Memoir from Ardern’s press secretary Andrew Campbell amplifies what the Chrises lack – Kiri Allan

His central insight is one he admits he reached late. For years he advised Ardern as though her job was to manage the status quo. She was a conviction politician set on changing it, and he believes his advice would have been different had he seen that sooner.

Her warmth, he insists, was real and her communication drove her Government. Speeches he thought were finished came back covered in her red ink. People make hard changes only when they feel the reason for them, he argues; a list of numbers will not move them.

He is just as clear about the price. Winning against the virus burned enormous political capital. Death threats against her more than tripled. He watched casual sexism play out in rooms where people addressed him instead of her, and where business leaders praised Chris Hipkins for finally listening, months after dismissing Ardern across the same table.

More than three years after she left, Ardern still out-rates everyone in the game. A Freshwater poll for the Post puts her net favourability at +10, ahead of a field of current leaders who are all underwater. Campbell says those are numbers either Chris would kill for. In this past week’s 1News Verian poll, 20% of voters picked Christopher Luxon as preferred Prime Minister and 17% picked Hipkins. Between them, the two men who could lead the next Government cannot win over two voters in five.

This week’s final debate showed how much room remains to grow. Both leaders appeared to read their vision statements from an autocue, which left voters with polished lines and little of the thinking behind them. Seventeen days out, the country is still waiting for a clear picture, in each leader’s own voice, of where he wants to take it. Charisma is the smallest part of that gap.

Both Chrises are managers, and both are good at it. Luxon came from the boardroom and governs like a chief executive reporting against targets. His line this week was that National’s plan is working, while seven in 10 voters tell pollsters the health system is in crisis. Hipkins was the minister Ardern trusted with the hardest logistics of Covid, and he delivered. When he took over, he steadied a Government that needed steadying, clearing the policy “bonfire” and returning to bread-and-butter issues. Campbell thinks he should have paired that reset with an early election while the change was still fresh. Hipkins now has the chance to show the conviction the reset made room for.

Competence matters, and both men have it. Competence is also the minimum. Voters follow leaders who tell them where they are going and why the trip is worth it. Ardern did that in a single press conference in 2017, an appearance Campbell credits with reviving Labour overnight. Neither Chris has had that moment yet.

Kiri Allan and Jacinda Ardern at Midway Surf Life Saving Club in July 2021. Photo / Paul Rickard

To be fair to both, Ardern’s leadership was forged in crises neither has faced as Prime Minister and conviction cost her. It made her a global target and a polarising figure. Popularity is a poor measure of a good Prime Minister. Still, voters give their trust to leaders who say plainly what they stand for, and both men have time to do that.

In place of vision, we have been handed venom from both podiums. Campbell calls this a very negative campaign that makes politics feel small-minded. Wednesday night’s leadership debate proved him right. Luxon called Hipkins the most abysmal Education Minister the country has ever had, and Hipkins hit back. Ardern’s 2017 message was “let’s do this”. This campaign has given voters nothing so simple and nothing so hopeful.

The line on Campbell’s cover is Ardern’s farewell to him: “Every Prime Minister needs someone who will challenge them – and that was you”. In an election, that job belongs to all of us.

It belongs to the media and our leaders are making that harder. Ardern stopped doing Mike Hosking’s show because Campbell judged the interviews had become disrespectful. Since then Luxon has dropped his weekly TVNZ Breakfast slot, and David Seymour and Winston Peters have, for periods, kept away from RNZ programmes. Every leader who picks the friendly microphone over the hard one denies voters the chance to see what they believe under pressure.

It belongs to coalition partners. With smaller parties likely to decide who governs again, the next Prime Minister will need to say no to his partners as readily as he says yes. Hipkins accused Luxon this week of letting Peters and Seymour run circles around him. Whoever wins will face the same test.

Most of all, it belongs to voters. Over the next two weeks, ask both men the question a scripted format cannot easily answer: what do you actually want to do with this job?

In the Room is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the Ardern years, and for anyone who wants to lead. Its lesson for Luxon and Hipkins fits in a single sentence: know what you believe, say it like you mean it, and when the moment comes, walk into the room and lead. I saw what that looks like in Whakatāne at midnight. We deserve no less from whoever leads us next.

Kiri Allan is a former Labour Party minister who held the portfolios of justice, regional development, conservation and emergency management. She was the lead minister for the Cyclone Gabrielle response in Tairāwhiti. She is the founder of renewable energy company Four Directions Fund and runs KLA consultancy firm.

Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter – a weekly round-up of our best commentary.