Dame Jacinda Ardern

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1:28Every once in a while you meet a hero you've admired for years, someone you feel you love from afar. For me, it was the Right Honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern. As Prime Minister, Jacinda passed the Zero Carbon Act, committed to cutting child poverty to half, expanded paid parental leave, implemented a child food program, and much, much more. She guided New Zealand through the white supremacist attack on two mosques at Christchurch, and the pandemic where the world saw a leader proving that compassion and rigor can be a governing principle. I run a restaurant, she runs a country, but we both navigate by following the same bright stars.

2:11Today we're here together in the River Cafe, a hero I finally met, a woman I can justifiably now say I love. It's a beautiful intro. Thank you. It's true, it's absolutely true. So it's one thing to be prime minister of a country. It's one thing to be an author of a great book. And now you also have written your own children's book. Yes. And you also have a documentary, which is I'm dying to see, which is on posters everywhere. Tell me about, you know, what you've been doing lately. Well, the children's, I mean, the children's book, a lot easier to write than the adults book, But it's based on conversations I used to have with my daughter.

2:55And I decided to turn it into a book because, you know, when you're a working parent, you know, you face these questions from your kids that make you realize that maybe they use the way you spend your time as a measure of your love. And I wanted something that would convey to her that, yes, yes, I work. But there's nothing that's as important to me as her. and our relationship. And so it's called Mum's Busy Work, and I thought there was a little gap because I never found anything as a working parent that had that messaging. Is that published here? Is it published worldwide? It is, it is. You can get that.

3:37It's published in the UK. It's about M-U-M, but you can also get it in America with an M-O-M. The documentary, my husband's a broadcaster, and so when I became prime minister, he just picked up a camera and just caught moments behind the scenes. At that time, I think it was both in our heads that would have some record for our family. But then when I left office, these conversations started about whether or not it might be something else. And so it's a documentary now. It's called Prime Minister, and it's in the UK, and cinema is from the 5th of December. Great. And we can see it on television?

4:16You can see it in cinema. If you're in the US, you can see it on HBO Max. On HBO. Yeah. Yeah. Did you enjoy doing it? Did you, were you involved? Well, so, I mean, I guess to say, did you enjoy doing it? It's like, did you enjoy being prime minister? Because it's very, it's very intimate. It's very much behind the scenes. And I hope a bit of a window into what it's like to lead. Yeah. And so I didn't, I found it a hard watch because it's very realistic. So I've only seen the final version just the one time. Oh, really? You didn't? Yeah, I watched it at Sundance with everyone else. Yeah, wow. Yeah, so it's a lot.

4:58But, you know, I watched it and I thought, yeah, that was what it was like. Yeah. I don't know where the Prime Minister lives in New Zealand. Do you have a palace? Do you have a house? Do you have an apartment? What do you have? So we have this beautiful home in New Zealand called Premier House, which is on and off through its history being used as the home where the Prime Minister of the day lives. But in its not too distant history, it was a dental training school. And I met people who would say, I used to get my teeth done in the house that you're living in. And so on the ground floor, it's got some event space.

5:32And so actually civil servants and different groups would use it. I'd often come home and there might be people in the downstairs and they would just trot upstairs to the first floor apartment where we would live. And it had a basic little kitchen in it. But you didn't have a chef who cooked it? No, no. So you had to take care of your own food. Yeah, so we would, there's a great chef in New Zealand called Nadia Lim, and she started meal bags and meal kits called My Food Bag. And we would use that because, you know, it was fresh ingredients and it was easy and it just meant that we could cook something at home in 30 minutes.

6:07Clark did our cooking for the most part. And so that's where those meal bags. Why do you think that is? I wonder why the value on having the highest elected official in the country not be fed by... I think in New Zealand, and I appreciate this about New Zealand, we're pretty unhierarchical. We like to know that if you're a member of parliament that you're being careful with taxpayers' money. And we also, I think one of the great things about the prime ministership in New Zealand is you keep your proximity to people. So, you know, I would still go to the grocery store. And yeah, and you'd have great conversations with people.

6:51It would take a little longer. You know, I'd still drive myself places when I could. And so... It's very cool, isn't it? So the shift back to not being in that role isn't the hugest leap in the world. You don't have security following you around anymore, but that's probably quite a good thing. But you definitely don't, you know, So you have more time to cook. How many women prime ministers were there before you? Two. Two. First one was in the mid-1990s, and that was Ginny Shipley. And then the second one, the longest serving, was Helen Clark. And she was first elected in 1999 and served nine years, three times.

