An Interview with Jacinda Ardern

INTERVIEW: ANDY TAYLOR PHOTOGRAPHY: SARAH TRAVERS

Jacinda Ardern travels pretty light. She may be the deputy leader of the opposition and a closely watched rising star of New Zealand politics tipped for greatness, but she arrives for an interview and photo shoot for Plenty without an entourage and without any sense of the urgency you’d expect from someone who is scheduled to walk out in front of a packed town hall meeting straight after our meeting.

She also arrives without an ego or agreed agenda – she is happy to discuss anything we want to throw at her, and waves away talk of copy approval and any topics being off limits. The trademark smile is there – she sheepishly and somewhat awkwardly admits she can’t not do it – and she is happy to go straight from walking in the door to being in front of the camera as the light quickly fails.

In a world of fake news, carefully manufactured public personas and early morning tweets, Jacinda Ardern in person is – refreshingly – the Jacinda Ardern you see on the telly: genuine, erudite, thoughtful and funny. The only real baggage she carries is a peculiar authenticity that makes you feel you already somehow know her, that perhaps you went to school with her, or maybe grew up around the corner from her. She has a mojo and a mana that are hard to explain, and maybe, just maybe, that has something to do with a little corner of the Bay of Plenty.

Lets put it this way – I was the only leftie in the village for a very long time!”

Photography © Sarah Travers /// Plenty Magazine

My memories of Murupara are generally really happy ones - I have a very vivid memory of getting locked in my Dad’s police handcuffs and him having to come home to get me out, so there were definitely lighter moments!”

Photography © Sarah Travers /// Plenty Magazine

PLENTY: You were born in Hamilton, but have often spoken about how the time you spent in Murupara as a child influenced you greatly.

JA: I remember the idea of moving to Murupara as a small child being such an adventure, but when I look back now I realise what a big move it was for a young family and for my mother who had never been there before. My father was a policeman and in those days you moved where the work was and policing meant living in the community. I have an overwhelming memory of Murupara being a really tight-knit community of amazing people, but a community that was going through a really rough time. The restructuring of the forestry industry and resulting unemployment meant it was a town in a real state of depression, and it influenced me remarkably. Now as an adult it doesn’t account for a huge part of my life in years, but as a kid it was very formative. I went to Tawhio Primary and then went to Galatea, and coming from Hamilton and then moving there and seeing it through a child’s lens had a real impact. The idea that kids didn’t have shoes to go to school in, or something to eat, or proper access to health care - I really remember that. I just have very vivid memories of a town and a community struggling. I certainly wasn’t thinking about going into politics at that age, but it’s not lost on me that a lot of those early memories were under a Labour government – albeit a very, very different one from the one I later signed up to.

PLENTY: Were you aware of the whys and wherefores of what was happening?

JA: The impact of a town being entirely reliant on one industry and having the rug pulled out from under it was devastating, and though as a child I didn’t walk around shaking my head at Rogernomics, it certainly informed elements of my social conscience just because things were so stark. But my memories of Murupara are generally really happy ones - I have a very vivid memory of getting locked in my Dad’s police handcuffs and him having to come home to get me out, so there were definitely lighter moments!

PLENTY: You once said that no one really grows up dreaming of a political future that involves being in opposition, so what were you dreaming of being in those days?

JA: Definitely not politics! I probably wanted to be a policewoman and be like my Dad. I used to have a white shirt with an emblem on it that kind of looked official and I used to pretend to be some sort of officer at school. But I didn’t take the handcuffs there! When I did think of joining the police, it was more about me being some kind of youth aid officer, more about helping people than catching baddies! But I kept a diary even then and I know that at some point I wrote in it that I wanted to be a clown because they seemed to make everyone so happy and that must be the greatest job in the world – which is ironic as I find them terrifying now. Stephen King ruined it for everybody.

PLENTY: What about now – if not politics, then what?

JA: I’ve never had a Plan B. Or a Plan A for that matter! Politics still feels quite accidental for me. The closer I got to it and realised it was an amazing job, the further I was from thinking I wanted to do it, because I genuinely believe that if you don’t have any doubts about going into politics then you really don’t know what you are getting yourself into. When I was first asked to run I said no, and it was in a quite incremental way that I came round to the idea of entering politics. For a start I didn’t think I was tough enough, but I didn’t want to regret having not given it a go. I do remember making the decision to run for Auckland Central after watching a West Wing Episode – how cheesy is that?!

It must have been a great episode.

It was – Two Cathedrals – the one when he’s trying to decide whether to run for President again. Just goes to show how dangerous the influence of television can be!

