SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, this is Umida Stari.

SPEAKER_04: 0:01

And Natasha McElhone. And with us today we have Jacinda Arduin.

SPEAKER_00: 0:05

Jacinda, it's so great to have you. Thanks for taking the time. We're going to talk about leadership today. And as such, we feel there's no better way to start this than you defining to us what good leadership is for you.

SPEAKER_05: 0:18

That's a great question because you know when I was when I was young, I was really hesitant to adopt the idea of being a leader, even when I was in, you know, student council or in these these roles that were were clearly defined by the fact that they were meant to be leadership within the student body. And I wonder if that's because first and foremost, for me, an important part of leadership is humility. And that's probably because for me, I couple leadership with a sense of public service and a sense of responsibility and duty of care. I'm also a big believer in the notion of empathetic leadership. And whilst it's a theme I talk about a lot, I'm really aware that it's something that we tend to frame more within a corporate worldview. You know, why is empathetic leadership good for productivity? Why is it good for business? Why is it good for the culture of an organization? Um, many of those features I think we should draw out for political leadership generally. Um, I subscribe to the view that people-centered leadership, that building consensus is what we need more of in these political times. Uh, but also just bringing our own humanity, you know, being willing to be human in a role, own up to mistakes, and in turn, I hope, get a little bit more grace from those whom we lead on behalf of.

SPEAKER_00: 1:35

Yeah. That's uh quite important words, right?

SPEAKER_05: 1:39

Yeah, and pretty much all absent. I mean, it's it's a difficult, it is a difficult time for politics. It's a difficult time to be in politics, and for lots of reasons. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:50

You touch upon the point, and I think this is something that we were wrestling with as we were preparing for this, is that a lot of the things that you represented in your leadership stint seem to be a bit absent in the West. So let me kind of rephrase that. You know, some Western democracies seem to have become enamored with the infallible leader called persona type, right, in general. And you see this popping up all over the world now. And what strikes me in your book is that we read you questioning everything, questioning yourself quite often as well. There's self-doubt, there's the question of why. Obviously, your dad was the paragon for this for you. And so I wonder why do you feel this type of leadership is in decline, the the one that is more something you just said really stood out to me.

SPEAKER_05: 2:35

This idea that, you know, in Western democracy, we seem to be enamored with this type of leadership. And that's a really fair assumption. We think that because obviously we have democratic systems, so therefore, surely the leadership is representative of what the people want. But I think that's probably not quite correct in this particular time that we're in. And the reason I draw that conclusion was if it's what people want, then we would probably see not only, of course, those individuals being elected, you might see as well other measures, high voter turnout, for instance. You might see high favorability for those individuals, you might see trust in the individuals and institutions, and yet we all know that actually on all those markers, that is not the case. We still have some of the highest mistrust and sense of grievance in politics that we've seen in some time. Indeed, yeah. We've got really low turnout, we have really high levels of voter dissatisfaction. So those old markers that we took of being success, which is just winning, are being undermined by all of these other markers of voter satisfaction. And in fact, people really feeling disenfranchised by their system. This is why I'm interested in the idea that it's not just what we do in politics that matters, but how we do it as well. And when you dig down into some of the data that we see, some survey work and the likes of France or in a number of places in Europe, which shows that something like 75% of people saying that don't trust politics anymore. And that's even higher when you're someone who's in a low-income bracket. That's coupled along with a sentiment that people believe that politicians don't care. Now, there's lots of ways you can demonstrate care and compassion and empathy. Of course, your policies will demonstrate that. But I also wonder what's the impact of people if all they hear about their politics is the dispatches between parties.

SPEAKER_03: 4:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 4:29

The sledging, the arguing amongst yourselves, the inability to get your political system to operate uh effectively, a greater degree to which you see the extremes being amplified, extreme statements, extreme views. And over time that erodes people's sense that they're being represented or their trust in the system. So I think all that to say, I don't know if we are enamored with that or not, or if this is just an outcome of a particular time and place we're in in politics, and we need some alternative responses to restore people's trust and confidence.

