Too much is left unsaid in Jacinda Ardern’s memoir

Sunday, 15 June 2025

Jacinda Ardern pictured on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert amid a round of international media coverage following the release of her book

Vernon Small is a journalist and former Labour government adviser.

OPINION: Like every other political tragic in the land, I have been reading Jacinda Ardern’s memoir A Different Kind of Power.

It’s a strange mix.

It sets out an unmistakable message that a Mormon, a young woman, a person from small town Murupara with imposter syndrome, can win power and exercise it with kindness and empathy.

Her description of her part in the various crises and events that won her international recognition – especially the Christchurch mosque attacks and her appearance with daughter Neve at the United Nations – still brings a tear to the eye as does the pride Kiwis felt at our successful initial fight against Covid.

Yet despite the word “power” in the title, it is far more a personal memoir than a political one, peopled with close friends, major players and staff who are often anonymous or swan around with only a first name.

The big political questions that could have been dealt with alongside her personal story linger largely unexplained: the fall-out with Winston Peters; why the Covid triumph turned turtle. What about the impact of the major economic decisions her government made, such as the hugely expansionary fiscal and monetary stance that fuelled a flare-up in inflation and a massive rise in asset prices including a surge – then crash – in house prices?

Nor is there any detailed rebuttal, in the interests of her legacy, of the over-the-top claims that the country, the economy and the government books were a disaster when Labour left office.

You could easily think the broader economy was just elevator music as she went about her day job.

Jacinda Ardern's book - A Different Kind of Power

She does, sometimes indirectly, show how unfairly – ridiculously unfairly – she has been attacked for her management of the country during Covid – a response that saved 20,000 lives and saw shorter lockdowns and more freedoms than many other countries. We were dining out and going to concerts while others were locked down and/or watching their death toll mount.

Ardern’s book has insight into some of the backlash to her handling of Covid.

Even as a personal memoir it feels like her urge to be self-deprecating at times sells herself short.

She has a deep intellect and some incredible skill – in common with other PMs like Helen Clark and John Key – at mastering detail and ‘selling’ her message. Sometimes her skill manifested in surprising ways. You had to be there to see her answering questions at a press conference while, without missing a beat, surreptitiously texting advisers to clarify policy points that might come up.

But the focus on events that fed her international rep, and the short shrift given to the impact or wisdom of major economic decisions and political tides within her own government, will be disappointing to domestic, particularly politico-tragic, readers.

And there are some odd omissions.

She mentions ACT leader David Seymour was the only party leader from the House to speak to the occupation outside Parliament but not that her former deputy Winston Peters, then out of office, walked among them harvesting votes and spreading the word about his disgruntlement with Labour’s leadership.

NZ First leader Winston Peters visiting the tent-city protest on Parliament grounds.

She explains how NZ First’s opposition led to her in 2019 kiboshing a capital gains tax (CGT), saying she took it off the table for the 2020 election. And she acknowledged she disappointed her finance minister and friend Grant Robertson and “left a significant problem in our tax system unresolved”.

In fact, she went much further than ruling it out for the 2020 election, saying she would not implement or campaign on a CGT while she was leader “not because I don’t believe in it, but because I don’t believe New Zealand does”.

It was a decision that crimped Labour’s ability to bring in a fairer tax system between 2020 and 2023 – when it had a clear one-party majority – and still bedevils the party as it seeks a way to tax the income from assets alongside tax on consumption and on income from labour.

However, she does confirm what is not widely understood – that despite her CGT “ban” she approved the work done by Robertson and then revenue minister David Parker on a wealth tax/personal tax switch (before her replacement, Chris Hipkins, put it to the sword).

The crux of how a popular government so quickly lost support, as the support for its Covid management quickly waned, comes down to the clear, but flawed, belief within government that the public wanted an unwavering focus on the response to Covid. On the ninth floor of the Beehive, it was described as “public relations 101” – deliver simple clear messages through one or two voices and trim away all other distractions.

So, the public face of the Government was limited to Ardern, Robertson and in time Chris Hipkins supported by Ashley Bloomfield and other health experts.

It may or may not be the right way to handle a crisis in a single government agency – such as the Reserve Bank - or a public relations snafu in a sports team or private business.

But in what universe was it a good idea during a pandemic and a national crisis to banish to Northland then deputy prime minister Winston Peters, who was the leader of the coalition partner who put you in office, and send your health minister Dr David Clark home to Dunedin? All the while, putting other government business and policy development on the backburner and out of the public eye – feeding the opposition narrative that Labour and Ardern were big on consultation but small on delivery; all talk, no walk.

So, after the 2020 election, when the Covid crisis eventually faded, (but as support for the response ebbed), there was too little to fall back on. Public criticism focused on the leadership that had hogged the limelight and blamed them for Covid restrictions that only ended in August 2023.

Meanwhile, policy was implemented only slowly, allowing the incoming coalition to go on a repeal-fest before many policies were bedded in.

And Winston Peters was fuming.

But all that – the economics and the politics behind the personal - will obviously have to wait for another book.

What do you think? Email sundayletters@stuff.co.nz. Please include your full name and address.