“Every night I thought I would jump online and check with everyone as we all prepare to hide for a few weeks,” said the New Zealand woman via Facebook Live while the country was preparing for his month-long shutdown on Covid-19. She showed her dirty sweatshirt. “It can be difficult to put a child to bed.”
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She was not the only kiwi mother to check with their whānau (family) that evening. But this woman was Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, and the one who had decided – on the advice of experts – “to go ahead and go forward”, imposing one of the prohibitions the earliest and most stringent in the world on international and domestic travel and enclosing countries for about a month from midnight on March 25.
In three years, the 39-year-old has grown from a minor Labor Party member of the low-polling opposition party to a global figure on Time magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The New York Times describes it as “the progressive antithesis of strong right-wingers like Trump, Orban and Modi”.
His empathetic leadership after the attack on Christchurch mosques in March 2019 was highlighted in images of an Ardern wearing the hijab embracing New Zealand Muslims; consoling the bereaved families after the eruption of the white island of Whakaari in December; and addressing the United Nations General Assembly while fiancee Clarke Gayford cuddled their four-month-old daughter Neve in September 2018. Her compassionate approach to politics – where “success is measured not only by the GDP of country but also by the better life that its people live ”- has led many to see New Zealand as a bastion of progressive government.
The Pacific nation, which will soon reach five million inhabitants, claims a number of social and political advances: creation of indigenous parliamentary seats (1857); granting women the right to vote (1893); advocating an eight-hour working day (1840); state-funded old-age pensions (1898); the most extensive pension and social protection system in the world (1938); and its unique compensation system for faultless accidents (1974).
From 1890 to 1920, New Zealand was viewed by foreign observers as a “social laboratory” because of its progressive political initiatives, and Ardern’s determination to measure national progress in the goals of “well-being” – increasing income, improving environmental and social well-being – has been characterized as a return to this aspiration.
But how did such a distant country come to have such an apparently progressive policy? Stephen Levine, professor of political science at Victoria University of Wellington, writes in Te Ara, the nation’s official online encyclopedia – another world first – says that early British settlers and politicians were driven by notions of equality, fairness and honesty.
“In 1948, New Zealand’s first professor of political science, Leslie Lipson, wrote that if New Zealanders chose to erect a statue like the Statue of Liberty, embodying the nation’s political outlook, it would be probably a statue of equality, “he wrote. “This reflected the New Zealanders’ view that equality (rather than freedom) was the most important political value and the most overriding objective for society to fight and protect.”
Unlike the other British colonies, the islands were not conquered, but based on a treaty between the Maori and the Crown: the 1840 Te Tiriti o Waitangi / Treaty of Waitangi.
It is not a constitution (New Zealand does not have a written document); it was rather an arrangement to provide security for the settlers and, many would say, a fig leaf to claim land and resources for Pākehā – the term for non-Maori English-speaking arrivals.
Crushing indigenous peoples and their culture, often under threat of arms, traders, farmers and traders (mainly from the United Kingdom) imported their vision of politics and government and their chance to live a new life at home. free from European conflicts and prejudices.
Above all, they felt entitled to self-government and that everyone should be equal before the law in their plan for a just, equal and honest society. They also refused to have an official church; Today, New Zealand is one of the most secular societies in the world.
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These early settlers were faced with isolated mountains and valleys, in which they began to dig farms. It quickly became apparent that they would need to create or repair machines from the scrap metal that was lying around. This skill has become part of the national psyche, known as the “No8 wire mentality” after the ability of lone farmers to use a length of fence wire to repair any machine that behaves badly.
Egalitarianism has engendered another national characteristic. New Zealanders appreciate modesty and are wary of anyone who seems to consider themselves better than others; hence the so-called “Tall Poppy Syndrome”: shooting someone who thinks they are a cut above the crowd. In typical Kiwi black humor, the unofficial national anthem celebrates complacency: we don’t know how lucky we are of John Clarke.
