Jacinda The Untold Stories

ASKING THE HARD QUESTIONS

Drawing on more than 100 interviews and extensive research, journalists DAVID COHEN and REBECCA KEILLOR track the rise, fall and re-emergence of former NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern onto the global stage, just as the UN gears up to choose a new Secretary-General. With the world on a powderkeg, is Ardern up to the job?

The debate rages, still, around this polarising leader:

“We didn’t spend enough time debating serious things in Cabinet that I can recall...”
"She always made me sit up a bit straighter"

"By stealthily pushing co-governance Ardern has sparked deep animosities..." "...it fed the hunger that is now evident in the Māori Party.”
"By wearing a hijab and declaring ... ‘They are us’, she may well also have spared New Zealand bloody retaliation by Islamists."

“The marketing department was in overdrive but the operations department was almost non-existent.”
“For the first time in 40 years I voted Labour.”

"She agreed with a wide grin that she was creating two classes of people."
“...a uniting figure in her period of office.”

"...the ultimate vacuum-cleaner salesperson. Door-to-door, she was compelling in front of the housewives in Mount Albert."
“...inspired a lot of young people and a lot of women to feel that they had a very important role to play in political life.”

“I don't think any other prime minister has done as much damage.”
"Ardern saved tens of thousands of lives."