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NEW ZEALAND PRIME Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced that she it is quitting after five years in the role.
She will step down next months after telling a meeting of her Labour Party: “I just don’t have enough in the tank for another four years.”
Ardern said her resignation would take effect no later than 7 February.
Here are some of the key moments of her time in power.
On 15 March, 2019, a white supremacist gunman targeted two mosques during Friday prayers in Christchurch, New Zealand.
The gunman killed 51 people and seriously injured another 40.
Ardern won widespread praise for her response.
She donned a headscarf and comforted victims’ families after the shooting, which she later described as a spontaneous gesture of respect to the Muslim community.
She also won plaudits for swiftly enacting gun law reforms and pushing social media giants to address online hate speech in the aftermath of the mass shooting.
Ardern again found herself comforting a shocked nation nine months later when a volcanic eruption at White Island, also known as Whakaari, killed 21 people and left dozens more with horrific burns.
Ardern won a second term by a landslide in October 2020, a result underpinned by her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ardern, whose popularity was dubbed “Jacindamania”, labelled her second win “the Covid election”.
She campaigned on her government’s success in eliminating community transmission of the coronavirus, which at the time had claimed 25 lives in a population of five million.
But two years after winning her second term, a small but vocal segment of New Zealand’s population turned against Ardern’s handling of the pandemic.
Across four weeks, starting in February last year, hundreds of demonstrators occupied the lawn in front of the distinctive Beehive parliament building in the capital Wellington.
Ardern refused to meet the protestors – many of them espousing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories – and said they were using “intimidation and harassment” to get their point across.
The demonstrations ended in a flurry of violence, with some people ripping up paving stones and hurling them at riot squad police who were attempting to clear the camp.
More than 100 people were eventually arrested, with Ardern later describing the situation as “incredibly difficult” and “challenging”.
Ardern won accolades in September 2018 when she was photographed kissing and bouncing her then three-month-old daughter, Neve, inside the hall of the United Nations General Assembly.
This was the first such appearance by a baby in the organisation’s history.
She was only the second prime minister to give birth while in office, after Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto in 1990.
“I want to normalise it,” Ardern told CNN.
“By being more open it might create a path for other women.”
Upon announcing her pregnancy, Ardern told reporters: ”I’m not the first woman to work and have a baby…. There are many women who have done this well before I have.”
"I'm not the first woman to work and have a baby.... There are many women who have done this well before I have."
— NBC News (@NBCNews) January 19, 2018
New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced that she is expecting her first child. pic.twitter.com/oX71C6I485
Ardern’s popularity waned as she battled declining trust in government, a deteriorating economic situation, and a resurgent conservative opposition.
Recent polls put the centre-right coalition ahead, with elections to be held on 14 October.
The stress has been evident in recent months – Ardern showed a rare lapse of poise when she was unwittingly caught on microphone calling an opposition politician an “arrogant prick”.
Later this month, former Labour Party MP Trevor Mallard will become the second resident ambassador of New Zealand’s to Ireland.
New Zealand media reports that Mallard will receive up to NZ$248,000 for the ambassador role.
He was appointed to the role by Jacinda Ardern but this was described as an “insult to our friends in Ireland” by David Seymour, who is the leader of the opposition ACT New Zealand party.
Mallard has been involved in several controversies.
He punched National Party MP Tau Henare in the New Zealand Parliament’s lobby in 2007.
In 2020, he settled a defamation case after he falsely accused a former staff member of rape.
Mallard also took the controversial decision to blast pop music at Covid-19 protestors in February of last year.
-With additional reporting from Diarmuid Pepper
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I cannot understand why this project has not been started already. Surly a loan can be sought from the European investment bank. This will be a money making entity once it is operational so it will be paid back over time
@Leitrim303: very few public transport systems make a profit so I doubt it would make much money
@J M Raw: m50 toll is profit on profit with more profit on top.
@Tom Shine: M50 is a road. Public transport systems are buses, trams, metro etc.
@J M Raw: the dart runs at a profit. Some regional services don’t. Anyway, it’s an investment into getting workers to work which has other benefits for the economy.
Alternate headline..”Dublin office building rejected by An Board Pleanala because it would interfere with Dart Underground station which won’t be built because it was rejected funding by Dublin City Council”..All that’s missing is some Benny Hill music.
@Dj: ha ha is that actually true.
@Dj: Benny hill music if not all ready Dublin City Council theme tune it should be.
By the time this Metro is built most of us will be transported by Hearse!
Maltese company ???
@RJ.Fallon: Looks like a shell set up in May 2016. No websites and address is a building with euphmistically entitled businesses such as PDK investments and LT Textile Holding Limited. Considering no publication in Ireland is willing to name the owners of the company Id say it’s probably safe to say it’s “he who cannot be named”.. and I don’t mean Voldemort…
@John Ryan: well then it is a nice report.
@John Ryan: I take it you mean the scruffy little elf who looks after Harry Potter?
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: I have no comment to make as I really can’t afford a High Court case right now (or ever). ;-)
@Patrick J. O’Rourke: I could be entirely worng of course but it looks like likely.
@John Ryan: Thanks for that info, it puts a perspective on it.
Ok. Will we ever get underground metro system in this country?
@The Girl:
No.
@The Girl: I’d say our debt repayments over next few years will make it tough to fund.
@Lurfic: Don’t you mean all the give away budgets will make it hard to fund?
@Tony Stack: Give away?!…I think you mean give the back the people their hard earned cash which you so happened to thieve in the first instance!
So blocked by a project that they arent working on and never will…seems legit
The maltese company should bring this to the high court. DART underground is still a figment of our imaginations. There’s plenty of other land and routes it could take. All development can’t be stopped just in case we do something 30 years from now. Ridiculous.
@Fred Jonsen: The Maltese company is also a figment of someone’s imagination. It exist only on paper.
Need a few brown envelopes lads
The state should just buy the site at current market value …
Someone come and take this place over again! Please!
Brown envelopes must have been a little light.
Maltese Elf must receive compo from the Taxpayers.. here we go again..
Make it part of the building (underground station hub)…
Government have been buying property along this planned underground railroad for years, the wording used was neutralized ground, Next they will be looking to store all the human sludge/faeces from Dublin next to the airport…..
have your say