To this day, New Zealanders like to think of themselves as practical, dealing with everything thrown at them, with good life skills and a cooperative spirit. New Zealand, writes Levine, is not a big country or a powerful country but has an “attractive self-image” of inspiration for others, leading by example idealism and pragmatic innovation.
This positive outlook places New Zealand eighth in the happiest countries in the 2019 United Nations Global Happiness Report for the seventh consecutive year, the only nation outside of Europe in the top 10.
In the same survey, Wellington was ranked as the third happiest city. Auckland and Christchurch are in the top 20, despite the decade of devastating earthquakes in Christchurch and the attack that killed 51 people last year.
British Telegraph readers have named it their favorite country seven years in a row; and after the election of Donald Trump in 2016, investigations into migration from the United States to New Zealand immediately increased 24-fold, according to The Guardian.
Travelers are drawn here by a world of constantly changing landscapes wrapped in a relatively small space: primordial forest; some lakes; waterfalls; fjords; active volcanoes; hot springs; geysers; white and black sand beaches; Alps and glaciers.
And they often go home, noting the warmth and sincerity of the relaxed welcome from the Kiwis and the local respect for Maori culture – tikanga Māori, a living, breathable and inclusive force that is part of the fabric of New Zealand society, not lit for tourists or a warm-up for rugby tests.
But this distant nation is not as perfect as it seems. Partnership with the treaty and the importance of te reo Māori (one of New Zealand’s three official languages, along with English and the signature) indicate little racial tension. However, racism exists.
According to Massey University sociologist Dr. Paul Spoonley, in an interview for Radio New Zealand in 2018, “Our race relations, seen globally, are not too bad. We do not have hate crimes as far as you would find them in European countries, ”he said. “But we have daily and often occasional racism across the country and you would be naive if you don’t think it exists.”
Social and racial tensions are due to very different interpretations of the treaty, which led to 135 years of conflict and grievances until the document was entered into law in 1975 and a truth and reconciliation commission was formed. . Today, the nation has shamefully unequal rates of Maori health, educational and judicial outcomes, and youth suicide statistics are tragically high.
Because of this disparity, many contemporary local commentators view the country’s progressive label with skepticism. They suggest that many advances have not taken place because of a conscious desire to effect change, but because of national values of equity and equality – society simply thought they were the right thing or decent to do at the time.
“If you look at women’s suffrage in the 1890s, no one said, ‘We want to be the first …’, said Professor Paul Moon, respected historian and social commentator. “The concern was:” This is an important right because it will free women or be more representative, more democratic, etc. “”
Moon explained that these notions of equality and fairness continued until the 1970s and 1980s. “I think there are people who still stick with this – it lasted a very long time and c “is the basic level of the New Zealand identity concept,” said Moon.
As the multicultural nation continues to adopt socially progressive laws – equality of marriage, decriminalization of prostitution, treatment of abortion as a health problem and not criminal – Moon detects a change in motivation.
“Now, a lot of the rhetoric says,” Well, if we do that, we will be a world leader. “This has exceeded the importance of the progressive initiative in many cases.”
Aotearoa, to use the Maori name for New Zealand, is not an utopia. However, the national response to the coronavirus pandemic so far seems to be ruling the world. On April 28, after five weeks of this severe lockdown, Ardern relaxed the restrictions slightly, announcing that his country had “done what few countries could do” and contained the community spread of Covid-19. Once again, global attention has turned to the nation: while some criticism has been expressed of the government’s response, others have said that New Zealand offers a model response of empathy, clarity and trust in science.
And, perhaps invoking these earlier ideals of equity and equality, the Prime Minister and the ministers took a 20% wage cut for six months in solidarity with those whose incomes were affected by the coronavirus.
“If there was a time to bridge the gap between groups of people across New Zealand in different positions, it’s now,” said Ardern.
Why we are what we are is a series of BBC trips examining the characteristics of a country and finding out whether they are true.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story had the incorrect start date of New Zealand’s national lockdown. This information has been updated.
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