My old Mum had a wise saying about bullies: They can dish it out, but they can’t take it. The same is particularly true of cry-bullies: those who self-righteously harass or intimidate others while playing the victim.
Jacinda Ardern is having a bit of a sissy-Mary over alleged “bullying” of New Zealand by Australia.
Which raises the question: what bullying?
Has Australia, for instance, publicly sniped at New Zealand at international forums, claiming that it has to “answer to” other countries for its behaviour? Why, no: that was Jacinda Ardern, attacking Australia.
Perhaps Scott Morrison has publicly berated Jacinda Ardern to her face, while on a leader’s visit to New Zealand? No: once again, that was Jacinda Ardern.
Well, maybe Australia has piled multi-billion-dollar economic and diplomatic sanctions on New Zealand? Oops: that’s Jacinda’s good friends in China, punishing Australia.
China is a cry-bully, and so is their antipodean lackey, Jacinda Ardern.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has spokely frankly about the rising difficulty of dealing with Xi Jinping’s China as her political mentor Helen Clark defended New Zealand from “slurs” made by Canberra and London.
Like all bullies, Ardern needs her muscle to back her up – and who better than one of the globalist heavyweights of the Great Reset?
At the [China Business Summit] Auckland conference, former Labour New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark said she was “staggered” by comments in the Australian and British press suggesting Wellington had turned its back on its traditional partners to develop relations with China.
Ms Clark, who as Prime Minister employed Ms Ardern as a staffer, said that was a “slur”.
It’s also the truth.
A truth acknowledged, perhaps unintentionally, by John Key, when he noted that Australia is “an active member of ANZUS” – another of New Zealand’s traditional partnerships that a Labour government had turned its back on.
The back-turning continues under Ardern.
In late March, New Zealand did not join a statement of 14 countries, including Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States that criticised the World Health Organisation investigation into the origins of COVID-19 in China.
Of course no Ardern speech is complete without a heapin’ helpin’ of doublespeak.
“It will not have escaped the attention of anyone here that as China’s role in the world grows and changes, the differences between our systems – and the interests and values that shape those systems – are becoming harder to reconcile,” she said.
“This is a challenge that we, and many other countries across the Indo Pacific region, but also in Europe and other regions, are also grappling with,” she said.
“As a significant power, the way that China treats its partners is important for us.
“And we will continue to promote the things that we believe in, and support the rules-based system that underpins our collective well-being.”
The Australian
Fine-sounding words, but contradicted at every turn by what she and her government actually does.
Meanwhile, the fact remains that, for all Ardern’s hanky-wringing about “bullying”, it’s she who has behaved like a public bully – and is cosying ever-closer to the global bully of the 21st century.
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