Bob reviews “JACINDA: The Untold Stories” by David Cohen with Rebecca Keillor. The unauthorised biography. Words such as “admiration”, “empathetic”, “political tactician” & “trailblazer” are evidence that this is not a ‘hatefest’ coming up against an authorised movie and an authorised book which are clearly ‘lovefests’. This book is an honest assessment, which includes commentary from a smorgasbord of both left, right and centrist people. Order the book at Centrist.nz
Show script:
Jacinda’s Unauthorised (But Balanced) Biography
As you may be aware – because it had quite a substantial number of views – I decided I would take one for the team and I would go to the official documentary of Jacinda Ardern entitled “Prime Minister – Elected to serve. Inspired to lead.”
The movie is described as:
“…chronicling Jacinda Ardern‘s tenure as New Zealand PM, navigating crises including while redefining global leadership through her empathetic yet resolute approach. Right honourable Dame Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s 40th prime minister, lead her nation through unprecedented challenges, implemented bold policies, and became the second leader in history to give birth in office, all while championing an inclusive and empathetic leadership style that changed global expectations of what a leader can be.”
That all sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it?
According to a review on the left-wing site Radio NZ, it said….
“The co-director of the documentary about Dame Jacinda Ardern’s tenure at the helm of the country has defended it from criticism about the lack of depth into policy decision making.”
But of course this is not a third person telling the story. This is a movie featuring one person and filmed by her partner.
So if you go into the movie expecting that narrative, bias and focus, then it doesn’t surprise you what is emphasised and what is not.
This is Jacinda’s side of the story – so we don’t get tough questions asked.
If you loved Jacinda‘s role as Prime Minister and voted for her, you’ll love the movie.
Previously there was Jacinda Ardern’s official memoir “A Different Kind of Power” – a book which even the rabidly left and toxic The Spinoff admitted
“There are hints scattered throughout showing where A Different Kind of Power could have gone if Ardern had taken a more, well, transparent approach…if we as an audience ever want to learn the intimate details of Ardern’s political legacy or, separately, the true picture of her as a globally admired woman filled with anger and resolve, someone else will have to write it.”
Although the usual left wing bias legacy media critics like The Guardian loved it – as did the fawning interviews
But in a McBlog in June I examined and called out the woeful lovefest from the so-called news media which is supposed to be the fourth estate – but now is predominantly a cheerleader for the left. Their interviewing of Jacinda Ardern proved just how pathetic they have become. Hillary Barry. Oprah Winfrey. ABC News in Australia. Stephen Colbert in the US. Jesse Mulligan at Radio NZ. Nobody asking the really tough questions.
It was almost as though they were told – be kind, or you won’t get the interview. Surely not! 😊
But now there’s the book – JACINDA: The Untold Stories by David Cohen with Rebecca Keillor. The unauthorised biography.
And on my recent short trip to Fiji for a family wedding, I used the return flights to read the book.
Here’s what the promo for the book says:
“JACINDA: The Untold Stories brings together the perspectives of a hundred New Zealanders—politicians, journalists, academics, community leaders, frontline workers, and everyday citizens—to paint the most unfiltered portrait yet of Jacinda Ardern’s leadership.
Rather than leaning on curated narratives or partisan spin, this book captures raw, unvarnished reflections on the former Prime Minister’s rise, her handling of crisis, and the profound cultural and political impact of her years in office. From the Christchurch mosque attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic to debates around free speech, governance, and international image-making, the interviews reveal the deep divides, admiration, and criticisms that defined her time in power.
The result is a mosaic of voices that resists easy categorisation: Ardern as empathetic visionary, Ardern as political tactician, Ardern as authoritarian, Ardern as trailblazer. By weaving these accounts together, the book distils recurring themes and sharp insights into what her leadership has meant for New Zealand—and what it signals for politics in the 21st century.
Comprehensive, balanced, and often provocative, this work is the most detailed exploration of Jacinda Ardern’s political legacy to date.”
You can quickly see why I loved the book.
Not only did the NZ politics attract me – which it always does – but there was a balance of coverage that you simply – and sadly – don’t see in the mainstream media anymore.
Words such as “admiration”, “empathetic”, “political tactician” & “trailblazer” are evidence that this is not a hatefest coming up against an authorised movie and authorised book which are clearly lovefests.
Nope – this is an honest assessment.
And it includes commentary from a smorgasbord of both left, right and centrist people. Ardern’s campaign manager. The political editor of The Post. Voices for Freedom. Matt McCarten. Heather du Plessis-Allan, Michael Baker, John Banks, Peter Williams, Matthew Hooton, Siouxsie Wiles, Michele A’Court, Josie Pagani, Shane Jones, Michael Laws, Todd Muller, Margaret Mutu, Bryce Edwards, Byron Clark, Rodney Hide, Sue Bradford – a mish mash of extreme lefties to righties – and everything in between.
