Jacinda Ardern
speaker
169 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2025
last heard 13 Apr
Jacinda Ardern’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I struggle to pinpoint the origin of it. It certainly was. I mean, I had the most encouraging family. Yes. I had wonderful teachers.
Incredible role models. Incredible role models. And so this, you know, when I think back, what was the source of this confidence gap? I couldn't tell you. I think that a number of people who have talked about it often might say the same thing. It's something they identify quite early on and they can't tell you its origin. But I notice it in our young people.
And I remember as a young member of parliament going in to give a speech about leadership to a group of young women. They were aged from probably about 13 to 15. And I went through an exercise with them where I said, I want you to write down your dream occupation, the thing that you, if you could do anything, would love to do with your life.
And they diligently, I saw them all thinking for a moment, writing it down. And then I said to them, now I want you to write down what you think you'll do. And you know, in a way, it was a trick question. I thought that they'd be confused by it. I thought they'd write the same thing twice. Nope, straight away, pens were picked up and they wrote down what they believed.
And I asked a handful of them, okay, tell me your dream job. And one girl said to me, I'd like to be a doctor. I said, that's wonderful. And what do you think you'll be without skipping a beat? Oh, I'll be probably a travel agent. You know, these two vastly different occupations. And I asked her, why do you think that you'll be a travel agent?
She said, I just think someone else will be better at being a doctor than I will be. And here we are. I mean, this young woman, what is it in her life at that early stage had given her that mindset that it was there. And so I... I do think there are more people than we know.
And perhaps this is one of the reasons why I feel so motivated to talk about and to articulate and to say out loud the thing that I think some people just don't, which is... Yeah, I've had a confidence gap my whole life. Still do. It's not something I think you can magically disappear or press away.
In the face of isolationism, protectionism, racism, the simple concept of looking outwardly and beyond ourselves, of kindness and collectivism, might just be as good a starting point as any.
Well, you mentioned earlier my father, you know, and actually both my parents were incredible role models. And in the process of writing about childhood, one of the things that came through to me clearly, which I already knew to be true, was how influential their example was to me. My father was a policeman for 40 years before retiring.
And there were so many times when I saw him policing in the community, but we lived in a very small town for a time. And so I got to see close up him at work. And he always had, I think, that approach to policing, that he was a member of a community first and foremost. And if he was going to police successfully, he needed to build trust.
And to build trust, he needed to try and bring dignity to the work that he did. I remember one day, I was only little, I probably would have been maybe six or seven. And to get into, to walk into the little township, which I'd do every so often to go and get a bag of lollies or something, I would cut through the car park of the police station.
And I remember coming through one day and seeing my dad surrounded by what in reflection I know were gang members. And I knew enough to know that it looked like a pretty bad situation. And my dad clocked me and he told me to just keep walking. And so off I went, but then worrying the entire time about how my dad got out of that situation.
That night I asked him about it, thinking that because he was so outnumbered that he must have had to have used force in some way. And he looked so disappointed at my assumption. And I remember him saying to me, the greatest tool that I have will always be my words.
And so he was someone who modeled, role modeled, I think, to me, as did my mother, the importance of communication, the importance of empathy, the importance of kindness, even in such a difficult job like policing. And so I think that was probably some of the earliest examples for me of how there can be a strength and a power to kindness and empathy, which we often forget in leadership.
Before, before, I might not have always articulated it as kindness. You know, at first, I think when I went into politics, The cut and thrust was always the bit that I struggled with. We have a Westminster system in New Zealand, so it can be quite aggressive. It can be a bit of a bear pit. And I remember feeling that actually as a thin-skinned, sensitive person, it was a hard place to be.
And so originally I thought, well, to survive here, I have to toughen up. But there was a politician who rightly pointed out to me that actually being sensitive is a form of empathy and that actually can be a kind of power. A different kind of power. A different kind of power. A strength, not a weakness. Yes. And so I made a decision that, okay, then that was something I was going to hang on to.
And it might not make me a successful politician because if our markers of success in politics or in leadership are, you know, to be overly confident or to bring ego or to be brash, then maybe I wouldn't succeed. But that's okay.
Wouldn't you say? Well, certainly that seems to be, I think, the assumption we have. And yet I think people would also agree that politics is a hard place to be. It is a hard place to be.
And so for the most part, my experience, at least in New Zealand, was that for the most part, even when you're on different sides of the house, for the most part, people are usually motivated to improve the place they live in, to improve... the lives of the people around them. They often just have very different ideas of what that looks like. How they're going to go about doing it.
And the thing that I think increasingly turns people off politics is the way that it's seen in the public domain is that people don't have their eyes on improving people's lives. They're in the politics. That's right. But my experience is that often people sacrifice a lot to be there and most of the time, most of the time, it's for the right reasons.
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