When I was a lad, Mum told me something about bullies: they’re only tough when they’re in a pack. They don’t have the guts to mouth off when they’re on their own, she said.
For all her prattle about “kindness”, Jacinda Ardern is acting a lot like a schoolyard-bully mean girl.
Ardern mouthed off at Australia for months over deportations – from a safe distance. When she visited Australia last month, she couldn’t backtrack fast enough. She’s suddenly talking tough again, now that she’s in with a clique of her pals at the Pacific Islands Forum.
Jacinda Ardern has challenged Scott Morrison to explain his government’s position on climate change to Pacific leaders as Australia fends off attacks over its domestic emissions policies despite committing $800 million to address global warming in the region.
…[Ardern], who has promised a carbon-neutral economy by 2050, yesterday declared that every nation needed to “do its bit” to fight worsening global warming, despite New Zealand providing $300m less than Australia in direct climate assistance for the Pacific over 10 years to 2025.
To achieve her carbon-neutral pledge, Ms Ardern has excluded agriculture and methane, which contribute about half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Ardern is deliberately excluding New Zealand’s most emissions-heavy industry. At the same time, she is conspicuously failing to make up for her lack of action by stumping up any significant cash.
By the middle of next decade, Australia will have spent $800m in taxpayers’ money directly helping Pacific island nations — not including the $200m committed to the UN Green Climate Fund […]by contrast, New Zealand spent $200m in the region between 2015 and 2019 and is on track to spend a further $300m by 2023.
For all Ardern’s big-noting, Australia is half a billion dollars of real action ahead of New Zealand.
We’re well ahead in emissions reduction, too.
As Alan Jones – who has called Ardern a “light weight hoax swallower” – points out, Australia’s per capita emissions grew by just 1.8% since 1990 – New Zealand’s grew by 10.8%. Australia has 12 times the wind and solar generation of New Zealand.
On every metric, from handouts to emissions reduction, Australia is walloping New Zealand.
As Jones also notes, New Zealanders are voting with their feet. The Kiwi population in Australia has doubled. In fact, more than 11% of New Zealand’s population lives in Australia. There are 15 times more New Zealanders in Australia than the other way ‘round. For all the leftist social media circle-jerking about moving to Australia, the numbers tell the real story.
As for her cargo-cult bully gang, they’re just as spineless and two-faced. Pacific leaders talk a big game for the international media but clamp up to Australia’s face.
Sources said none of the leaders pushed Mr Morrison on climate change, despite strong statements by many at the forum on the need to accelerate emissions reductions to protect low-lying Pacific nations from rising seas and worsening storms. Several leaders, including Ms Ardern, emphasised the need for a consensus communique, which could help Australia in its fight to tone down the language of earlier drafts.
theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/australia-has-to-answer-to-pacific-arderns-climate-blast
Like Jacinda Ardern, they’re all mouth and no trousers.