On Wednesday, former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave a speech in which she dismissed parliament, after announcing her resignation as prime minister last January (to be replaced by Chris Hipkins). It was a speech concluding his mandate, in which he retraced some of the most significant moments of his five and a half years in office, but it was also quite emotional: Ardern shared some intimate and personal details of his experience as prime minister, for example of how he accepted the job despite some hesitations due to his character. To describe the feeling of becoming prime minister, you said:
It was something between the sense of duty to drive a freight train in motion … and being run over. Probably because my inner reluctance to command was only compensated by a huge sense of responsibility.
In her speech, Ardern said she never expected to become prime minister. He recalled the exceptional and historic events he had to face, such as the pandemic and the Christchurch massacre in 2019, considered the largest mass murder in New Zealand history, in which a white supremacist killed 51 people in an armed attack on a mosque and an Islamic centre. “These phases remain etched in my mind and probably always will be. It is the responsibility and privilege of the role of prime minister », she commented.
He also said he would now focus more on the Christchurch Call project, which aims to eliminate violent and extremist content online. She set it up herself, and today it includes 120 world governments, as well as various organizations and online service providers.
Then she dwelt at length on the importance of climate change, emphasizing that it is a “crisis”: “One of the very few things I will ask this Parliament when I leave is to remove politics from climate change”, she said.
The tone was joking at various times and Ardern also shared more personal and amusing anecdotes: for example, she said that her mother wrote her many messages to cheer her up during the pandemic, when she had to make unpopular decisions. The funniest one, and according to Ardern too much even for a very apprehensive mother, was probably one in which she wrote to her: “Remember, not everyone liked Jesus either!”
Ardern’s resignation in January had come in a very unexpected way: she had motivated them above all by explaining that she wanted to spend more time with her daughter and her family, but several of her colleagues and experts had underlined how they could have played a decisive role in her decision also the numerous threats and personal attacks he had suffered in recent years. In resigning you had said: “I know what this job requires and I know that I no longer have enough energy to do it justice.”