In fact, one of the quotes which will win no friends is from failed political advisor Matthew Hooton who oversaw the disastrous days of Todd Muller’s leadership of the National Party which brought the party to its knees and didn’t recover until Luxon took over the leadership – but he is quoted in the book as saying
“I think the people protesting outside parliament should have been removed by the riot squad the first night, violently, so that’s where I stand on that, I don’t think there should have been any kindness extended to people who illegally occupy the lawn of parliament after sunset and deprive others of having access to it.”
Charming.
But the quote is in the book. I like the balanced approach that even dumb opinions are included.
So let me just highlight a couple of things that stood out to me – but let me say from the outset, I highly recommend this book if you want an honest assessment of Jacinda’s legacy as Prime Minister.
From the outset you may be asking “who is David Cohen?” Good question. From Penguin Books it says
“David Cohen is a Wellington-based writer and journalist whose work has appeared frequently in publications in New Zealand and abroad.”
He is a food critic, has a longstanding interest in Jewish subjects, and his book Little Criminals uses Epuni Boys’ Home as a basis to study New Zealand’s now-scandalous residential juvenile criminal system of the 1950s to 1980s. The book would provide the basis for a documentary of the same name.
So into the book. The first comment I note is that in the Acknowledgements, it says
“Although she was invited, Jacinda Ardern did not participate in the writing of this unauthorised biography. That’s consistent with the former prime minister’s long-standing policy of not involving herself in such works.”
Well, except books and movies where she is totally in control. Which is kinda convenient.
She also wasn’t in control of the COVID inquiry so wouldn’t appear in a public hearing.
The author David Cohen first met Jacinda Ardern at the Auckland Museum in 2011. They were on a panel together and he was impressed with the presence she cut. He says:
“I sometimes think Kiwi audiences are the toughest in the world but Ardern made them look the softest. From the vantage of the stage, you could see people leaning forward to catch her lines or else leaning back to savour the broadcast. While I was simply listening to what struck me as word salad, they were savouring the signal.”
But here’s the interesting early admission from the author:
“On the night I first met her, I was left a little non-plussed. Nine years later, along with much of the country, I cast a confident vote for her during the early months of the pandemic, then found myself with a galloping case of buyer’s remorse not too soon afterwards.”
The author is certainly not a rabid Conservative who would never vote for a leftist politician. He voted for her in 2020!
The book then moves into her background in Morrinsville, and her involvement in the Mormon church.
One interesting fact that I never knew was that her cousin several times removed was Marcus Arden – a powerful preacher who many of you would perhaps be aware of through his involvement in YWAM, Youth for Christ, OMF and other church groups.
We then hear about her travels around the world, including the University of Arizona, New York and ultimately London working in the Cabinet Office and also the Home Office during the Blair government.
She also had a stint in the Beehive in 2005 when Helen Clark was Prime Minister, and there was Margaret Wilson, Steve Maharey, and Michael Cullen.
And her best buddies were none other than Grant Robertson and Chris Hipkins all working in that same office. The seeds were being sown.
Of course, during her time in London she was also working in a volunteer position with the International Union of Socialist Youth and serving as vice president and later as the first female president.
But it was eventually Phil Goff who had used her as a junior researcher who ultimately got her back to New Zealand to run as a Labour candidate.
Not a very good candidate, because she kept on losing, but due to the quirks of MMP, she was able to get in on the list. (Another reason to get rid of MMP).
Another interesting commentary is around her focus on building an in-house social media team amongst her electorate staff well before this became normal in New Zealand politics. Possibly following the example that Barak Obama had set in the US.
Here’s an interesting quote (page 50)
“In addition to her natural likability, warmth, and affability, the essential message during the campaign – as the Trade Unionist and Veteran left Winger, Matt McCarten put it – was that she was a nice person on whose watch the next government would do nice things for people.
A case in point was her initial pledging of creating a hundred thousand new homes by 2027. Nobody in the party had a faintest idea how this might be brought about, and one senior MP admits “I was in the meeting where that target was picked. It was originally 50,000, but then someone said, that doesn’t sound big enough.” So someone else just doubled it without any economic thought to either capacity or constraints.”
One area that Jacinda receives credit for is the establishment of the Abuse In Care Royal Commission of Inquiry which she announced on February 2018.
But the book is not so complimentary about her enthusiasm for arts and culture and the way the Marsden fund descended into identity-based woke concerns.
Here’s what her government started funding via the Marsden Fund…
From page 65. $360,000 given to one scholar to investigate the question of whether it’s benevolently sexist to believe that men ought to protect and cherish women. Nearly 1 million for research into the re-imagination of anti-racism theory in the health sector. 360,000 for complex shadows and investigation into intersecting stories of place, identity and erasure through large roadside sculptures. And 860,000 was given to scientists at the University of Waikato to effectively junket around the beaches of Hawaii, Ireland, and Iceland to generate supposedly better shared understanding of the imperatives to decolonize ocean worlds. And one more. 360,000 given for researchers to determine whether the statue of a carrot in Ohakune constitutes a quote critical gaze to the privileging of Pakeha centered narratives.
There is also a strong focus on the fawning media coverage of Jacinda.
