The New Zealand Film Commission is putting $800,000 of taxpayer’s money towards a documentary about former Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern.
In a statement the Film Commission said the documentary explores the rise of violent extremism and online hate in New Zealand, while covering Dame Jacinda’s leadership.
The documentary explores the rise of violent extremism and online hate in New Zealand, following Jacinda Ardern’s leadership trajectory as an example of how these forces played out through one of the most tumultuous periods in modern times.
In 2007, Jacinda became the second woman ever elected president of the International Union of Socialist Youth, the world’s largest international political youth organisation.
Over her term as Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern has risen to international stardom based on reporting by world media outlets.
She became Prime Minister at the age of 37 and was one of the world’s first millennials to head a government. She was the second world leader to give birth in office after Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan.
If we were to solely rely on the international media reports of her achievements we would believe that she was a super star on the stage of politics both in NZ and across the world but in fact if you closely study her list of achievements as leader of the Labour government (the first government under MMP to be elected with an absolute majority), you soon see that the list of achievements is very short and in fact far outweighed by her list of failures.
It is my opinion that Jacinda Ardern’s government has done more harm to NZ’s democratic systems of government than any and all of the preceding governments going back to the beginning.
This documentary will record a period of New Zealand’s history and was presented by the Commission at Cannes Film Festival in May 2023 to potential international partners, under the name Jacindamania.
In total it is expected the documentary will cost $3.2 million to make and is scheduled to go into production in 2024, and to be released in August 2025.
Ardern cited child poverty as her reason for entering politics and when she first ran for Prime Minister, she declared climate change was her ‘generation’s nuclear free moment’.
Yet on both of those issues she has failed comprehensively. All the child poverty statistics are much worse and her climate change commitments are a sad joke.
The Labour government in 2021 made an extraordinary commitment to an NDC (Nationally-determined Contribution) which promised not only to reduce New Zealand’s emissions by 47 Mt during 2021-2030 but also to buy 143 Mt of foreign carbon credits at the same time.
That absurd extra pledge to buy carbon credits; which was priced at $23 billion (but will probably be 50% higher) – comes with a potential liability that has been described as “a staggering sum” for New Zealand.
Her Labour government set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agricul-ture as part of its overall effort to reduce New Zealand’s emissions by 50 percent by 2030.
Given the effects on our primary income source (agricultural exports), particularly in the light of the UNFCCC declaration in November 2022 which stated that their predic-tions around climate change were in fact wrong and that they were reducing their pre-dicted climate warming numbers by 50%, this decision was madness.
“The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) an-nounced that it accepted research showed climate change was expected to reach just 2.5°C – only half as much as the mainstream media had long assumed.
Research has confirmed the carbon footprint of New Zealand beef and lamb is amongst the lowest in the world. A comprehensive study by AgResearch found that a kilo of New Zealand sheep meat had a carbon footprint of just under 15 kilograms (kgs) of CO2 equivalent emissions per kilo.
Meanwhile, the carbon footprint of New Zealand beef is just under 22kgs – making the country’s red meat among the most efficient in the world.
The researchers compared New Zealand’s on-farm emissions to a range of countries’ footprints across the globe, and concluded that when Kiwi beef or sheep meat is ex-ported, the total carbon footprint is lower or very similar to domestically-produced red meat in those nations.
They concluded that this was because New Zealand was so efficient at the farm level, which represents about 90-95 per cent of the total carbon footprint. New Zealand’s on-farm footprint was about half the average of the other countries in the study.
As the world’s second-biggest exporter of lamb and one of the largest beef exporters, sustainable farming is a critical part of NZ’s red meat sector strategy.
The Labour government had made decisions that would have seen sheep and beef farming decimated on the altar of incorrect information regards climate change; with sheep and beef reduced by 20% and dairying by 5%. This is equivalent to the entire wine industry and half of the seafood industry being wiped out. New Zealand’s economy relies on agricultural exports for the majority of our income yet we had a Labour government that was determined to knowingly penalise agricul-ture for its greenhouse gas emissions even when it was proved that the statistics they were basing their decisions on, were wrong, and the effects from farming were not as severe as had been stated.
They took this action even though the Paris Accord clearly stated under article 2, that actions to combat climate change should not affect food production.
Ardern basically shut down the coal mining industry in New Zealand (supposedly to eliminate the use of fossil fuelled energy) and then sat and watched as we imported millions of tonnes of dirty coal from Indonesia, so that we could keep the lights on without saying a word. I cannot think of a major policy from her election manifestos that was not a failure. She told us she would make houses more affordable; yet their costs have risen so high that first home owners cannot even hope to buy let alone actually be able to “afford” to buy in the current market.
She promised us 100,000 Kiwi-build homes, but actually only succeeded in sacking her Minister after his failing so spectacularly, in fact her government made a habit of failure after bold promises, over its terms in office.
In early 2019, she said that she would promote a new ‘economics of kindness’ which was demonstrated shortly afterwards in her first ‘well-being budget’. We all saw the results of that budget (for example it earmarked $900 million in funds to fix mental health, but her government could not find any projects in the first twelve months, on which to spend the money).
Jacinda Ardern showed great expertise in communications which was not surprising considering that she attended the University of Waikato, graduating in 2001 as a Bachelor of Communication Studies in politics and public relations, a specialist three-year degree.
She was making almost daily TV appearances throughout the coronavirus crisis and this huge level of exposure on almost a daily basis in the run up to the 2020 election must have been of immense help in promoting her government leading up to that election.
In the 2020 election campaign, she should have struggled to explain why her governments promises had failed, but no one asked any accountability questions and she was elected with an absolute majority based on the public perception of her image.
The gap between people’s impression of her leadership and her actual performance as a leader widened appreciably after the election and the people of New Zealand started demanding accountability for the government promises that failed. She promised the people of New Zealand that she would provide the most open and transparent government and at one time even stated they were the one source of truth and we should only believe the government.
Overall the truth was not quite so rosy though because when you looked at the government’s statistics, on practically every single metric her administration had failed.
There are many more reasons why Ardern’s leadership, while celebrated internationally, faces scrutiny for its mixed record of achievements and failures, divisive policies, and erosion of public favorability. To unlock the rest of this article and more premium content with a 14 day free trial on Voice Media - click here - and receive a $30 free ebook “DNA to Rock the Nation”, astounding evidence of pre Maori occupation.
Click here to read more about my reasons for why this is an absolute waste of Tax Payer’s Money.