Man hurries into the Auckland airport’s domestic terminal and stops. It’s just not the place he once knew so well. Not many airport officers around to ask for directions but he does spot a tall Polynesian officer standing nearby. Man thinks he should know and so he stops and asks:
What will be the most enduring legacy of PM, Jacinda Ardern? Will it be the fact that she and her party won in a landslide in this year’s election? Well yes, that’s now history. The fact that she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize? Close – it indicates the regard held for her internationally.
But none of this goes to the core of what she stands for. And a large part of the answer to that lies in two little words she uttered when we first entered our first lockdown: ‘Be kind’ she said.
Elections are hard on old lefties like me. Even the glorious Labour Party win left me subdued when it became evident the National Party voters who lent their vote to Labour had a condition attached: Hands off our taxes. And as a National TV panellist noted with much satisfaction after the win, “We have a centrist government.”
The Me generation is usually identified as the one born after us. But there is no Me generation, only Me people and, as each elections cycle shows, the Me people always have a winning vote.
Yet the media focusses on political parties, their policies and their representatives, and, of course, speculation about who is going to win, as if the outcome is unpredictable. Yet we know beyond doubt who is going to win.