7:29And so not too distant history. She was the first prime minister I ever voted for, was Helen Clark. And so a real gift to have two other women in front of me. Do you think? I think so. Why? A gift because it meant that I wasn't breaking that particular glass ceiling. You know, there'd been women before me. I didn't feel like I had to prove that you could be a female leader and be competent. Yeah. That had been well proven. I think instead what I ended up testing was the types of qualities you could bring as a leader. You know, these ideas of compassion whilst still conveying strength. You know, those were things people, I think, really questioned.

8:12And I was very visibly, I mean, we've had parents, obviously, as Prime Minister before. But I had a baby. You had a baby. So that was very pronounced, I guess. Tell me about that. What was it like having a baby as, you couldn't get maternity leave, I suppose. Well, it was a funny thing because we'd extended maternity leave. And then the question was, would I take it? And I said, well, I didn't feel like that's something that I could do, you know, because obviously it's a very particular job. So I took six weeks. And I remember just having, there was no precedent. I just had to, before I had my daughter, make a guess of what would be about right.

8:49And I chose six weeks because generally the guidelines for before you could say drive if you had a C-section. And I thought, well, okay. You'd had a C-section. No, I hadn't had any. So I just had to guess. I thought, what if? What if? Oh, I see. With a C-section. How long before I can physically do things? What's the bare minimum? Six weeks. I thought, six weeks. And so I picked that as a bit of a just in case. I was also very aware that I was, the technical term, a geriatric mother. You were what? Medically, they call you a geriatric mother. How old were you? I was 37. Yeah, yeah. So many things.

9:30I remember thinking, well, who decided that that was the term? And how do we get it changed? And so I remember thinking as soon as I got that label, oh, does that mean everything's going to be harder? I had no baseline. I don't even have one. Did they ever call you up during your maternity leave and say, can you take this call from someone? Well, more I think probably accurately would be how many times did I call others? I never really let go Oh you didn't? No I didn't feel like I should I was not public facing You know Most of it Doing it at home From a chair My daughter was jaundiced When she first arrived So there was a lot of her Lying in the sun on my lap Yeah Nice But still doing papers And fun courses And you took her to the UN Didn't you?

10:21Yeah Can you describe that visit To the UN? Well she was four months old So it was just Necessity more than anything You know, I was still breastfeeding It was too long to be without her And did you take her actually into the General Assembly? Well, so when I, it had been part of, you know When I was over speaking or had meetings She might come over in case I needed to breastfeed But on the particular day where she was photographed I was speaking at an event in honour of Nelson Mandela And it was on the General Assembly floor And we hadn't planned to bring her I whipped over there because I was running late and then as I came down off the floor I saw that Clark had brought her over and he was just waiting in the sidelines with her and so I went and sat in the seat designated for New Zealand and he came over and sat next to us and I grabbed her and was holding her.

11:12There weren't many people on the General Assembly floor and then I just heard and I thought what in blue blazes is that? And I asked the representative for New Zealand to the UN and he said, oh, up in the wings. You couldn't see. There were these kind of closed off bits up in the wings. He said, oh, the media sit up there. And, you know, I didn't pay much attention because I couldn't see them. But sure enough, they were taking photos of us. And you can tell that, you know, we're kind of caught off guard because I have this awful look on my face. I'm making baby faces. You know, I'm looking around at the clicking noises.

11:53but I hope when people see those photos they see the people around me because they were the ones that were making my job possible yeah I wonder if she's the first baby to sit in that incredibly beautiful room apparently yes apparently she is yeah I went there on school trips and I was so moved by going into that building amazing the history of it and the wood have you been there since then or was that your one in only time? Yeah, I have several times and one of the things that always grabs me is that in one of the walkways in there are traditional Māori panels that have been gifted and so there's this magnificent and often overwhelming space.

12:33Here's this piece of home that you can see as you move through the building. What are they? They're a type of panel that you would see in what we would call marae or Maori meeting spaces in New Zealand where there's weavings over the top of wood panelings and they've been gifted to the UN over the years. There's a number of different cultural pieces around the building from different parts of the world but these Maori panels are quite prominently placed and so that my memory, my first memory of being at the UN was seeing this piece of home and feeling incredibly proud to represent New Zealand and after that visit with my daughter New Zealand co-sponsors now a breastfeeding space in the UN building good because that kind of thing didn't really exist, I remember Clark changing Neve in a meeting space and a delegation came in to have a meeting and Clark is trying to change Neve on a table so it's a small little legacy Talking about the food that you ate growing up in New Zealand and school, what your mother cooked.

13:45Tell me about Māori. The indigenous New Zealanders, Māori, are incredibly generous in the sharing of every aspect of Māori culture. And that includes food. Hangi is a traditional form of preparation. So the use of stones and cooking within the earth over a number of hours where you would cook pork or chicken and vegetables. And so you see lots of different iterations of hanging. And that culture still exists. Yep, absolutely. But there's been a number of other different dishes that are traditional to Maori culture. And I've tried to start a tradition with our daughter That when Matariki, the Maori New Year comes around That we'll make a more traditional dish What would you make?

