Sheridan on Ardern

The Daily Mail reports:

An Australian journalist has blasted Jacinda Ardern and said he doesn’t know any other leader in the world who ‘talks so much nonsense so consistently’ and ‘gets such lavish, wonderful praise for it’.

Appearing on Sky News, The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan was asked for his take on recent comments from Ms Ardern on the Pacific and climate change.  

Host Peta Credlin played a clip of the New Zealand Prime Minister addressing the Lowry Institute in Australia on Thursday. 

In her speech, Ms Ardern warned against ‘positioning the Pacific in such a way that they have to pick sides’.

Describing the speech as ‘a shocker’ Ms Credlin asked Mr Sheridan for his view. 

‘I don’t know what she’s taking in her morning coffee. We’re trying to give the Pacific an alternative from being conscripted into debt traps and hegemony by the most ruthless, authoritarian dictatorship in the world,’ Mr Sheridan replied.

That is a good way of describing it. China’s strategy is to make small states so dependent on them, they can’t risk getting offside with China.

‘And she says ‘don’t cast this struggle as one between authoritarianism and democracy’ – she might as well say ‘don’t describe the sky as blue and the trees as green’. I have no idea what she’s on about.

‘She comes from the worst, woke, unreal, fantasy-dwelling strain in New Zealand politics. I just think she makes no sense about anything, really.’ 

The lessons from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is it is a struggle between authoritarianism and democracry.