Page 67. An AI analysis of three and a half thousand news articles published by Stuff on political party leaders over the past 12 years with each piece assigned a favourability rating between one and 10 shows Ardern handily outstripping allcomers from left and right with Green and Maori party leaders next in line. Her average mean score was 6.75 out of 10, well ahead of her opposite number in National, Simon Bridges who clocked in at just 4.91. So Stuff’s favourable coverage for Ardern was 6.75 – for Bridges 4.91.
“New Zealand had probably never had a national leader whose office put so much effort into media management or who reaped such impressive rewards or the investment.”
And then what I found to be the most fascinating part of the book was the way the media manipulated the language around Jacinda leading into the 2017 election after she had taken over the leadership of the Labour party from Andrew Little.
The word “adorable”. It was almost as though the whole mainstream media had got the same memo. Use the word adorable.
Pages 70-71.
There is also mention of the Worlds of Journalism survey conducted across 120 countries – which found the two out of every three journalists in New Zealand are now female, mostly aged in their 20s or 30s.
“According to the same survey, these young reporters will overwhelmingly be university educated and moderately to strongly left-wing in the political views. A majority of respondent said their political leaning directly informed their work.”
No kidding.
And that’s how we got “Jessica then Tova” which we broke here on McBlog and which went viral.
The survey also found
“Nearly one in three journalists say that the treaty – not even Maoridom in general but just the document from 1840 – should feature in every news story. This figure rises to 74% if you include the further 43% of journalists who say the treaty applies to most new stories.”
The book also delves into the public interest journalism fund which really became an Achilles heel for both Jacinda‘s government and the media in general which they’re still trying to recover from.
As expected, the unauthorised biography also covers Jacinda‘s handling of the tragic mosque shooting and talks about Jacinda at her best, empathetic, locals finding solace in Ardern’s style of leadership, and overseas praise for her actions and words.
Although it rightly asks –
“Another New Zealand leader would surely have responded with similar style, maybe even said more or less the same thing. Would Bill English or John Key have been that different?”
Good question. John Key had to deal with the Christchurch earthquakes and also Pike River. Did he get some similar adulation?
The book also has an honest assessment of KiwiBuild, the ban on all oil and gas exploration, Three Waters, and especially the “shift in race consciousness” with co-governance which I personally believe was one of the tipping points for the rejection of her leadership, and the subsequent turfing out of labour in 2023.
The book even quotes an exasperated Kiri Allan, Ardern’s Minister of Conservation at the time, who called out the “tokenistic” use of the language that too often showed up in her department’s official advice.
An excellent comment from Shane Jones on this topic is included:
“Jones goes back to the point that such activity seems like a waste of effort while larger social and economic concerns for Maori remain undressed. He wants the political culture to focus instead on the development of our people and less daubing every new report or project that never gets delivered anyway with a yet more romantic Maori name.”
What the official biography and the movie never touch on though is covered in detail in the book – the response to the pandemic and the Kiwis who found themselves shut out of fortress New Zealand.
It refers to Justine Kirby, who’s a Harvard trained lawyer.
“She calls herself a Kiwi American. She’s on the political left. She voted for Jacinda twice. Totally peppy about the Democratic Party campaign for Biden and Harris. Donald Trump, Uhuh. Don’t get us started, but the unsettling decisions taken by the Ardern government early on in the pandemic made plenty of trouble for Kirby. She was one of the principal movers in a group called Grounded Kiwis. It advocated for the million or so citizens who had found themselves shut out of Fortress New Zealand because of Labour government’s isolationist policies.”
Jacinda was losing the room. Everyone knew it. Everyone could see it. Everyone except the government and most of the Media.
“COVID marked the most critical test of Ardern’s leadership, both at home and abroad. There are two other public milestones. The Christchurch terror attack and the volcanic eruption on White Island occurred in isolated contexts. Both found her performing vigorously, combining her natural stage craft, and genuine feeling, and solidifying her growing reputation.”
There’s the praise.
“COVID was a viral monster already on route to the shaky isles and all she had to work with were shards of information gleaned from a media already in meltdown mode and hastily prepared articles just starting to appear in academic journals.
On the other hand, some quietly asked, might Ardern’s apparent success in riding the pandemic wave have simply been the luck of leading a sparsely populated island nation protected by a maritime buffer of 1.6 million square miles of ocean? And wasn’t the government, like, simply printing money, a sure-fire portent of monumentally messy things to come.”
And then the killer – the mandates – the protest, but also the failed policies on KiwiBuild, child poverty reduction; ram raids, soft on crime, gangs, and of course the massive fiscal debt.
And the resignation.
Nothing left in the tank.
But we all knew the reality. The polling was going through the floor. The star had fallen spectacularly. The writing was on the wall.
When I watched the movie “Prime Minister” I told you that I took one for the team.
In the case of this book, it doesn’t feel like taking one for the team. It gave me hope that if more people read this book, we will be able to have an honest conversation and honest assessment of the legacy of Jacinda Ardern.
Honest accountability and reflection are never a bad thing.
You can buy the book from Centrist.nz
Tell them I sent you. But no – I’m not getting a commission. We’re a deregistered charity, remember. We believe marriage is one man one woman.