SPEAKER_04: 5:07

It's interesting because at the end of your book you ruminate on how there's been a temperature change. And I love this so much, this idea of leadership incorporating other opinion and challenge that you used to you said that you used to build in time in your day-to-day running around. If you were going to interface with civilians, that there'd be this extra sort of ten minutes, whatever it was, for the spontaneous interaction, and you would engage and let someone go. And then as you progressed through your five years, the time broke changed, and there was some aggression and some hostility. Yes. Um, and I was I was curious about whether that you think was the tipping point of what you're talking about now, this this disimpression.

SPEAKER_05: 5:51

Yeah, I think I I do think there's a number of feeders, and it's interesting, you know, and you've got to always take it with grain. So of course, I have to acknowledge that when you're in politics over a period of time, people will build personal grievance with you. You build your own baggage as a leader. So I say none of this to disclaim or disown what was just actually what you build naturally over time.

SPEAKER_04: 6:12

And I'm kind of fatigue of it.

SPEAKER_05: 6:14

Yeah, and I take risks, you know, it's not to say, you know, were it not for these circumstances, you know, I would have had, you know, zero grievance. Not at all. But what I what I noticed over time was that the way that we would feel was acceptable, okay, to express that aggression was changing. I think people in New Zealand have always we've always been quick to debate. We've never held back on sharing a view. Protest is part of who we are, but never before have I seen that level of violence in the way we were engaging in protest. Now, some people think somehow COVID was the cause. I don't believe that. I think COVID escalated or um perhaps exacerbated something that was already building over time. I'm not a I'm not an academic, I haven't done great amounts of research on this, but it it feels to me that we've built over time greater binary thinking, uh a tendency to kind of take a particular perspective and to rule out looking at the other person's worldview. And so once you've decided that your perspective is good and the other perspective is evil, that's when it's easier to dehumanize the other person and to engage in in what Edelman's surveys picks up as uh hostile acts, which could be anything from the dissemination of disinformation or the vandalism of public property or abuse online. And we see all of these markers, and they coincide, though, interestingly, with that growing sense of grievance.

SPEAKER_00: 7:57

Right. I remember we were at a conference and there was a panel with a few people on it. Uh there's a gentleman from there was a gentleman from the Reform Party, and there was another person as well. Both of them were suggesting that voters have now become identity first voters and then economic voters second. I wonder if you believe that too.

SPEAKER_05: 8:20

It's really interesting when you start segmenting some of those voter groups, because I think if you if you take a pure they're an identity voter, you probably make an assumption that someone's made that vote uh based on the value set rather than the policy prescription.

SPEAKER_02: 8:37

Right.

SPEAKER_05: 8:37

And after the EU elections, not so long ago, Data Craxists did some analysis of those who had voted more for this, what we'd identify as populist parties. Right. Shifted their vote towards populist parties, and found that actually the majority of them didn't do it because of what we would have seen as that, that, that identity style of thing, which was kind of the anti-migration, you know, kind of more, you know, some extreme ends, of course, what some people describe as racist policy. But a range of reasons, some of which included feeling disenfranchised from the political system or feeling that the mainstream parties hadn't hadn't served them well. In some cases, it was a particular economic policy, just a singular thing. So I actually I actually think that when you dig down into those data groups, we see a range of reasons. And the incorrect assumption would be that it's solely because of that value that that group represents. I think it's wrong to run around and say that block of voters are all entirely bigoted, for instance. Because I think it's much more complicated than that.

SPEAKER_00: 9:45

Yeah, we contain multitudes. I mean, that's really the reality of it. And when you are quite nuanced and look at politics properly, every person that you've met probably also had some opposing views about certain things within them. Uh nobody is like a completely myopic voter in any shape or something.

