Steve Braunias has kindly read and reviewed Michelle Duff’s portrait of Jacinda Ardern so that I don’t have to. Apparently the author of the book Duff is a serious fanboi of Ardern.
It’s also very adoring of its subject. The Prime Minister is “staggering”, “phenomenal”, “ground-breaking”, “inspirational”. And: “The impact she’s already had in terms of gender equality in New Zealand will be felt for years to come.” Also: “Watching Ardern take it on and smash it has been, as one of my friends put it, ‘mind-blowingly awesome’.” It might be said that her book is not exactly a critical study. It might also be said that it employs the same attitude Ardern promised when she was elected Labour’s leader: a “relentless positivity”.
Tellingly when the book links Jacinda Ardern to the #MeToo movement it is with complete amnesia regarding all the sexual assaults that have happened on Ardern’s watch.
Duff, too, attempts to catch and analyse the sensation that something has changed since Ardern became Prime Minister. Her emphasis is on gender. And this is where the book has purpose and meaning. She places Ardern in the context of the #Metoo movement, and looks at her significance as a role model for New Zealand women. “I hope that she knows,” she concludes, “what it has meant to so many of us”. It’s an effective and searching argument, wide-ranging, passionate, thoughtful.
newsroom.co.nz/2019/10/21/864055/first-review-of-the-new-book-about-jacinda-ardern
Not addressing the sexual assault elephant in the room is quite a huge thing to leave out of a book about Jacinda Ardern especially when she is being held up as some kind of #MeToo icon.