Jacinda Ardern’s Legacy is a Battle Between Decolonisation and Re-colonisation
And The Implications For Global Governance
Future Perspectives Newsletter is a round-up of my essays from the frontier
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I’ve broken with the bi-weekly cadence to write my perspective on Jacinda Ardern’s resignation as a migrant living in New Zealand married into a kiwi family (of farming stock), and working with many business owners.
While the poster child of liberal democracy still maintains a “100% Pure” façade to the international press it’s a different story living in New Zealand.
Successive government policies over the past decade have torn the fabric of a society established with a ‘fair go’ and classless ethos by the Victorian diaspora who colonized it as a British Utopia.
International reactions to Ardern’s resignation have been largely gushing, however she leaves with NZ’s unity at a postwar low-ebb amid manifold ‘crises’:
housing bubble (and burst)
youth mental health/suicide
The End of Utopia?
During her tenure The Kiwi Dream has become a delusion as two distinct tiers of citizens are pitted against each other for generations to come:
Māori Vs non-Māori (aka. Pākehā)
Landowners Vs non-landowners
During her time in office, Ardern’s politics (sometimes described as Woke) has openly prioritised the former, such as changing the name of the country in all public services to Aotearoa New Zealand, while discretely courting foreign ‘ultra-high net worth individuals’ to buy NZ residency and allowing the country to be asset stripped of farms, mines, forests by overseas private equity.
Ardern is now primed to follow the path of her antecedent, Helen Clarke, for an influential role at the UN or the WEF where she was long ago ordained a Young Global Leader, alongside her peer Justin Trudeau.
The New Land Wars
Since the late 80s, particularly the infamous ‘87 stockmarket crash, kiwis went all in on property investment as a way to build wealth, which in the past decade turned to pure speculation just like the country’s 1890s Gold Rush.
Perhaps it’s a legacy mentality.
Over the same period, the government has been compensating Māori for the land forfeited to the Crown (or mistakenly signed over to the British) under the Treaty of Waitangi, and the Crown Tribunals continue making financial reparations and land reclamations.
From a Pakeha perspective — as an Irish migrant married into a white kiwi farming family and working with many small business owners — the government is now overcompensating in every aspect of Māori life in education, politics, culture, healthcare, business and tilting the playing field.
Under Ardern, Labour have habitually referred to co-governance (working with Maori tribes) in managing the country, most controversially the country’s water resources.
For instance, Māori-owned businesses are often favoured for government contracts and they also only pay half the corporate tax rate as non-Māori owned companies.
While the country has been one of the few (only?) colonial success stories, it is now caught between two opposing forces of decolonisation and re-colonisation.
The political pendulum has swung strongly towards the former over the past 6 years and will either swing more aggressively back the opposite direction this election year (2023) or go further left — until it breaks.
What is decolonisation?
The process of decolonisation in NZ has been underway in all but name for over a decade (here is a good primer you want to learn more about the process and ideology of decolonisation).
This includes the revision of recorded historical events in textbooks; revising the university curriculum; corporate diversity hiring; corporate apologies for colonial workplace culture; the preeminence of indigenous culture and language in all aspects of life from government communication and to kindergarten curriculum.
At the same time the country continues to be recolonised by Ultra High Net Worth Individuals from the US, EU and China who can buy residency for $10m. It is also being recolonised by the children and grandchildren of landowners, farmers and landlords (Pakeha) who are now inheriting a windfall of several generations of wealth — all completely untaxed.
This has created what one NZ economist calls a “new landed gentry” and an elite class of “opportunity hoarders”, described by another.
The safe haven where US billionaires build bunkers to hide out when Western civilisation collapses now faces the same social and economic decay as the US: soaring wealth inequality, rentier capitalism, declining education, a speculative housing bubble and wokeism/cancel culture in politics and education.
These factors have accelerated since the pandemic began.
The Future of Global Governance
From its colonial beginnings the country has been something of a social experiment in neoliberal economics and democracy. It is possible that any success stories here will give governments and central banks around the world new data points to base their plans on.
Often described as “progressive” NZ has a history of setting trends for liberal democracies: the first country to accord women voting rights; the first central bank to set an inflation target in its mandate; and, more recently, Jacinda Ardern became the world’s youngest female head of state and the most lionised politician in recent memory.
So influential is she that she even joined the league of the Nelson Mandela book club for leading with ”Kindness and Empathy”.
She was ordained a WEF Young Global Leader nearly a decade ago and she appears to be primed for a big role at the UN.
Aside from the Zero-Covid policy the NZ government has announced several grandiose “world-first policies “over the past year:
Neutral carbon emissions by 2030
Zero Road deaths by 2025
Zero tobacco sales by 2025
Conclusion
Criticised at home for being authoritarian and bloating a centralised bureaucracy it will be interesting to see if these world-first policies inspire other liberal beacons.
On another note, NZ along with Canada and Australia, are the first and furthest along the decolonisation trend and what’s happening here is a fascinating clash of Western and indigenous cultures will probably play out on all continents.
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