Consider This from NPR - How New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern broke the political mold

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

Whether it was her history making win in 2017.Or the history she made as only the second woman elected to lead a country to give birth while IN office.Or her decision to step away from power after leading New Zealand through crisis after crisis.Jacinda Ardern could never be described as a TYPICAL politician. But perhaps the most norm-busting feature of her time as Prime Minister was her rejection of the old ways of leadership.Now as she reflects on her time as Prime Minister of New Zealand Ardern is emphasizing the need to lead with kindness and empathy. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I feel extraordinarily honored and privileged to be in the position to form a government with Labour at the lead. Whether it was her history-making win in 2017… We campaigned hard on issues that we believe strongly on, and now we take very seriously the responsibility that we have to deliver on them. Or the history she made as only the second woman elected to lead a country to give birth while in office. Maybe you've all had a calming effect, she's just finally going to sleep.

All right, welcome everyone, thanks for coming and joining us today. It's a real pleasure to introduce our little one to you all, and to New Zealand. Or her decision to step away from power. And so today I'm announcing that I will not be seeking re-election. And that my term as Prime Minister will conclude no later than the 7th of February.

After leading New Zealand through crisis after crisis. I know what this job takes, and I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It's that simple. Jacinda Ardern could never be described as a typical politician, but perhaps the most norm-busting feature of her time as Prime Minister was her rejection of the old ways of leadership. I don't think we should differentiate from the values that we think are important enough

to teach our kids. And most of us teach our kids kindness. We teach them generosity, curiosity, bravery, and then we have this bizarre distinction where we then don't expect it in our leaders, let alone our political leaders. And I think we should. Consider this. As Jacinda Ardern reflects on her time as Prime Minister of New Zealand, she's emphasizing the need to lead with kindness and empathy. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly. It's Consider This from NPR. Jacinda Ardern tells a story about being locked in a political campaign, seven weeks to go

before elections, and she's about to do a TV news interview. Ardern had just taken over as leader of the Labour Party in New Zealand. If they won, she would become Prime Minister. And as she waited for her live hit, she listened as the male sports anchor opined that she and all women seeking new jobs should be open about their reproductive plans. That was the bit that got me. And I think that was because I'd talked openly about wanting a family. But to assert that any woman should be asked that, I really rebelled against that. That upset me.

What did you do? Well, I pulled out my index finger and I pointed at him quite a lot. Whilst really clearly asserting, you can ask me that question, but it is totally inappropriate. And then it was 2017 to imply that any woman should have to answer that question with an employer. Jacinda Ardern's party won the election. She became Prime Minister and she describes that 2017 TV exchange and her new memoir, A Different Kind of Power. It's one of many moments that let you glimpse what it was like to be a young woman running a country. When I sat down with Ardern earlier this week, I also asked about a moment

that took place a few weeks later in a bathroom. You're sitting on the closed seat of the toilet. Yeah, it's pretty glamorous. And you're scared to death because you're waiting to learn two things. Yeah. What were they? Ah, so this was right in the middle of coalition negotiations. Our systems are like the German one. You don't always know on election night if you've won or not. So I was waiting to find out whether or not I was going to become the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

And in that moment, I was also waiting to find out if I was pregnant. Quite a time. Yeah. Yeah. Many of us who have been pregnant have battled morning sickness. Yes. Few of us had to run a country while doing so. I loved your line about that it was salt and vinegar potato chips that got you through. It was Cheetos for me.

I could never eat them again. I don't know if you can still face salt and vinegar crisp. I was also thinking, and you capture, there were very few people you could ask. Yeah. You were only the second person to give birth while holding elected office at the top of a government. Benazir Bhutto was the first. Yes, that's right. You asked Queen Elizabeth.

I did ask Queen Elizabeth. And you know, really, she just completely straight-faced. She just said, well, you just get on with it. And there was just something about that. I thought, well, that's true. Because actually when you break it down in any role, any parent who is working and raising children, it's a matter of logistics. Every day is one foot in front of the other. It's getting on with it. And that turned out to be true. There was no magic to it. And that turned out to be true. There was no magic to it. But you found, and I could so relate to this, that as your daughter grew, you found the

juggle getting harder. You were weighing what you were missing with her. And it weighed more heavily as she got bigger. Yeah. Yeah. And actually, I mean, I found that in a way, as difficult as I found it, breastfeeding was an excuse to have her with me, you know, but actually, as she got older, it was less practical. But I was also at the same time, really clear that when I left, that was not a decision that was about it is too hard to be a mother and to do this role. There was no way that I was going to place the weight of that decision on her, nor was I going to

send a message to any woman that you can't do both. You can. You can. Because actually the mother guilt that I have now, that I'm around more, is just the same as what I had then. It doesn't go away. It's the price you pay of being a parent. And probably having that perspective has been really helpful as well. It's painful. It's the takeaway that we're going to feel guilty no matter what choices we make. Absolutely correct. So you might as well go do what you came to do.

