The term tends to be a euphemism for mainland Chinese investors—and indeed New Zealand is ranked sixth on their list of their desirable buys—but this is equally the bolt-hole of wealthy American survivalists and fugitive Internet moguls. NZ First leader Winston Peters will pick up the plum foreign affairs portfolio and his deputy Ron Mark defence when Jacinda Ardern releases her lineup on Tuesday. “We know we can be better than this.”.

She left the church in her early 20s while living with three gay friends in Auckland—unable to reconcile a religion where “sexual relations are reserved for a man and woman who are married” with her belief in marriage equality. Several books by Robert Fisk lie on the shelves, along with a child’s history of New Zealand, a string of cowrie shells, a portrait of Michael Joseph Savage—who led New Zealand’s first Labour government from 1935-40 (Ardern heads the sixth)—and a ukulele. The executive wing of New Zealand’s parliament is nicknamed—for reasons immediately obvious to anybody who has seen its exterior—the Beehive. “Ours are the more progressive, bolder, more transformational changes,” she said.

Jacinda Ardern is once again blaming Winston Peters for one of the Government's major broken promises: that there would be no more mining on conservation land.

According to Tiki and Temple: The Mormon Mission in New Zealand, 1854-1958, a scholarly history by Marjorie Newton, New Zealand has been on the Mormon radar almost as long as there has been a Mormon church. In 1958, that law was given concrete form (literally) by the Hamilton New Zealand Temple. We have a housing crisis. “She just rang her.”, This was the paragon who graduated from the nearby University of Waikato in 2001, studying politics and public relations—an odd combination, but one that partly explains the Prime Minister’s Blairite flair for being on-brief and on-message. That would be the new prime minister. Kelvin Davis (Labour's deputy leader) will be Minister for Crown/Māori Relations, corrections, tourism, and will be Associate Minister of Education, responsible for Māori Education. Defenders of the New Zealand style of democracy will argue that Peters is a complex and misunderstood figure and not the huffy old crank that ignorant foreign journalists depict him as. Ardern's recommitting to keep the broken promise this time around - as long as it can govern without New Zealand First and Winston Peters. By ... taken on the ministerial portfolio of child poverty reduction. Peters, on the other hand, leads a party that has frequently called for a repeal of laws that prevent New Zealand parents from hitting their offspring (this in a country where a child is admitted to hospital every other day with injuries from assault, neglect or maltreatment). Collins acknowledged today she was not happy with the comments and was calling on Ardern to retract them. The centrist New Zealand First Party, Ardern’s coalition partner for the past three years, is unlikely to be re-elected, removing a conservative brake just as the Greens gain a greater say on policy. “Always willing to go to the nth degree to understand.”, Ardern describes herself as the serious, teetotal Mormon girl among her peers. “You know, as soon as I came in as leader we had seven weeks to an election, so we had to be entirely focused on the job we had in front of us.”. The manner of how she came to power—as the head of an alliance with a populist right-wing party on whose support she critically depends—says much about democracy in our time. At the same time, data is very sketchy: there are no registers of foreign buyers or of foreign shareholders in companies buying local property, and not everyone agrees that carpetbaggers in Shanghai or Silicon Valley, phoning in their bids to the Auckland auctions, are responsible for driving up prices.

So we get kids ending up in hospital for days and days with all sorts of chronic respiratory problems.”. “If I can give a sense of hope that there is a path, that you can find yourself in these wonderful situations … it’s a simple message, but I hope it’s one that just my presence conveys,” she says. Ardern will release the list of portfolios and details of her coalition deal with NZ First on Tuesday afternoon, ahead of a swearing in ceremony Thursday when the Labour-NZ First Cabinet will meet for the first time. The green hills that are one of the defining features of New Zealand’s capital can be seen encircling its other—a serene, blue-gray harbor. “I meant to graduate to the guitar but I never did.”. The previous government split it up, but Ardern said she wanted one person responsible for making sure every Kiwi had a home.

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“I looked at my wife and said ‘Let’s go.’”, Ardern’s solution has been to announce the drafting of legislation to ban nonresident foreigners from buying local homes. To be sure, she came late to the fight. In numerical terms, Ardern actually lost the election, and by a considerable margin. “We’ve had a debate about immigration in New Zealand for some time,” she says.

Afterward, they are happy to talk about covenants with God, the centrality of family life, or even the New Zealand church’s most notorious apostate. They want new taxes on top earners, including a wealth tax on net worth over NZ$1 million -– a policy Labour has rejected. "So I expect she'll want to distance herself from those comments today.". It was such a firm commitment from the Government in 2017 that the Governor-General set it in stone - but then there was mining.

