What Ardern\u2019s former top aide has revealed about the Covid years – watch on TVNZ+<\/a><\/p>\nHe told Q+A that the setting for the argument with the PM during the pandemic era made it \u201cvery uncomfortable, cause you\u2019re sitting right next to each other\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was suggesting, in fact, that I thought the government was doing too much. It needed to do less. We needed to focus on the economy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
According to the book\u2019s publicity material, Dame Jacinda told Campbell on his final day: \u201cEvery Prime Minister needs someone who will challenge them \u2013 and that was you.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell said Labour \u201cfailed to pivot to the economic response of Covid anywhere near soon enough\u201d. He said that by the end of 2021, \u201cwe were largely vaccinated\u201d and the government should have \u201cremoved things like mandate[s] sooner\u201d.<\/p>\n
Though he qualified his answer by saying Dame Jacinda’s government did “an incredibly successful job” on the things that mattered most, and that the problem was the cumulative weight of decisions rather than any single one.<\/p>\n
Vaccine mandates for workers in sectors including health and education were introduced in late 2021, alongside the \u201ctraffic light\u201d framework and vaccine passes. <\/p>\n
‘Removing liberty\u2019<\/p>\n
Campbell said he realised early on that the pandemic response would cost Labour votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can\u2019t ask people to take these actions and then expect them to vote for you. Like, I mean, you\u2019re removing liberty. And whilst in the immediate election after that, that didn\u2019t come true, that eventually did,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Labour won a landslide in 2020 but was voted out in 2023.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn order to win the battle against the virus, inevitably, you have to burn a huge amount of political capital,\u201d Campbell said.<\/p>\n
He said Dame Jacinda’s daily briefings and constant availability drew public support at first, until people grew \u201csick of hearing the same message\u201d. <\/p>\n
The 1pm podium briefings, often alongside then-Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield, became a fixture of life during the 2020 lockdowns.<\/p>\n
Campbell said Dame Jacinda was the one who pointed out that her level of exposure \u201cwas obviously ultimately going to have a consequence, and it did\u201d.<\/p>\n
He also rejected the suggestion that the media had been \u201con a string\u201d during the pandemic, naming a list of stories exposing flaws with the response.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy recollection of actually a lot of that period wasn\u2019t that they were on a string, but they were exposing PPE problems, or breaches at the border.”<\/p>\n
‘A conviction politician’<\/p>\n
Campbell admitted he had misread the kind of leader he was working for. Dame Jacinda, he believed, had been trying to model \u201ca different type of leadership\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my failings actually in the job was that I didn\u2019t really fully appreciate that the whole time I worked for her, and I wonder whether we could have done things a bit differently had I kind of been more alert to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad I understood her as more of a disruptor, as someone who was really a kind of a conviction politician, [who] was wanting to change the status quo, not just manage it, I think some of the communications advice might have been a bit different.\u201d<\/p>\n
The warmth the public saw in Dame Jacinda was genuine, Campbell asserted.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of that\u2019s manufactured. You can\u2019t manufacture that. It was completely authentic. It is who she is. She\u2019s a very warm, a very kind person.\u201d<\/p>\n
She was also a tough editor when it came to her communication. Speech drafts Campbell thought were \u201cpretty good\u201d often came back \u201cwith red ink through them\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a fundamental part of the success of the government, actually, was her ability to communicate effectively,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are needing people to take an action, they have to feel that. They have to be comfortable with taking that, and they\u2019re not just going to do that because you tell them to or you give them a bunch of numbers that tell them to.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also rejected the notion that Dame Jacinda was now unpopular. <\/p>\n
Her approval ratings were at times \u201castronomical\u201d, and newer more recent polling still had her as \u201cthe most popular politician in New Zealand”.<\/p>\n
Campbell also weighed in on the existing political environment.<\/p>\n
“The current government has actually made a very relatively benign environment compared to the six years we had look extremely hard. I mean, that’s remarkable given they’ve had a much much easier hand than we had,” he said.<\/p>\n
His advice to today\u2019s leaders went back to Dame Jacinda’s \u201crelentlessly positive\u201d 2017 campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there was one thing I would encourage all of the leaders to think about is to actually be less negative,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a negativity in politics at the moment. I think a politician that can come forward and actually be positive, and live those values and not buy into the negative, that would be powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Campbell had previously worked for the Greens and New Zealand Rugby. He now lives in the UK, where he works for a multinational renewable energy company.<\/p>\n
Watch the full interview in the video above<\/p>\n
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dame Jacinda Ardern\u2019s former press secretary says he argued with her in the back of a Crown car…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2567,40096,8028,111,43,139,69,135],"class_list":["post-627045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-arts-and-culture","tag-coronavirus-pandemic","tag-labour-party","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=627045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}