We might as well flip it to think about what we want for our own children. And we want for them to have fulfilling lives as if they choose, parents, and careers as if they choose. Why don't we give ourselves that same grace? Before people start writing in, yelling at me, why are you asking her these questions? Would you ask the same thing of a 40 something male leader? Yes, I would. But I'm asking you specifically because you write so honestly and such a raw way about what that struggle that I think every working parent has dealt with

to the point where you're getting a breast screening. They see something or feel something that raises questions you might have cancer and describe what is going through your head. Yeah. And I think someone asked me why you're only talking about this at this point given the proximity to when you left office. And it was because actually it wasn't a determining factor for me, but it was the first moment that I started thinking what would I do in those circumstances whilst being in this job. It invited the question of, oh, maybe I would have

to leave. There was something at that point that I felt even allowing myself to think about departure, I could feel that I was thinking about it in a way that I hadn't before. But I guess I'm curious, what had changed in your thinking that your reaction to a possible diagnosis of cancer wasn't, oh my god, I might have cancer, but was, oh my god, I might get to leave, I might get to be done. Yeah. That's a really significant shift. It is, it is.

And I knew that that wasn't a great way to see that piece of information, and that's what gave me pause to think about it. But as I was writing about it, I know exactly what was happening. I ended up in this role because that battle that I always had between whether or not I felt like I was equipped

with all of the skills needed to be a leader, which I never believed myself to hold, and that sense of responsibility just happened to be in my case, my sense of responsibility always won out. That was what brought me into the role. And it was only when I had a piece of information that allowed myself to get beyond my sense of responsibility that I started entertaining the idea of leaving. And it wasn't in that moment for a selfish reason, but rather potentially a medical one. So it just started a thought process that I hadn't allowed myself to have until then.

It opened the door to that possibility. So how do you know when it's time to go? When you're in a job you worked really hard to get and you love. You can tell you loved it. And I did love it. And there's so much about it that I miss, but I at the same time don't regret the decision. You've always got to have a bit of extra in case there's crisis. And for us, we had a biosecurity incursion, a volcanic

eruption, a horrific domestic terror attack, and then the pandemic. I knew I needed more in reserves than what I had. You write about a question that your daughter, I think she was five by this point, or round about, you two were walking home from daycare and she asked why you had stepped down as prime minister. How did you explain it to her, to a child? Yeah, it's a great question. I gave her a version of what I'd kind of said at the time because it was my honest view and it was as I've already explained. I just did it in a more user-friendly way. And then she just said to me, but mommy, we never give up.

And suddenly I was mortified at the idea that that might've been what she thought. You know, for me, politics is an incredible place to be useful, to make change, to address injustice, but it's not the only place. And so for anyone who feels like politics is so representative about the direction of travel for community, for society, it is not the only place. I spent 15 years in politics and the majority I was in opposition. And every day I was motivated by what I saw amongst people and communities that was in spite sometimes of what they might have seen at a leadership level.

So I guess I'd say to anyone the same thing I said to her. I'm never giving up. Jacinda Ardern led New Zealand through crisis after crisis in the five years she served as Prime Minister. There was the COVID pandemic, a volcanic eruption, but it was the mass shootings in Christchurch that cemented her global reputation as a capable and empathetic leader. It was meant to be a relatively uneventful day. I was on my way to visit a new build of a school out in the rural part of New Zealand when my pre-secretary handed me the phone

and said there's been a shooting. Actually, two shootings. A single gunman opened fire in two separate mosques during Friday prayers, live streaming one of the shootings on Facebook. We know that the moment he arrived at the first mosque in order to undertake his attack. He was welcomed by a member of the community who opened the door and said, welcome brother. And he was shot dead. It was the worst mass shooting in the country's history. And when did it become clear as awful as one, two, three deaths would have been that this

was going to be something of a much bigger scale. It unfolded over the course of the day. Very quickly, we became aware of the scale. And by the time I exited the police station and went to a hotel in order to give a briefing, that was the first moment I saw images and I could see the ambulances arriving. Many ambulances. 51 people were killed. 51.