While full of praise for Ardern’s leadership, Davidson said the prime minister has failed to deliver the social transformation she promised. The Isles are to wait for his law.”. There is a lot going for National on the West Coast, and it's not just Judith Collins' love of whitebait. Coalition negotiations began and, on Oct. 19, with the dramatic flair of a man who has played kingmaker on more than one occasion in the past, Peters announced which side he was backing—without informing Ardern, or National leader Bill English, first. New Zealand is so stunningly beautiful, and so very laid-back, that first-time visitors refuse to believe that there can be anything wrong with it. Davidson and Shaw won’t reveal what roles they want in the next government, but said they will push Ardern to focus massive economic stimulus on three areas -- “the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, and the crisis of deepening poverty.”, “We talk about in this next term being able to go further and faster than we have been able to,” said Shaw. It has the highest youth suicide rate (ages 15-19) in the developed world, and one of the worst rates of domestic violence. The markets view her with suspicion. “Housing and drugs and abuse are all connected,” says Quentin Tuwhangai, 50, an addiction counselor in the old riverine city of Whanganui. “My brother moved to Auckland earlier this year and for a while he was sleeping in his car,” says Olivia Leckner, 21, a communications student at the University of Waikato, like Ardern before her. “Now what we’re trying to champion in that conversation is a recognition that New Zealand has been built off immigration.

West Coast Tasman tends to party vote National, but Labour's Damian O'Connor's been its MP since 1993 - except for a blip in 2008, when coasters sent a message not to take them for granted. I thought she wanted a clean campaign and that was pretty dirty.". Says Fountain, her former high school teacher: “There’s not a public, private, or political persona. But if not what, New Zealanders knew exactly who they were getting when the young prime minister from Morrinsville told reporters that she went home to her Wellington studio and “ate a pot of noodles” after concluding negotiations for a coalition government. “Behold, I am Jesus Christ, I created the heavens and the Earth,” booms a recorded voice in an incongruously American accent. But Ardern is inexperienced. Then PM John Key initiated an inquiry, which found that while Collins had provided information about Feeley to WhaleOil blogger Cameron Slater, "there was nothing improper about the provision of this information". September 29, 2020. While the libertarian ACT Party has risen to 8%, the Greens are polling at 7%, giving the center-left a healthy majority.

And yet many have a story to tell about them. New Zealand is in the grip of a desperate housing crisis and has the worst rate of homelessness in the 35 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. You’re not supposed to use your car horn between 11 pm and 7 am, and unless a flight is boarding, airport screens display the friendly enjoinder: “Relax.” In the heart of the capital, the sound of birdsong can sometimes be louder than the traffic. Andrew Little becomes Minister of Justice, Courts, GCSB/NZSIS, Pike River re-entry, and Treaty negotiations. The city of 165,000 on the North Island lies under infamously sullen skies, and its western suburb, Dinsdale, is Ardern’s birthplace.

Nanaia Mahuta is in line for Māori development, relieving deputy leader Kelvin Davis will likely get corrections but pick up other portfolios, perhaps tourism. And fittingly, three days after its newest occupant has moved in, the ninth floor is buzzing. New Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has announced her team for Cabinet. There’s the Golden Kiwi, the fish-and-chip shop where Ardern got her first job at the age of 14.

After suffering record-low poll ratings, Labour leader Andrew Little resigned on July 31, saddling his then deputy Ardern with the leadership just weeks before the general election on Sept. 23. Prices of homes are meanwhile soaring.

Hamilton is also the country’s Mormon capital. Jacinda Ardern is once again blaming Winston Peters for one of the Government's major broken promises: that there would be no more mining on conservation land. The party’s poverty action plan calls for a guaranteed minimum income of NZ$325 ($213) per week for students and people out of work and significant boosts to welfare payments for low-income families and single parents. “They can’t afford to heat them, and they certainly can’t afford to have the dehumidifiers going. “I welcome the opportunity to confront [the comparisons] head-on,” she says. “I’ve got to say that it was pretty obvious to me, as her teacher, that the feminism and Mormonism were going to clash,” says Gregor Fountain, 44, one of Ardern’s teachers.

“The simple things like humility, social consciousness—you can see what a great communicator she is.”, His colleague Kay Weaver, 53, the university’s postgraduate pro vice chancellor, adds with a proud chuckle: “We don’t have to use Obama’s speeches anymore in class.