I don’t think I’ve ever been more proud to be a New Zealander than during this last week, and I can put that down to one person, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has continued to impress in the top job by making intelligent statements during her short reign as PM. The world Economic Forum heard her ask the assembled leaders, “Do you want to be a leader that looks back in time and say that you were on the wrong side of an argument when the world was crying out for a solution?”
It’s the sort of statement that prickles only those who have been consumed with self-interest, who are slow to act, or who need to be reminded of their leaden boots, their inaction. It’s a statement of genuine quality, which as a one-off, can probably be attributed to a very effective speech writer, after all, Ardern is only 38 years old, relatively new to politics, and very new to the country’s top job.
Then, in December last year when youthful English backpacker, Grace Millane, was abducted and murdered in the nation’s largest city, Auckland, Ardern again demonstrated her ability to say the right thing.
“There is this overwhelming sense of hurt and shame that this has happened in our country, a place that prides itself on our hospitality, on our manaakitanga,” she said, using the Māori word for welcoming others.
“So, on behalf of New Zealand, I want to apologise to Grace’s family — your daughter should have been safe here and she wasn’t, and I’m sorry for that.” Here she demonstrated the emotions of a city and a nation that both needs and welcomes tourists, and a place that prides itself on being hospitable and welcoming to the tens of thousands of young people from all over the world who come for their overseas experiences, and for many students like Millane, their gap years after achieving their degree, and before starting work. It was a statement that succinctly captured the way we all felt, the collective responsibility we took for her safety, our embarrassment at the loss of a young life, and yet, Ardern appeared at the end, in saying “I’m sorry,” to take the blame for us all. It was humbling!
And now, of course Ardern has become the crème-de-la-crème of the political world, in her compassionate, honest, and very personal, yet very representative statements to the world’s media, in the wake of the Christchurch Al Noor and Linwood Mosque atrocities of last week. Quite simply while her every word has resonated around the world, it is her refusal to use the name of the gunman, and therefore denying him the opportunity for his supremacist views to be put before a wider audience, that has been her master stroke. “You will never hear me speak his name,” she told a hushed Parliament House.
Even a week later, never out of the spotlight, Ardern demonstrated she wasn’t all talk when, at a commemoration service for the victims, her head covered in a scarf, she incredibly, and with poignancy, told 20,000 people in Hagley Park, near the Al Noor Mosque, “The believers in their mutual kindness, compassion, and sympathy are just like one body. When any part of the body suffers, the whole body feels pain,” quoting the Prophet Mohammad’s (PBUH) hadith. “New Zealand mourns with you; we are one,” she finished her short but impactful speech. There was no applause, only silence, reflection, and a rejection of the hatred that, intent upon dividing us, in a way one would never have conceived, had bought a nation even closer together.
This has somehow become more about the healing than the dying, and about a national leader who has demonstrated extraordinary compassion and empathy, not only for the Muslim community, or the electorate, but for all New Zealanders. In doing so, she has created an example to others, and given them a lead to follow, in offering a way forward.
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