Hope, Up In Smoke

Why I am feeling very nervous about Jacinda Ardern's leadership.

Before America was a full kleptocracy, Barack Obama faced criticism of campaigning as a blank screen to be projected on. “Hope and change” was his 2008 campaign message - A bumper sticker so vague that anyone could read whatever they wanted into it.

The political art of inspiring the masses with as little commitment as possible is a cynical skill to hone. Prior to watching the Prime Minister’s treatment of the cannabis referendum, I wouldn’t have accused her of this.

However for an entire election campaign, the hyper popular Jacinda Ardern refused to publicly state her position on legalising cannabis. She successfully ran down the clock and we went to the polls to vote on her and her party while she refused to state whether she was for or against a proposed law. This proposed law has profound justice, economic and health implications for the country. Now that the referendum results have been called, she has revealed she voted in favour of it.

With 53.1% voting No and 46.1% voting Yes in the preliminary results, that means if 3.5% of No voters switched, it’d be dead even. As yet uncounted Special Votes are expected to favour Yes, bringing the final result even closer together. That result is going to be so close that it is VERY easy to imagine her public announcement for the personal position she held would have changed the outcome.

Instead, we had an American-funded disinformation campaign lying about the proposed law, which you can read about in an earlier piece I wrote. As a result, the Prime Minister is now in with the minority and we’re stuck in the quagmire of prohibition which is enriching criminals, preventing access to medicine, sending otherwise upstanding (and overwhelmingly brown) citizens to jail and depriving hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenue from our country every year. Based on international experience, it also would have seen our terrible alcohol consumption lowered - something with direct ramifications to domestic violence and road toll statistics.

By failing to declare her view on cannabis legalisation, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has put herself on the wrong side of history on this issue in spite of her personal vote.

She leads the Labour Party who now have sole domain of Government for the next three years. To have a leader who gets the benefit of listening to the best experts and personally knows what the right thing to do is but then refuses to expend a modicum of political capital to advocate for it, scares me. Our politicians are charged with synthesising the best advice, evidence and arguments into law on our behalf. It’s why we vote for representatives every three years, hearing where their values and capabilities lie and choosing the best people for this job based on their declarations and track record.

We are facing massive, imminent challenges - None greater than the climate crisis. For anything close to adequate action, it’s going to take courage to do the right thing over the popular thing. We’re going to need to listen to scientists and experts. Kicking off a Parliamentary term with the approach we just saw from Jacinda Ardern makes me really nervous about her leadership.

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