14:38A really slow cooked soup Where you might slow cook pork over a number of hours And then add puha, which is a type of watercress to it At the end, maybe dumplings as well Sometimes are served with it But it's very warming because Māori New Year is celebrated. Is it the same time? So Māori New Year is based around harvest and the lunar calendar and sits around the June mark, which is New Zealand winter. Yeah. So, and we made that a national holiday in New Zealand when we were in office. Did you do that when you were in office? Yeah. You say that you're telling us in the kitchen that your grandparents, was it your grandparents who came from Scotland?

15:24My great-grandmother came from Scotland in 1913. She came out on the ship named the Tainui. By herself? With her son, with an eight-year-old child. And what happened? Well, she was divorced earlier that year, which I can't imagine would have been that common. I think divorced in January and on the boat by November. I'm divorcing you and going to New Zealand. I'm going to New Zealand. I know, that's really, that is really. She bought with her violin and her pistol and her son. Okay. So she came to New Zealand, married another Scotsman who was born in Australia, though, a McVicar, and had my nana.

16:09And she died when my nana was eight. And my nana then took the violin and the pistol. Do you still have them? We do. My nana gave me the violin when I was learning as a girl And so pretty special treasures But I think that must say a lot about her A lot I mean, a lot Yeah And I wonder how long that journey was Oh Like months and months Weeks Weeks and weeks and weeks Incredible though to say a woman on her own Yeah I've seen the ship manifest My mum's a genealogist She listed herself as a cook Oh, another cook Another cook Okay But her father was a policeman, which is what my father ended up doing as well.

16:53Yeah. So my great-grandmother came from Scotland. My great-great-grandfather came from Denmark. And then I've got other relatives who came from Ireland. And yet we're the only ones in their family. Every other sibling they had went to Syracuse, New York. No, Syracuse. And I cannot tell you why. Why, if all your family were going to New York, did you decide, nope, I'm sailing on. And knowing that you may never see them again is such bravery and courage. And it happens right now. People are leaving countries as brave and courageous refugees and traveling to other countries. The only issue is are they being welcomed and taken care of, as my relatives were.

17:43And, you know, I think we often forget that that decision to leave family, leave connection, leave your home. You know, those are big, hard decisions. You don't take those lightly. And for the most part, I think they are, as my great grandmother, would have been most likely driven by the idea of giving her son a better life. There's a lot of Scottish ancestry in New Zealand and particularly the South Island. When you go to the furthest southern parts of New Zealand, and they still roll their R's. It's a mean imitation. So, you know, in the South Island, they might say, instead of Survery, Survery.

18:25There's just a bit of a stronger R there, and it's credited to the connection with the Scottish ancestry.

19:10We'll see you next time. Peerliving.com. Equal housing opportunity. Let's talk about the book you wrote, A Different Kind of Power. Do you think that this background of your life led you into political? Because I also know that you had a very strong religious. You know, I think you're right. I think whether it's your ancestry, religion, your parents, so many of these things input into who we become. And so when I sat down to write, you know, a different kind of power, I remember having that question, that persistent question in my head that I'd get from people. How did you end up in politics? And how did you end up, you know, deciding that these were the values that mattered to you?

19:52And I don't think you can pinpoint a singular thing. And so I decided to write about all of it. And people will decide. My faith, I was raised Mormon. And I left in my early 20s. But I bear no resentment to having been raised in the church Because it gave me a set of values that are still really important to me It just happened to be that one that felt a bit inconsistent for me Was I believe in inclusivity I believed in people's right to be who they are without judgement And so the church's position on homosexuality I found hard so that caused me to to leave but my faith was also grounded in service yeah and I still carry that with me and a good healthy dose of of guilt that's a good mode of transport but um the so so you you just you know not many 17 or 19 year olds decide they want to be the leader of the labor party oh what did I what age what but you did you know or did that just grow into something?

21:01It kind of grew into something. I mean, I remember the things that I felt most sure I'd become. I mean, my friends would joke about me kind of, you know, being a politician. It's because I was the only friend they had that belonged to a political party. Yeah, well, that's what I meant. I was the odd one out. But no, I didn't see it as a career. You know, I remember, you know, in all those little diaries and little books that you fill in where it says career, I would write things like psychologist or writer or probably the closest alternate career I came to was being a policewoman. Yeah. I remember talking to my dad really seriously about it.

