I DON'T feel any pressing need to read the new unofficial biography of former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Written by conservative journalist David Cohen with assistance from Canadian journalist Rebecca Keillor, it has been published by the Centrist, a right wing news website. It's owned by Canadian billionaire Jim Grenon, who also has an 18 percent shareholding in NZME, the owner of the NZ Herald and Newstalk ZB. It doesn't come as any surprise, then, that Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking interviewed Cohen on his breakfast show this week and heaped lavish praise on the book.
Jacinda: The Untold Stories has been seized upon by those who still nurse a long list of grievances about Arden. Yet their fixation on her persona, long after she has left office, exposes the hollowness of their project. Sean Plunket, for instance, has built an entire media platform on railing against 'wokeness,' but when it comes to the structural issues that define New Zealand today—skyrocketing rents, stagnant wages, and the collapse of public services—he has nothing to say. His outrage is a sideshow, a distraction from the economic realities that are grinding down working people. The website of The Platform urges people to 'join the resistance', but what exactly are they supposed to be 'resisting'?
The Free Speech Union, too, has positioned itself as a defender of liberty against the supposed tyranny of political correctness. But its campaigns are almost exclusively about the right to offend, not the right to live with dignity. Where is their crusade for the freedom of people living on the streets because housing has become unaffordable? Where is their defence of workers whose 'freedom' is curtailed by insecure contracts and poverty pay? Their silence on these matters speaks volumes. They are not fighting for freedom in any meaningful sense; they are fighting for relevance in a debate that has already moved on.
And then there is Winston Peters, the perennial populist who has reinvented himself countless times but always returns to the same formula: stoking resentment, railing against liberal elites, and promising to restore a mythical past. His recent forays into anti-woke rhetoric are no different. Yet Peters’ politics, like those of his fellow travellers, are yesterday’s politics. They are the politics of grievance without vision, of noise without solutions. They can whip up headlines, generate a little clickbait, but they cannot answer the fundamental question facing New Zealand: how do we build an economy that works for everyone?
Because that is where the real battle now lies. The culture war has faded, not because its combatants have conceded, but because material reality has overtaken it. Inequality in New Zealand is at levels not seen in decades. Child poverty remains stubbornly high. Food banks are overwhelmed. Public hospitals are stretched to breaking point. The promise of home ownership has evaporated for an entire generation. These are not abstract debates about language or statues; they are the lived experiences of hundreds of thousands of people. And they demand answers that the anti-woke crusaders are incapable of providing.
The irony is that by clinging to their culture war scripts, Ardern’s critics only highlight their irrelevance. They rail against a ghost while the country moves on. The terrain of politics has shifted decisively to questions of economic justice, redistribution, and public ownership. The energy that once animated debates about 'cancel culture' is now being channelled into demands for rent controls, wealth taxes, and investment in public housing. The future of New Zealand politics will not be decided by those who shout loudest about wokeness, but by those who can articulate a credible alternative to neoliberal failure. The failure of Jacinda Ardern's Labour Government to provide that alternative is the story that Cohen doesn't tell.
David Cohen’s biography may have reignited the familiar chorus of Ardern-bashing, but it has also revealed the exhaustion of that chorus. Sean Plunket, the Free Speech Union, Winston Peters—these are yesterday’s people, fighting yesterday’s war. The real struggle is not over pronouns, but over who controls wealth and power in this country. And on that front, the anti-woke brigade have nothing to offer. Their silence on poverty and inequality is not accidental; it is the logical consequence of a politics that was never about justice in the first place.
New Zealand does not need another round of culture war theatrics. It requires a politics that confronts the obscene concentration of wealth, that rebuilds public services, that ensures every child grows up with security and hope. The anti-woke brigade cannot deliver that. They are relics of a fading era, shouting into the void while the rest of us turn to the urgent task of building something better.
Did you actually read the book, Steven? I have, and I ask because it has a tonne of content on the economy, housing, poverty, abuse, education, and other critical voter matters.
ReplyDelete"The failure of Jacinda Ardern's Labour Government to provide that alternative is the story that Cohen doesn't tell."
I said that I haven't read it. David Cohen, given his right wing politics, is hardly going to provide a commentary on the failure of neoliberalism. His view on Ardern is that she was 'Machiavellian', which is conspiratorial BS.
DeleteThanks, Steven,
DeleteI strongly encourage you to at least pick it up and read a few pages before judging it by it's cover. You've made several assumptions which are not correct.
1) David Cohen, and Rebecca Keillor, have been very full, fair, and factual in their deep analysis. Remember that he interviewed 100 different voices across the political spectrum across two years of research.
2) This isn't and never was a book about the pros and cons of neoliberalism. It's a book about Jacinda Ardern. The formative influencers which shaped her politics, her politics, policies, and performance (for better and worse), and how she's reinvented herself again for new global roles.
3) Hosking said she was "Machiavellian" in that interview, not Cohen. Cohen said he disagreed with Hosking and felt she was more "adjacent" and "taken along with the tide" when it came to policy design.
Fair points?