New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Scott Morrison when he stumbled to power at the end of a dramatic week in 2018.
But the difference between the two leaders — one a progressive darling, the other a conservative Pentacostal daggy dad — is stark and it’s led to a relationship where Ardern has been unafraid to often call out Australia and the Morrison government — the most recent being yesterday when she blasted Australia’s decision to cancel the passport of a dual citizen who had joined Islamic State (IS).
Here’s a list of all the times Morrison pissed off Ardern.
The deportees
At a joint press conference in front of the Sydney Opera House last year, Ardern made Morrison visibly squirm when she accused Australia of “testing” the trans-Tasman relationship. She was referring to Australia’s practice of deporting New Zealanders convicted of crimes, even if they had lived for years –sometimes almost their whole lives — in Australia.
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Ardern said she’d told Morrison the same thing in private, and had spoken in the past of the “corrosive” effect it was having on the relationship. But the theatrics of the public presser made the depth of New Zealand’s annoyance clear.
“Send back genuine Kiwis. Do not deport your people and your problems,” Ardern said.
Climate change
Climate change has also been an obvious source of difference. In 2019 New Zealand committed to net zero emissions by 2050. Morrison, well-known for brandishing a lump of coal in parliament, continues to fudge it.
At a 2019 meeting of Pacific leaders in Tuvalu, Ardern had her sternest words for Morrison: Pacific island nations were desperate for Australia to take a more proactive approach to a climate crisis which will see their nations submerged.
“Australia has to answer to the Pacific,” she said.
The comments didn’t go down well, and led reactionary shock jock Alan Jones to demand Morrison “shove a sock down her throat”.
Morrison has sniped back on climate, pointing out last year that New Zealand’s net zero pledge had exemptions for methane produced by agriculture.
The IS affair
Suhayra Aden, a 25-year-old Melbourne woman, moved to Australia from New Zealand when she was six but left to live under IS in 2014.
Aden was a dual citizen until Australia cancelled her passport last year. That meant that when she was detained crossing into Turkey she became New Zealand’s problem.
Ardern was visibly furious at a press conference yesterday.
“Our very strong view on behalf of New Zealanders was that this individual was clearly most appropriately dealt with in Australia,” she said.
She accused Australia of “abdicating its responsibility” to Aden, and “exporting its problems” to New Zealand.
In the trans-Tasman relationship there’s a tendency in Australia to see the Kiwis as a something of a pushover, and a mate whose mateship can be easily taken for granted.
Ardern has again made it clear Morrison won’t have it easy.
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Scotty from Marketing has found another island to dump his regime’s unwanted problem people on: New Zealand.
He will regret it, when hundreds of crack killer kiwi’s (birds) come to Oz…
The criminal deportees have no legal right to stay in Australia.
They arent citizens and they dont have PR.
So, tell me, what does New Zealand do to criminals once theyve done their time in jail and dont have citizenship or PR?
The Morrison government is a joke, but we cant have one set of rules for New Zealanders who are here on a temporary visa and another set of rules for people from the other 193 countries.
There are around 650000 new zealanders in Australia, including my wife. A large number have citizenship or PR. The rest benefit from the freedom of movement arrangements, such as my wife. However, this special arrangement leaves those people subject to deportation should they commit a crime and spend a year or more in jail.
Morrison and co are just cruel clowns, but this is not a problem of their making.
The trans-Tasman free movement arrangements need to be revisited and reformed.
Many of these being deported came to Australia as small children with their parents and have lived almost all their lives in Australia. They have married Australians and have Australian children. Their entire immediate family is here. Many also have PR even they are not citizens and this gets cancelled so they can be deported. Also whilst Dutton claims they are all paedophiles (he loves that term, doesn’t he, makes you wonder) or serious offenders, many are not. They get dumped in New Zealand where they know nobody and New Zealand is expected to pick up the pieces, whereas the person has usually been formed by their life in Australia, not NZ.
It used not to be like this. Deportation was restricted to very few who were regarded as ‘not having settled’ and likely to be recidivist and to better off returning to their country of birth. If you look at the comparison in deportations pre-Dutton and now, you will see the numbers have risen astronomically under Dutton. He’s a very nasty man.
So are they all, from the PM down. I was doing two weeks iso at a remote beach last year when I was surrounded by the Blackshirts. Could’ve been Germany 1938, seriously weird and disturbing. Dutton and Co have a strange conception of the world (Veltanschauung) and the future under them does not look pretty: it’s not just their uniform design!
The woman in question was an Australian citizen, passport and all. Very unlikely she was ‘radicalised’ before she was six when she moved to Australia. Cancelling her citizenship is simply dumping a problem that is clearly Made in Australia.
Jacinta isn’t arguing that criminal deportees should not go to New Zealand. She simply, clearly, makes the very fair point that a number of deportees came to Australia when the were kids and are clearly made in to criminals in Australia. It is not right to send those back, without support to New Zealand. This is causing New Zealand significant problems, not of its making.
It was probably very bad luck that this woman was raised in Australia her life would have had better outcomes for her if she had been raised in NZ
Jacinda
Please tell me that you have a clone! And send her over here!!!!
Ardern has discovered what we all know – Morrison doesn’t take responsibility for difficult problems. He is a bludger.
I think of Morrison as something found under a rock: I think of Ardern as someone standing high on a mountain peak dressed in a gold lamee body suit and radiating shining emanations of Common Sense. Leadership-wise, we’re on a downward spiral. Whatever could be next?
If we want national integrity, it’s time we annexed NZ, declared it the 8th state and installed its Prime Minister as official resident in Kirrabilli. What’s not to like??
What’s not to like? Your assumption that Kirribilli is the official residence of the PM.