The Nauru PR disaster for Ardern
John Armstrong writes:
Instead of shaking off the reverse Midas touch with which has been her unwanted yet constant companion since her return to Parliament from maternity leave, the Prime Minister’s overseas excursion seems to have exacerbated the affliction.
The trip had already met all the requirements to be classified as a public relations disaster even before her Air Force Boeing 757 had cleared the runway in Auckland en route to arguably the South Pacific’s prime economic basket-case.
The omnipresent visage of Helen Clark in the media in recent weeks might well be cramping Ardern’s style.
Clark is indeed in the news almost every day sharing her opinion on basically everything.
Having been buried under a deluge of publicity which, in her case, was unprecedented in terms of its negativity, Ardern instead indulged in an angst-filled “damned if I did, damned if I didn’t” rationalising of the $80,000-plus bill for the extra costs imposed on the Air Force in having the aircraft at her disposal.
The lesson from the brouhaha is simple, but one Ardern appears to be having trouble taking on board in full.
It is impossible to please all of the people all of the time. Putting on sack cloth and ashes as a plea of mitigation was never going to silence her critics. She would have done better to have just ignored them.
As I said previously she made the right decision to go. But as Armstrong says, the woe is me, I’ll be criticised either way routine, was unnecessary.
Ardern was obliged to smile while being serenaded by Nauru’s President Baron Waqa.
The latter’s self-composed tribute to Ardern and her daughter would have been tolerable, even touching had it been delivered by any of the other leaders of the 18-nation grouping.
Coming from someone whose crackdown on opponents reeks of a police state and whose belief in press freedom is non-existent, the singalong would have been hard for Ardern to stomach.
Not far off being serenaded by Vladimir Putin. Waqa has expelled the Chief Justice, introduced an emergency rule law, ansd had the Solicitor-General resign in protest.
Coming from someone whose country sold its soul to low-life politicians in Canberra to enable the latter to establish a detention centre which is such a hell-hole that its inmates’ mental health has been sapped to levels which make death preferable would — to quote one observer — have been stomach-churning in the extreme.
But confronting the host of an international gathering with some very ugly home truths is not the done thing.
Ardern instead found herself defending her failure to meet and talk to asylum-seekers desperate to escape this Robben Island of the South Seas.
Not enough time!
Peters’ announcement that his party had not signed up to Labour’s commitment to raise New Zealand’s refugee annual quota from 1000 to 1500 appeared to catch Labour’s ministers unawares.
They quickly regrouped, claiming the Cabinet has yet to make a decision on future quota levels.
The collective ducking for cover left a rather awkward question in its wake, however.
If the increase in the quota had yet to be approved, why had the Cabinet given the nod back in May for the spending of close to $14 million on the construction of new accommodation blocks and other facilities at the Māngere Refugee Resettlement Centre?
Which Peters would have voted for.
The flip-side of that notion — one that Peters and Jones are deliberately seeking to nurture — is that Ardern is no longer quite the dominant figure as was so vividly apparent during the first few months of her Administration.
The implication is that she is correspondingly weaker. Any hint or suggestion of weakness is something no prime minister can afford to take root, however.
It might prove to be messy. But Ardern is going to have to apply the weed killer to demonstrate in unequivocal fashion that she is still the Boss with a capital “B”— and much sooner than later.
But she is only the boss for as long as he says so.