SPEAKER_05: 10:01

Well, even, and I think we've probably lost sight of this, even politicians themselves. I mean, they ultimately belong to political parties because generally they're aligned with that value set, but there'll be individual policies they won't agree with. And one of the things that I love about the system in New Zealand, by putting in that thing called a conscience vote, it means regardless of whether or not you're in a progressive party or a conservative party, if you're liberal on an issue like abortion, you can vote for that, or on marriage equality, you can vote for that, or on alcohol, or on gambling, there's room to bring in that personal value set in a way that doesn't have to be strictly determined by your party.

SPEAKER_04: 10:39

And I was thinking about you being able to hold Well, then in my mind, they're actually not contradictory value systems, but if you are subscribing to, let's say, a certain religion or as you say, party politics, that you are meant because you're in this party, you're meant to think this and this and this as well. And you were able to hold i what some people might regard as quite conservative value systems with something that was very progressive until there must have come a sort of powder keg moment where it wasn't possible to hold those two things. And so you decided to break away from organise religion in the way that and uh so that you could be presumably more flexible and incorporate other people's views into your possibility.

SPEAKER_05: 11:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 11:26

Um but I love how open you are about that process because we all wrestle and struggle with being able to hold contradictory feelings and views, and we struggle with other people holding contradictory feelings and views. To me, what made you such a great politician was being open about that. Surely then that just invites conversation and collaboration. Why have we got so far away from that? And is it I know we constantly blame social media and amplification of bots and and is it? Oh, good for good reason. For good reason.

SPEAKER_05: 12:04

Do you know when you think about, you know, one of the one of the things about politics which makes it fascinating but difficult, is that most of the problems you're dealing with are are difficult, uh, have multiple layout, have nuance, multiple layers to them. And yet uh the time we have available to communicate the problem and the solution to the to the people who voted for us is limited. And often go into detail and nuance. Not often, not often. There might be some where there is a bit more of an understanding awareness of the complexity, but not always. Um, and the bandwidth that you get to go into that or to to build the process that's needed to uh allow everyone to come to the common ground, that's lessening and lessening. And particularly as people switch out of switch off politics, and so the situation's getting worse. So it incentivizes politicians to create, and incentivizes, I will say, often the media to create a very, you know, in the red corner we have X and in the blue corner we have Y. And and that's in two reasons as well for them. Um not only is it there, how do I simplify the story, uh, but sometimes it's also the story's only good if there's a fight. And so I I need two opposing forces when actually you might have two two two teams who are just trying to figure figure out the best solution from their own perspective. And so there's the these things then combined with the fact that people now often get their information and the news from social media.

SPEAKER_02: 13:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 13:43

Uh, and so all of the incentives now are wrong. The incentives now of if media do want engagement, and I don't blame them for this, this is really tough.

SPEAKER_00: 13:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 13:53

Used to be that, of course, it would just be if someone bought a newspaper, that was their measure of of commercial success. Now they can distill it down to the individual click on an article and not just that, how many seconds someone read into that article. They know what headlines attract people and they're therefore incentivized to build more of those headlines. Politicians, on the other hand, their incentive is to be known, to be seen to be working, to be recognized as doing their jobs, to have name recognition. And if their old version of getting that is media coverage, then we're all incentivized to be operating in a pretty inflammatory way. And no wonder voters then they read it, but it doesn't mean they enjoy seeing what they're seeing.

SPEAKER_00: 14:37

Yeah, and it triggers parts of the brain that is also not really sustainable over time, right? It feels to me that most of progress in civilization has come due to coordination, as a matter of fact, right? And and somehow we've regressed to the gladiatorial combat of the Coliseum in many ways in all of these arenas. And we believe that that has to be now the way that we make progress in some shape or form.