21:34I started doing the training. I don't know that I would ever have passed the physical, but I thought seriously I might. Was there a feeling that you wanted to travel because you came to London? Oh, yeah. And tell me about that. Well, I always, I mean, I remember being obsessed with the United States. And I wonder if in part that was my religion. I mean, culturally, it's, you know, it's home really is the U.S. And we had a lot of Mormon missionaries that would come through my very small town. And they would tell me tales of home. Yeah, yeah. Well, they would tell me about Arizona or Idaho or Utah, all the places they came from.

22:13And their family would send Kool-Aid or ranch dressing or, you know, they taught us how to make buffalo wings and told me about the Simpsons. And I remember just thinking, America sounds so magical. And so I used to think I would serve a mission so that I could go to America. So I remember always the idea of travel. So excited by it. But I just couldn't see how it would happen beyond going out and being a Mormon missionary. So it felt like there was a big barrier to that when I was a kid. But that isn't what you did. It isn't what I did, no. How did you get to the States? I saved up. I worked hard, saved my money, and then when I was 19, traveled to the States.

22:56By yourself? By myself. I remember that being a big, you know, a really big deal for me. It's a big deal. It is a big deal, that age to go so far. Do you remember the food in New York? Oh, yeah. I remember in particular I was still obsessed with buffalo wings. Yeah. In fact, as a kid, you know, when you live in a small town and it's birthday time, You didn't really have parties Or you know You just get to pick your birthday dinner at home I'd pick buffalo wings Every time And so eating buffalo wings At New York Did you go to restaurants Or did you I was in Arizona So I remember eating A lot of good Mexican food And I loved Mexican food I think I actually after I finished up in America the second time.

23:51I was heavier then than I was when I was nine months pregnant. Yeah, that'll do it. But you didn't go to Mexico. I did not. You have to go. I did not that time. I have been once. For me, people often ask me my favorite city, and they expect me to say Rome or Milan or Florence, and they are great cities. But for me, Mexico City. I had to live there for sort of four months, and discovered Mexican food in a very different way. It doesn't really translate so much. It's great, as you say, the food you get in the United States, the Mexican food. But when you get there, it's very kind of light and clean.

24:31It's delicious. I remember eating at a place called, I want to say it was Roses. And I think what I remember loving about it was just the simplicity of all the dishes. But they were just so good. And what about coming to England? Did you come to London? I came here in, well, first after, I worked as an advisor in politics, kind of stumbled into some of those jobs. By that time, you were how old when you came to London? When I came to London, I was 25. I first bought a one-way ticket to New York, thinking that was going to be my experience, but figured out how hard it is to get visas and find work.

25:08And so, of course, New Zealanders have the opportunity to take the working holiday visa in the UK. so I ended up coming over here and I lived here for about two and a half years Did you? In London? Yeah, I loved it. Tell me about it I lived I didn't want to do the traditional OE that New Zealanders do and they all live with New Zealanders and Australians so I think at the beginning I had one token English flatmate but then ended up with New Zealanders and Australians but I lived in Vauxhall and Fulham and then finished in Brixton and I worked in the British Civil Service and I loved it. I have lifelong friendships from my time here.

25:46What did you love about working for the book? I think just being here generally, I love the proximity to the rest of the world. And also there's something about being away from home that helps you solidify your identity. New Zealanders aren't traditional in their patriotism in lots of ways, but it really does come out when they're away. and you see the things that we value. What are they? I think we have a really finely tuned sense of fairness. I do think that we pride ourselves in our hospitality and so I think that means that we kind of instinctively look out for one another and for others if we are acting as host.

26:34I do think that We value Company You know We value The social side of life A bit And We appreciate sports A lot Yeah Yeah Yeah We also Our physical environment When you live in a city You kind of realise Oh that proximity to the beach Or those green spaces Or Just the freedom you have The freedom kids have Yeah You notice You notice the difference But living in London, did you feel that you loved London? I did, I did love it here And having come from New York I just noticed the difference in these two big cities What year was this? 2005 And I was here until about 2008 And so coming from these two big cities You notice when New York, a friend said this to me once Asks you every day if you really want to be there And I never felt like that in London you know there isn't that same unbottled rage that you sometimes get in New York it's all pent up in London yeah people love London so much and I do too but there's a very it's like different communities much more you kind of go between the different areas and communities and green you know the fact that it is so green.

27:57What's Auckland like? Is it a beautiful city? I think it's a beautiful city I do I mean it's it's you know it's the city of sails so the ocean is very important to the city I remember when um my now husband and I were first seeing each other he had a boat he's a fisherman and you know he took me out one afternoon we just popped out onto the Waitemata harbour and sailed for you know just didn't go that far and then suddenly we've got three or four snapper and a John Dory and there's and there's dolphins and there's a black petrol and And, you know, I remember him saying to me, he's like, it's not always like this.

28:34But it's just, yeah, it's beautiful in the islands nearby. It's, yeah, it is a beautiful city.

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