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.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Because we're in the floor. It was at an event to mark the legacy of Nelson Mandela. And so the entire floor was not full at that time. And so the press you couldn't see. I could just hear the clicking. Click, click, click, click, click, click. I did not think they were aimed on us. And so, again, I think it was just a moment where you were getting on with what was required and then afterwards...
Afterwards was the moment that I thought, well, I guess that was a historic moment. And if there's any message I want people to take, it's that there I am with my partner behind me is the person who made sure that we had a bassinet for Neve and a place to be in between time. My foreign policy advisor, she covered us so that we could go to the president's reception. You know, I had a team.
And how lucky was I?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes, you can do it all, but don't do it alone. Don't expect to do it alone. Wonder Woman deserves a sidekick too.
And I know how lucky I was. I was lucky. And so... Knowing that, you know, I remember them. I've always been interested and focused on child poverty. And I put a lot of that back to, you know, observations growing up as a child. I had a wonderful childhood, but I observed children who didn't have what I had.
And then becoming a mother and experiencing having a village, I then became focused on what about all those sole parents? What about all those women who are doing this alone?
How do they do that? And so extending paid parental leave, increasing government support for parents raising children alone, increasing access to childcare, even giving special leave to women who experience miscarriages and All of that became part of our agenda. And that was because as a government, we really thought about what it is to be a parent in the world.
And I remember we were very open about the fact that he was going to be the primary caregiver and I remember afterwards him sharing with me that he had had a number of men who would come and almost talk to him behind a closed hand about the fact that they had been the primary caregiver too. And so the chance to spotlight that, normalize that, we will all have different seasons.
And while my season was in office, his season was the opportunity to form this beautiful relationship with our daughter. And then he'll have a season and then I'll take on different roles. And for me, that's a beautiful partnership to have.
Yeah.
I think in leadership sometimes we're presented with this idea that you have to fit a particular mold. And so often parts of that mold tell you not to show emotion, not to share or show how you're feeling in any given moment. And, you know, during the aftermath of the shooting, it was almost impossible for me not to feel deeply what had happened to our Muslim community in our country.
It just wouldn't have been possible to hide that for me.
The idea, and because this was the motivation of the person who undertook this attack... His entire motivation was to other members of our community. Because he wanted to cause a division within... He did. He wanted to create an internal warfare. He saw New Zealand as too inclusive.
too welcoming, and particularly in his mind to Muslim communities. He was not from New Zealand. He chose New Zealand for that reason. And he came to our country with the intention to try and cause division. And in my mind, I simply reflected in the aftermath the sentiment that I saw and I felt from New Zealanders, which was first and foremost an overwhelming sense of grief,
anger that someone would come and perpetrate such violence on our Muslim community and an utter rejection of everything he represented I had never felt more privileged to lead than I did during that period because I saw ultimately what New Zealanders did in response to that attack and the response of our Muslim community, which was deeply humbling.
So when people, particularly members of the Muslim community from around the world, comment on it, I mostly feel sadness. Shouldn't it be a given that after an experience like that, that you respond with humanity?
And these were, I mean, incredibly challenging moments that only I would have understood exactly, you know, the things the community were grappling with. Had I been there. And I think one of the things, one of the really important things about empathetic leadership is that you just instinctively feel like you need to be on the ground closest and closest proximity to where the crisis has happened.
I, you know, no one told me I needed to do that. No one counseled me. Often people ask me about that decision. All I remember thinking was, I'm going into the community space. They have just lost an incredible number of their family members and their loved ones. The least I can do is show respect in that moment.
And so all I really remember from that moment is I packed from Wellington to get ready to go to Christchurch, was calling a friend and asking if she had a scarf I could use. No one counseled me either way. It just felt like the least I could do in that moment. And then there was that famous photograph of you with the scarf, yes.
Showing 61–80 of 169 · page 4 of 9
← Previous
Next →