PLENTY: Have you ever experienced what we like to call the Tall Poppy syndrome?

JA: I guess it depends on how you define success. I don’t really see myself as being a success or a tall poppy because what I’m doing now is just so far outside of any of the criteria I set for myself. I’m in opposition – I haven’t really done anything yet, at least none of the things I am in politics for anyway. For me the really important things were always more about family – and in that regard the jury is still out. I don’t think Grandma is particularly impressed with my career path though!

PLENTY: Do you mind being in the limelight?

JA: I accept that it is part of the job and I thankfully don’t mind being open with people. I do mind when it impacts on my family though, as they never chose this.

PLENTY: It has been remarked upon that you have an ability to ‘cut through’ to New Zealanders. Where do you think this comes from?

JA: There are a lot of good communicators in politics so I don’t see myself as being anything special in that regard, but I do feel very lucky to have had the start that I had. You know, in addition to Murupara I also spent a lot of time in Morrinsville, and – lets put it this way – I was the only leftie in the village for a very long time! People would whisper behind their hands about voting Labour and give me the fingers when I was out campaigning, and when you hold views that are different from everyone else you get very good at empathising with others and trying to connect somehow.

The benefit of living in such different places means that when I do policy work – and I love policy work, I’m a total pointy head in that regard because I like to solve problems – I always try to think if it would work in Murupara, Morrinsville and Auckland, because if it will work in those diverse places it will work across the board. There is a line that I like from T S Eliot: In my beginning is my end. So much of where we end up is predetermined by how we start. I really believe in that and I try to let it guide me in any policy decisions. I’m just grateful that the start I had was so formative.

Photography © Sarah Travers /// Plenty Magazine

In my beginning is my end. So much of where we end up is predetermined by how we start.

PLENTY: It has also been noted that regardless of whether people like your politics or not, they recognise you have genuine passion.

JA: I just never grew out of my angsty teenage years! Usually people shed that, but I’m going to carry mine right through to middle age.

PLENTY: You’ve embraced social media more than any other New Zealand politician; you have a huge following on Twitter for example, so are there any other similarities between you and Donald Trump?

JA: I think very carefully about everything I post on Twitter. And a very important difference between us – apart from our very different value sets – is that I don’t have access to a nuclear arsenal!

PLENTY: The mainstream media have been quick to point out that all of this might somewhat over shadow Labour leader Andrew Little. Is that a concern for you?

JA: For me it is all about doing my job, and if I can bring more people to support Labour then that is ‘job done’. My goal is to see Labour in government and it’s all about the party vote - Andrew and I have often talked about how important that is. Rightly or wrongly we have seen the shift here and overseas to a focus on individual personalities, when in fact when you come to vote you should really be thinking about who brings the best team to the table. Andrew has been really awesome to work with, and he has a completely focused and unflappable nature - something that should be pretty highly valued in politics.

PLENTY: You’ve been on an extensive tour of the country with him, speaking at town hall meetings. When you are on these road trips, who gets to choose the CD – you or Andrew?

JA: Ha! So far, we haven’t had music because we are just yarning about work, or listening to the news, or talking about family. But a surprising thing I just learnt about Andrew is that he doesn’t use an alarm, and given the number of interviews he has to give from 5 o’clock in the morning this blows my mind. He just wakes up naturally when he has to and I guess it comes from his time as a trade unionist when he was doing research on shift workers and the impact of sleep cycles on people. I’ve just never met anyone who has such a brutal routine and who doesn’t use an alarm. One day I really must prank him on this, call him at 4 o’clock in the morning and say, “Where the heck are you, you’re late!”

PLENTY: Those meetings have taken you to quite a few places in regional New Zealand. Globally, and here, there is a renewed focus on cities and major centres, so what do you think the future holds for places like Murupara and the Bay of Plenty?

JA: I think about this a lot. I work in the social development space, and I absolutely believe that there is a whole group of families who wouldn’t be coming to the attention of the state if they just had the dignity of a decent job, with decent wages. This will be a huge focus for us in government. That does mean placing much greater emphasis on two things, diversification of our economy so we can remove some of the vulnerabilities that exist in our regions, and also regional economic development more generally. We have already given a very real example in Gisborne of our plans for timber processing as a way to add more value to all of the current raw product we are exporting, but we also want to work with local councils to identify what job creation projects and ideas look like in their backyard. All in all, we just need a government that doesn’t forget any part of New Zealand or is distracted by the challenges in our cities. We have to have a vision that benefits every single corner of the country. And I consider myself very lucky to have lived in some of those corners.

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