last Labour prime minister, Helen Clark, had overseen the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004, a law widely considered to be an act of oppression against the already historically oppressed Māori.
Since 2004, Labour had attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to regain Māori support. Having Davis as deputy, the first Māori deputy leader of Labour in its history, had symbolic power. Davis was also running in a Māori electorate, and the Māori seats were vital for Labour if they were to hold or gain ground.
Perhaps the most defining moment of the conference came in the final minute. A reporter addressed a question to Stuart Nash, who was standing conspicuously at the very end of the support line-up. ‘You said yesterday Labour shouldn’t change leaders this close to the election . . .’ As the reporter spoke, Sepuloni looked across at Nash and smirked. Davis looked to be laughing. Nash had been the lone MP to speak out strongly against a leadership change. As he stepped forward to respond, he was beaten to it by Ardern, who answered before the question was even finished. ‘Stuart has acknowledged to me that he was wrong.’ The whole room laughed, and Nash stepped back into place at the end of the line.
Ardern’s transition from deputy leader to leader both in title and in commanding presence overnight was extraordinary to behold. Six months earlier, Ardern and Nash had been more or less equals in the party. But in that instant, their new relationship was instantly and convincingly established. It sent a clear message: Labour would no longer allow infighting or members speaking out of turn. After five years of a very public struggle for loyalty and cooperation, Labour’s new leader making a point of putting a colleague in his place was refreshing.
While all this was unfolding, Little was packing up the office that was no longer his. He’d promised to support his successor in her campaign, but he needed to take a few days to mourn his lost ambitions. By the time Ardern returned to the offices of the opposition, she would find an empty workspace ready for her across the hall from her old one. Little would be gone, driven home with a box of his possessions.
When the last question was answered, Ardern thanked the room, smiled and led her team out. As they made their way past the mics, which were still picking up sound, health spokesperson David Clark could be heard muttering ‘nailed it’ under his breath. He wasn’t wrong.
7
THE FIRST 72 HOURS
The ‘Jacinda effect’ was immediate.
It’s hard to overstate the excitement with which even the most cynical journalists reported Ardern’s appointment as leader. New Zealand politics hadn’t had such a charismatic leader in decades. John Key had been affable in a Kiwi Bloke sort of way, but Ardern was something else. It had been so long since Labour had dominated the news cycle for a positive reason that even right-wing commentators couldn’t help but get caught up in the buzz.
Breathless live crosses from outside the Beehive dominated the six o’clock news, and the front pages of the major newspapers around the country the next morning declared: ‘Labour’s golden girl steps up’ and ‘Labour’s A-bomb has the X-factor’. They would continue to lead with Ardern for the next two days.
For nine years, National had sat in government and watched as their opposition scored own goal after own goal. But with a new captain, the Labour team was looking not just less downtrodden but actually hopeful. It was a shock for everyone, and National MPs didn’t take to it kindly. Minister of Defence Gerry Brownlee went so far as to send Patrick Gower (he of ‘Battle of the Babes’ fame) a set of cheerleading pompoms with a note: ‘Watching your unbridled enthusiasm yesterday in your live crosses I thought the props may help in the future.’
The excitement manifested in more concrete ways too. In the twenty-four hours following Ardern’s first press conference, Labour received more than $250,000 in online donations, with a median donation of $33. At one point they were receiving $700 in donations every minute, unheard of in New Zealand politics. As well as the increase in donations, Labour received over 1000 new volunteer sign-ups in a day.
The extra help was much needed. The thousands of hoardings around the country showing Little and Ardern with their slogan ‘Fresh Approach’ didn’t look so fresh anymore. On social media, people had no shortage of solutions to offer. Some pointed out that Little and Davis shared a similar enough build to make a clean swap of the faces. One user printed out a picture of Davis’s face and stuck it over Little’s to demonstrate. Others photoshopped a black X over Little and added an ‘er’ to make the sign read ‘A Fresher Approach’. Some suggested that Labour simply cut out Little’s face, leaving a hole that voters could put their own heads in, like the photo walls at county fairs. Jacinda and Me, walking together towards a better New Zealand. It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Labour themselves wanted to overhaul the entire campaign. They needed a fresh approach – without the slogan ‘a fresh approach’.