And Jacinda Ardern, the youngest woman ever elected to lead a country, decided it was time to change New Zealand's gun laws. When I sat down with Ardern this week in our New York bureau, I asked, how'd she do it? I remember the day after the attack, the police commissioner confirming for us that the weapons, as far as they could tell at that stage, had been legally acquired. And it felt like being punched in the stomach because there was-

We let this happen. Yeah, there was an air of, you know, the moment your laws create a permission space, that you feel complicit almost in a way. You certainly, I mean, I already felt a responsibility to respond, but in that moment, there was, you know, it sat squarely with us. So I went to a press conference immediately after and said that our gun laws needed to change. And then it was a matter of working through how and what they would look like.

And here I have to really credit John Howard, Australian Prime Minister who predated me, a conservative Prime Minister who had his own experience and Australia's own experience with mass gun violence in what was called the Port Arthur Massacre. And after that, they changed their gun laws by removing access to military style and semi-automatic weapons, and they coupled it with a buyback. So we had a model. You thought why reinvent the wheel? Why reinvent the wheel?

It enabled us to move quickly. And so we introduced law and took 10 days to debate it and pass it. In all, 27 days roughly after the attack, we had moved to ban semi-automatic and military style weapons in New Zealand. So you and I are sitting, talking in the United States of America where there is a constitutional right to keep and bear arms, the Second Amendment. Does any piece of the New Zealand experience apply here? To the extent that anyone else within the United States believes it does.

My experience simply is that empathetic leadership is not just about being there in the moment and experiencing and understanding as much as anyone is able when you're not directly a victim yourself what is happening for people. It's also about action. And I do think crisis calls for change and it keeps calling for it until it happens. So understanding that you are reluctant to give advice to any other country on how they should do it, because it's a different situation and a different culture with different laws. However, I am going to ask, do you have any advice for your counterparts here, for America's

political leaders who are horrified when they see gun violence here, and yet have sworn an oath to uphold our constitution. Well here I would say, my observation and keeping in mind that I wouldn't say I'd be alone in politics in this view because every member of parliament at the time in New Zealand, bar one, voted for this law change. And I would say, not to speak on their behalf, that within the thinking of mostly legislators at that time, it would have been, yes, New Zealand has a relatively high number of guns and gun ownership because, of course, we have a real pragmatic issue with farmers, with food producers, we have pests, we have goats, we have possums, we have deer, AR-15s are designed to kill people. And they're designed to kill people at a rate that is just beyond comprehension.

And so in our minds, there was a differentiation to be made between the idea of simply gun ownership and the type of gun. And so we made that differentiation. Jacinda Ardern, you used the word kindness so many times I lost track in this book. You make it the centerpiece of your book because it was the centerpiece, it was your guiding principle in leadership. You have a great line, kindness has a power and strength that almost nothing else on this planet has. Why sin through that of all of the different values you could have been striding toward as prime minister? Why that one?

I think it's been missing. And I think there's also an unfair assumption that doesn't really exist or belong in leadership, but particularly politics, because it's so often associated with the idea of weakness. That in order to be in politics, you have to have a level of strength and resilience and that in and of itself that is incompatible with kindness and empathy. And I disagree. I disagree, particularly in these times where there's so much dehumanization and dehumanization leads to aggression, to violence, and ultimately does nothing to solve the problems that so

many of our communities are facing. I mean, you're describing a leadership style that is centered on kindness and empathy and compassion. Yes. Apply that to America's political leaders today. I don't know that for the listener that I would need to. I mean, obviously for me, it's not just about any one country. There are two different styles of leadership that we're seeing globally.

And I tend not to focus on individuals because I don't think they are a singular example. I think actually this is a broader issue. We have the world over examples of those who utilize in politics the weapons of fear and blame and it's a tool that's been used for a very long time. It's not new versus the more difficult task of what are really complex issues, and in this current time, I'd say, which are deeply rooted in ideas of financial insecurity, rapid change, and generally a sense that the world is changing around us and we can't guarantee the kind of life that our kids will inherit. Jacinda Ardern was the 40th Prime Minister of New Zealand. Thank you.

Thank you. Our new memoir is a different kind of power and you can watch our full interview on youtube.com slash npr. This episode was produced by Erica Ryan and Mia Venat. It was edited by Courtney Dornan. Our executive producer is Samma Yenegan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.