Jacinda Ardern: not a record to be proud of

Let's assume Jacinda Ardern's drawing stumps is to be taken at face value: gotta admire a politico who resigns because they reckon they've had enough.  Most of them have never had enough - of power - and make spectacles of themselves (or worse) as they cling on.

That's just about as far as my charity towards her extends.  

So what has her 5-year rule encompassed?  Two truly shocking developments have worsened noticeably on her watch.

The first, and most strategic, is NZ's handing itself over to the Chinese.  You can readily research this for yourself.  Yeah yeah, we understand the geography: and plenty of others have taken the Chinese billion-shilling.  But NZ has completely sunk itself.  Is it recoverable?  I dunno: the revived combo of USA/UK/Oz might be able to offer an escape strategy, perhaps with Japan and a few other Asian countries that also don't enjoy Xi's ever-expanding colonial outreach.  I hope so.

The second is more subtle but, in its way, equally pernicious: the thoroughgoing intellectual surrender to government-enforced woke nonsense - possibly the worst in the western world (though somebody may have another candidate for that).  This includes the crazy business of insisting (and we do mean insisting, particularly in the education system) that "Maori science" is "true science", infecting even the NZ Royal Society.   In the spirit of open-minded curiosity, I'm all for obtaining the best available insights from traditional wisdom and holistic metaphorical world-views, which often give deeply worthwhile perspectives: but "true"?  In the context of science, only on the basis of successfully coming through the usual "western" intellectual scrutiny.  Not so many creation myths (etc) will pass that test.  Determined war needs to be waged on this rubbish.

Ardern herself may only have presided over these dreadful developments: maybe she bemoans them privately, I don't know.  But - it has still been on her watch.

An interesting insight comes from one of her responses to questions: 

Asked how she would like New Zealanders to remember her leadership, Ardern said “as someone who always tried to be kind”.

I often think that the only vaguely creditworthy sentiment associated with the mindless pandering to the more extreme demands of, e.g. "trans rights", is a well-meaning, if ill-considered desire to "be kind".  He thinks he's a girl - let's not upset him.  Well, kindness and consideration have their important place in human affairs.   Always worth revisiting Monty Python's Life of Brian on this: the way Reg's anti-Roman groupuscule tries to accommodate Stan's wish to be called Loretta - and have babies.  They're trying to be kind.  (And it's bloody funny.)

But kindness is sometimes not enough (and Reg's last word is still the last word).  Let's see if something better can follow at the hands of new leadership.

ND

AUKUS - welcome news indeed

Back in June I wrote here [OK, Cold War It Is]:

Joe, you and your new posse gotta rescue already-suborned New Zealand, and make Australia feel a lot more comfortable with its situation.  Fast.  Otherwise it'll be clear that your reach is only to those lazy countries that are a comfortable distance away from the coming action in the Far East.   And even they will still be defending their precious Sino-exports and graduate-student fee income, hoping nobody will notice or mind too much.

He was listening!  And now we have AUKUS, replete with new nuclear subs for Oz.  (Gotta love the choice of name: not sure AUSUK would have worked at all ...  At least someone was giving half a thought to the matter.)

A bit of context.  What has recently become common parlance as "the Five-Eyes (intelligence) community" is officially AUSCANUKUS, with the 'Aus' being Australasia.  (You will sometimes find people, e.g. Wiki, inserting an 'NZ' but that's technically spurious.)  Sadly, NZ has been so thoroughly suborned by China, they've effectively self-selected themselves out of the inner circle; and we have to guess Canada had no particular reason to be in on this latest one.  Pity, but there it is.

Now to the reactions.  China very hostile, natch: say no more.  France, hahah!  Crocodile tears all around.  They were screwing up their own Oz-deal, and had it coming.  What are they going to say to us - if you don't back-track, we'll let all those refugees sail across the Channel?  (Oh, wait a minute ...)   In fact, what we'll be saying to them is: pipe down, Johnny Frog, or we'll leave those troops of yours in Central Africa with no helicopter support or aerial reconnaissance.

And everyone else on the world stage?  Well, by Heaven, after the Afghan debacle, something had to be done, or else the Taiwanese and many others besides would have been starting to make their accommodations.  Let's hope there are several other good ideas where this one came from rolling out over the weeks and months - most especially including something significant and soon for New Zealand, please.  As often noted here before: the lines of logistics in politics - particularly in foreign policy - can be very short.  Imagination is everything.

Which brings us to the Labour Party - which rushed to applaud the whole thing!  With a speed that must leave plenty of domestic lefties just reeling.  Even the Graun is more or less onside, even if leaving themselves a bit of equivocal wriggle-room.  (Gad, these people are so easily blindsided!)  We can expect some pushback to this amusingly tame position, I expect, in the run-up to Party Conference.  (Perhaps Starmer's Lotto crowd plans to make it yet another dividing line for advancing their really quite ruthless purge.)

Anyhow: credit where it's due - hats off to Biden this time.  

(I reserve the right to call him senile again if he drops the ball next time, though.)

ND