Ardern had promised a new strategy within seventy-two hours and she delivered. Within three days, new hoardings had been erected. And on Thursday morning, forty-eight hours after Little resigned, Labour scheduled a press conference to announce their new campaign. But while volunteers were putting up the brand-new signs around the country, Ardern was encountering her first real challenge as leader. One that would show whether she was a leader with steel, who could make cut-throat decisions, or that her critics were right and she didn’t have the ruthlessness required to be a successful politician. The question was whether or not to axe a potential ally, Metiria Turei.
Turei was the co-leader of the Green Party, a left-wing party formed in 1990 with a focus on environmental issues and socialist economic policies. The Greens were the third-largest party in New Zealand, though significantly smaller than National and Labour. Since the turn of the century they had typically received between 6 and 12 per cent of party votes in general elections. Because New Zealand has a mixed member proportional (MMP) electoral system, the Greens play a crucial role in giving support to either side within parliament. On most issues, Labour and the Greens agree.
In May 2016, Labour had been looking for allies. They signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Greens, ‘to work co-operatively to change the government in the 2017 election’. It was a historic move, interpreted as Labour coming to terms with the fact that it looked near impossible for them to beat National on their own.
But in July 2017, Labour were floundering in the polls and the Greens wanted to seize the chance to sway undecided left-wing voters. So Metitiria Turei took a risk. A calculated risk, though commentators from both the left and right would later agree it wasn’t calculated enough. At the party AGM, where Turei and her co-leader James Shaw outlined their campaign policies, she admitted that as a young single mum she had committed benefit fraud. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue and it wasn’t a play for headlines. It was intended to start a conversation around welfare and whether it is possible to survive on the benefit in New Zealand. It succeeded. But it also started another conversation: should Turei, someone who’d admitted to breaking the law, be in government?
Turei’s team had discussed her speech with Little’s team before the conference (as part of their regular meetings under the MOU), and Labour had advised against it. If there’s one thing that unites all voters, they felt, it’s a disdain for those who breach the social contract. Not paying taxes or taking more than you’re entitled to are considered equal sins. We all agreed to follow these rules, how dare you get greedy. Never mind that one is called benefit fraud and taps out at tens of millions of dollars a year, while the other is tax evasion and totals in the billions of dollars of unpaid tax annually.
As a 23-year-old single mother studying law in the ’90s, Turei did not disclose that she had flatmates paying rent to her – so that her benefit wouldn’t be cut for being over the income threshold.
Her admission dominated the news cycle for a few days, and brought the Greens back into the election conversation. The ministry of social development launched an investigation into Turei’s benefit history on the same day that the poll results came out, Ardern’s birthday. The same poll that showed Labour polling at their worst since 1995 showed the Greens at an incredible 15 per cent.
Voters to the centre of Labour saw a left block imploding and fled to New Zealand First, while Labour voters who were tired of the lack of conviction their party was showing felt they’d found a worthy alternative in the Greens. Turei’s honesty and frankness touched many New Zealanders, who empathised rather than saw her as a criminal. Labour were dropping in the polls, yes. And they were heading for an election loss to National anyway, yes. But Turei’s move meant the Greens were also taking Labour votes.
Looking back, Metiria Turei’s speech could be seen as the catalyst for Jacinda Ardern becoming prime minister. Had Turei not taken the risk, Labour would have probably continued polling in the high 20s and Little would have had no reason to consider stepping down at the eleventh hour. But Turei did take that risk, Labour’s support plummeted, and Little had no choice but to go, leaving Ardern to step up.
On the morning that Little resigned, the Greens were looking at a potentially record-breaking election result. There was still much criticism of Turei’s admission in the media, but polls showed a lot of voters supported her. When Little resigned seven weeks before the election, many expected an even bigger surge to the Greens, as more disgruntled Labour voters turned their backs on red. Instead, by the time Ardern had wrapped up her first press conference, droves of left-wing voters were flocking back to Labour.
