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
Look at how we can be better prepared next time.
Thank you. Because that one I rewrote and rewrote and rewrote because I was processing it. You know, I came out of COVID and it was a... I had two goals, and I've talked about this a bit. One was to save people's lives, but the other was to keep people together, and I didn't achieve both. I found that so hard. I still find it hard.
Yes, exactly, exactly. And so it's hard to feel upset about that. And when people say, what do you regret? I find that really simplistic because...
I absolutely agree with you. And it's one of those things that you then realize how much through your life you rely on the ability to still just communicate with someone. Yes.
And that if you can at least talk to them and you can have that dialogue, then if there is that, you know, that bizarre view that someone might have, that conspiracy theory that you think you might be able to talk that through, but you can't.
I just don't understand how anyone could assume that I'm so cavalier about having a whole city and over a million people in lockdown of course I think about it all the time I have to take sleeping pills so I don't think about it all the time
And so the only thing that you can, you know, it took me a while to get to this, but the only thing that you can hold on to in those moments is that you know. what your motivation is, you know that you're just trying to make the right decisions.
And even, I think, I remember my hardest moments looking out when we did have an occupation on Parliament's grounds and thinking, well, they think they're protecting people's lives too. And so do I. We actually want for the same things. We have just come at it from completely different corners. And I do spend a lot of time reflecting on it.
But I still give myself as much grace as I can that we were motivated by the right things. And that was to save people's lives. For all the thinking I give to what I would have done differently, I would still rather be sitting in front of the public and explaining why perhaps we did too much differently. rather than why we did too little.
Because the doing too little was the difference between people living and people dying.
So we would use lockdowns when there were cases that we couldn't trace. So that's when we would use it. And ultimately, it meant that we had fewer days in lockdown than most countries. And when we were out, we had relative normality. Yes. And I think importantly, we saved an estimated 20,000 lives. But it came at a cost, you know, for everyone globally.
I think there is globally now this unease that the way that we'd experienced the world was upended. Suddenly you could have something that you just didn't see coming and it can fundamentally change your life in an instant. And we already have such a sense of uncertainty in the world, technological developments, the impact of, you know, the changing economies that we have, multiple wars raging.
We have a sense of insecurity that the pandemic just exacerbated so much. And I think as leaders, and this is one of the things I talk about a lot, we have options in this environment now. We have the option of actually tackling the core of the difficult problems we have presented to us, which is hard. Or we have the option of blaming others.
of saying that the cause of the insecurity you feel or the financial insecurity you feel is this group or this group. And that is a quick and easy way to do politics. Incite fear. It's the oldest trick in the book, but it is the most harmful and the most damaging. And I talk openly about the alternatives because they exist.
There are leaders who champion empathetic leadership, who actually want to solve the problems. But what we see a spotlight more often is that alternative. I wish so much that we can turn towards those more optimistic, hopeful and inclusive responses to problems rather than the fear that we see people reach to.
There are other politicians, there are politicians out there and leaders out there. who believe in solving those core fundamental problems rather than politicking around them. I see it. I see it. I've met them. I run a fellowship program called Field to support that.
I see it at lots of different levels. I see it in leadership. I think the president of Mexico at the moment is... so genuinely focused on the well-being of her people through difficult times. I see it in lots of places, but I see it at, you know, new incoming MPs, MEPs. We need to shine a light on them because I think people are losing their hope in politics.
And yet there are people that they should feel hopeful about.
I had certain mantras that would run through my head. And the one that was most common was just, let this be the right decision. Let's be the right decision. And that didn't always mean the most popular decision. I could carry the weight of an unpopular decision if it felt like it was the right one. I could wear a lot if it felt like the right one. But just let it be the right thing to do.
One of the strengths of all of those things that I thought would hold me back of a little bit of that self-doubt was actually I would prepare. I would bring in experts. I would use people who had the knowledge and expertise to give me the best possible advice. I would read everything I could about a challenge that was presenting itself. And then I would overlay my values and my intuition.
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