Newsletter 2

This morning the 19th of January, 2023 I woke up in the UK to learn that Jacinda Adern, the prime minister of New Zealand had announced her resignation and announced Saturday 14 October?2023?as the?election?date.

Is this the Age of Futility?

Many potential voters, particularly the young who have given up on the dream of home ownership have nothing to believe in anymore. Labour should represent something more than a better softer market-led Toryism.?Blair and Brown tried it but neoliberal capitalism and market economics?aren't trusted any more by a wide enough spectrum of potential Lab voters to deliver the things they're most concerned about, a green transition and an end to unrestrained inequality.?

Humans have undertaken animal agriculture and hunted the oceans treating whales as raw materials at nature's cost for thousands of years. Humanity has to learn not to live as a parasite killing the earth but to tread softly and give back to nature. There is scope to revolutionise our fundamental relationship to soil, food, money and government that has stood since the dawn of civilization.

The anxiety about just about everything related to the environment, climate change, habitat and soil loss, food and fuel security and biodiversity is so widespread now, that it's time to put the nation on a war footing to treat the situation like the emergency that it is. I'm not asking for martial law to be imposed but the imminent risks and the emergency faced by future generations must be taken seriously by this generation in this decade.

Major fossil fuel companies and the mega wealthy want, like everyone to do what's needed to save the earth, nature and our life support systems. They are ready to be turned over to play their part. The assets and incomes shared equitably would go a long way to reducing the sense of despair.??

Whole areas of production should be simplified so that products are renewable, can be repaired and nothing is thrown away, any available bodied person should be employed to:

- insulate homes,

- replace all coalfired heating systems with hydrogen or electric power

- fence off and plant wetlands, waterways and highland areas for rewilding and regen ag in which the large ruminant herbivore to land ratio is reduced to the sustainable level of .23/ha and the land and oceans may be saved from destruction.

And yet the headlines and airwaves today are filled with adulation for Jacinda's intelligent, science based, bold, heartfelt and courteous style of leadership. Some have described her as New Zealand's best leader ever, an international example along with the charismatic Finnish leaver Sanna Marin.

Ardern, Labour and the Greens, in coalition, narrowly won the 2017 New Zealand election after Key stood aside and National appointed is career finance minister Bill English who failed to grab the nation's attention like Ardern. She was hailed internationally as an example for attending ceremonies in Maori cloak in London while pregnant, having a child shortly after taking power and bringing her (Neve Te Aroha) to the UN. She and Labour won an outright majority in 2020 but remained in coalition with Greens, her personal popularity and that of Labour has waned domestically.

While in power she has had a series of disasters to cope with including the 2019 Christchurch Mosque shooting in which she famously said of the victims "they are us", less than a week later she enacted firearms controls which banned military-style rifles and social media anti terror "hate speech" controls. The government's reaction to the 2019 White Island/Whakaari volcano eruption was weak and private operators had to refuse flight control orders to rescue survivors, but Ardern praised them and led the nations mourning.

I consider her standout achievement was establishing the virtually unanimous parliamentary consensus around the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Act 2019 (which amended the Climate Change Response Act 2002 that had implemented NZ's emissions trading scheme) and put the Paris Agreement into effect with the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees. However, Jacinda's premiership, to end in February, 2023, will be best remembered for her decisive reaction to the Covid 19 pandemic.

Pandemic Response

When the pandemic struck, she reacted strongly coining the phrase "go hard and go early", which perhaps rang true in New Zealand as it sounds like a Rugby scrum technique. She began daily briefings with the director general of health, Dr Ashley Bloomfield, imposed an alert-level system that saw the country closed off from the world. First, in February 2020 flights to and from China and then Iran were restricted and citizens were repatriated. The following month the borders were effectively closed to non-citizens. A four-tier alert level system was introduced to take effect a few days later that placed the country into lockdown. Users of mobile phones heard them being co-opted to emit emergency alert fog horn blasts to warn them that lock-down restrictions were coming into effect in a few hours.

The track, trace and elimination strategy was successful and in early June the lockdown restrictions were lifted in June, 2020 although the international border restrictions remained in place. When outbreaks occurred, in August 2020, travel restrictions were imposed on parts of the Waikato and Auckland.

These were lifted in Early October, 2020. The international border opened in November 2020 subject to 14 day managed isolation and testing A further outbreak in August 2021 but with close to 90% Pfiser vaccination and booster rates, the elimination strategy was phased out in 2021.

Is the Age of Futility over?

Jacinda, by announcing that her "tank is empty" and stepping aside, gives her party time to find a replacement. Quitting while ahead she leaves her brand intact. She leaves an example and a message of hope. Youth and particularly young indigenous women the world over have an example and a positive antidote to the paralysis of anxiety. Take action and positive change is possible.

The closest MP to her type may be the country's inspirational Auckland Central Green MP Chloe Swarbrick but having led the very close but lost Marijuana decriminalisation referendum is more aligned to the Green agenda.

Change is in the air with the pendulum having swung from the centre left under Labour's Helen Clark to the centre right under the almost three terms of John Key from 2008-2016, and then left again for two terms of Ardern's Labour-Green coalition. The 2023 election is the right-leaning National Party's, currently poling 5% ahead of Labour, alone or in coalition with NZ First, to lose.