It should have been a win-win situation. The Green Party was finding its feet, getting media attention and starting conversations around the policies they wanted to implement. And Labour had a rising star as their new leader, who’d just exceeded everyone’s expectations in her first media challenge. But the media wasn’t done with Turei yet.
On 3 August, while hundreds of thousands of dollars were being donated to Labour, Newshub reported that Turei had enrolled to vote in an electorate where she was no longer living. Voting in a different electorate to the one you actually reside in isn’t uncommon. People move and don’t bother changing their address on the electoral roll all the time. But when asked about it, Turei replied that she’d stayed enrolled at her old residence in order to vote for her friend, who was running a joke campaign for that seat. This was the beginning of the end for Turei. On its own, it was nothing. But paired with her earlier confession, it was damning. Although most people believed Turei had been wrong to claim an increased benefit, there was a lot of sympathy for her and understanding that she did it out of necessity, not greed. But when it was reported that she also committed electoral fraud simply to vote for her friend, she started to seem like someone who broke the law recklessly, for the fun of it. It sowed doubt in a lot of voters’ minds. If Turei had admitted to benefit fraud, and then confessed to have also committed electoral fraud, what else was there to find in her past? As it turned out, nothing. But it was too late.
Predictably, after Turei’s AGM speech, National MPs had spoken out strongly against her actions. Right-wing commentators had called for her to be prosecuted. But Little had said he thought Turei was brave for admitting it, and that he would support her and continue to support the MOU.
But when the Newshub report came out, Little wasn’t the leader anymore. With Ardern in charge, would Labour stick by Turei and the Greens or would they cut them off like an infected limb?
Appearing on The AM Show the morning after the Newshub report was published, deputy leader Davis didn’t hold back in distancing himself and Labour from Turei and the Greens. ‘The Greens, they’ve made their bed and they’re going to have to lie in it,’ he said. ‘We’re just going to have to have a good discussion about how this is going to affect us, because we don’t want to be seen to be condoning this sort of stuff.’
Labour scheduled a press conference for 12.15 pm on Thursday, 4 August, two days after Ardern became leader. The purpose was to unveil Labour’s new slogan and campaign look. There would also be questions about Turei. It was far too early for Ardern to have blood on her hands, but she needed to show she was able to make the tough decisions.
That morning, Ardern assigned two members of her team to pass on a message to James Shaw and his team. One of the messengers was heavily rumoured to be Grant Robertson and the other chief of staff, Neale Jones. They told the Greens that if asked about Turei’s potential role in a Labour government, Ardern would say she would not assign Turei a cabinet or ministerial position. This was huge. The two parties had a memorandum of understanding. For Ardern to rule out the co-leader of their potential coalition partner from any ministerial role was essentially a disowning. On top of that, Ardern, known for being the most empathetic MP in parliament and criticised for being ‘too nice’, hadn’t even passed the news on herself.
In order to save face, Turei scheduled her own press conference for noon, leaving Labour to push Ardern’s back to 1 pm. In Turei’s presser, she announced that she would not be putting herself forward for a ministerial position if Labour got into government but would remain as co-leader of the Greens at least until the election. Turei insisted that Labour hadn’t pressured her to step back. It was hard to believe (what MP, having spent a decade in opposition, would willingly rule themselves out of contention for a ministerial position?) and became even harder to believe once Ardern held her own press conference an hour later.
Ardern stated that her team had ‘conveyed’ her view to Turei that morning that Turei had no place in a Labour–Greens government. With Labour experiencing a rare surge of power and support, the future of the Labour–Greens alliance was looking shaky.
By the end of the election campaign, the consensus was that Turei had been brave in admitting both her struggles and the unlawful behaviour it took for her to survive those struggles. But in politics, honesty is no substitute for strategy, and had the Greens plotted out her admission more stringently (for example, if she had made a point of paying back what she had been overpaid in the ’90s, now that she was a high-earning MP, before the speech), things may have turned out very differently. Instead, Turei’s admission set in motion a series of events that would ultimately end with her own political downfall and Ardern’s accelerated ascension. Ardern’s dismissal of Turei in that moment was widely praised. The politician judged for a decade as ‘too nice’ had dispatched an ally with ruthless efficiency. It reassured Ardern’s supporters that she could play the game.
