INFANTILE POLITICS

Jacinda Ardern's cautiously centrist politics were on the full display at the United Nations.

I HAVE FRIENDS WHO LIVE IN NEW YORK, most of them politically clued up and more besides, and none of them were aware that the New Zealand Prime Minister was in town. The mainstream media was pretty much dominated by the tussle over Brett Kavanaugh's advancement to the bench of the Supreme Court and the usual Trump shenanigans. And maybe the sentencing of sex offender Bill Cosby intruded in there somewhere as well. Yet Wendy Petrie informed me on the six o'clock news bulletin that Jacinda Ardern was the talk of the town, embraced by all. Fake news indeed.

While the New Zealand mainstream media and the blogosphere thought she was great, Ardern performed as one would of expected of a cautiously centrist politician; she turned up on time, she didn't knock over any of the furniture and she delivered her lines. Even Stephen Colbert of The Late Show couldn't coax her to go 'off script' and she expressed exactly no opinion on Donald Trump and his policies, negative or otherwise. She did make the point though that she wasn't one of those laughing at Trump at the United Nations General Assembly. Apparently she just 'observed'. Gosh.

While commentators as diverse as Newstalk ZB's Tim Roxburgh, TVNZ's Hilary Barry, University of Canterbury academic Brownyn Hayward and Martyn Bradbury of The Daily Blog 'ooohed and aaahed' over the startling fact that Ardern took her child to the United Nations, little mention was made of just how poor her speech actually was to the General Assembly. In fact some commentators thought it was 'fantastic', like Mitch Harris of Radio Live. But, then again, Harris also supported the invasion of Iraq.

While New Zealand has always prided itself on its so-called 'independent' foreign policy Ardern made zero effort to assert that claimed 'independence' in front of her fellow world leaders. She didn't speak out about Trump embracing the demands of the militaristic and authoritarian Israeli regime at the expense of the Palestinian people. She didn't speak out against the economic war that Trump is waging against Venezuela in an effort to topple its democratically elected government. She had nothing to say abut the atrocities that US-backed Saudi Arabia is committing in Yemen. Ardern couldn't even find it in herself to condemn Trump's dismal denial of climate change, even though she says climate change is the issue of her generation.

While the chattering class might of thought her time in New York was 'a triumph', it was more confirmation that, as far as new ideas are concerned and a determination to take on the status quo, Jacinda Ardern has little to offer.