SPEAKER_01: 14:59

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00: 15:00

And and it feels so backwards because it speaks to the very primal parts of ourselves rather than the I'd say neocortex or high-myctula. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's lizard brain in a way. That part of it. And I again, I understand when people are just feel disenfranchised, they want to point fingers and they want things to change, right? And there's drastic measures that they want to see. And I understand that. But how do we break the cycle? You you address the media here. I do think that there's a big problem there, right?

SPEAKER_05: 15:28

Yeah, and again, uh I say it without blame because it's you know, they're in a really difficult position.

SPEAKER_04: 15:34

Uh we are reliant on them. That is the conduit for our information. I mean, as a citizen, that's how I get my information.

SPEAKER_05: 15:41

Yes, yes. And you know, for the most part, there's a there's still a group of people who trust that as a source of information. And we want, you know, we want to continue to encourage it as a trusted source of information. You know, their job was to critique the job I did. And, you know, if we unfortunately instead have the critique of what we did solely opposition parties, everyone brings their own bias in that situation. They were the third, the media is our, you know, our third party assessor on behalf of the public to hold to account. So we that importance of the fourth of the important thing. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04: 16:20

So, yes, there's this beautiful I and sorry, I'm probably now throwing this off course, but do your thing.

SPEAKER_05: 16:26

I know I love how many folded pages and scribbles you've got in there. Like, I feel like as a textbook, I've really done well.

SPEAKER_04: 16:34

I I just I absolutely loved, and I can't remember his name, I think it was John something, the journalist that you called from the back of the car. John Campbell. Yeah, that's it. How eroded is that obviously very trusted relationship you had with that journalist? And you'd spoken to him on your way to become Prime Minister, and then as he was stepping down, you also had a very open and emotional conversation with him. Yeah. Or left him a message, I think. Yes, I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 17:01

I respected him, and I respect a number of journalists in New Zealand. And it's not the case that we always saw eye to eye. And I I wonder if sometimes that's that's what I what I crave still is that notion of respect and decency, civility, simple things that I think we took for granted, but there's a number of journalists I really respect. And, you know, obviously we didn't always agree, they would absolutely hold me to account. Some of the interviews I had with John over the years were pretty robust, but I respected him.

SPEAKER_04: 17:35

But you also trusted that he was going to represent what you were saying accurately. You were able to be vulnerable and and and brave in your message. I'm not even sure I knew what he might do with that last year.

SPEAKER_05: 17:46

Really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Uh yeah. Uh I think when I sent it, I didn't have a mind to what he might do with it, actually. And to be honest, he did nothing with it. Well I I wrote about it. Uh he he he just I think took it as a relationship. A closing moment, I guess. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:06

Nice. Beautiful. Um let's shift gears a little bit, shall we?

SPEAKER_04: 18:12

Are we gonna are we gonna ask her the big question?

SPEAKER_00: 18:14

Yeah, let's ask the big question.

SPEAKER_05: 18:16

He made a really scary face just then.

SPEAKER_00: 18:20

For our listeners, Natasha made a scary face. Um let's reimagine the way we organize societies for a moment. Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_05: 18:29

I mean it's only 10 10 30 a.m. on a Monday. Let's do that.

SPEAKER_00: 18:33

You know, we don't want to give you an easy ride here. If you could tear up the rule book and create an ideal political system, what would that look like?

SPEAKER_05: 18:42

This is interesting. I it would be pretty close to the system we have in New Zealand. There's a lot about our system. I really, really love and appreciate. So just to give some context on that, we have a mixed member proportional system. And so the idea is that every vote, every vote counts. It doesn't matter if you live in a seat where traditionally the conservatives have won, you get two votes. Your first vote is for who you locally want to represent you, and your second vote is that for the party you want to represent you in government. And that means that even if the majority in your local town tend to vote one way, your party vote is still having some influence to determine who governs. Now, the upshot of that is that if you happen to be, you know, uh, let's say very environmentally minded, you have to happen to think that maybe my party you'd like you'd like them to be fairly singularly focused on environment, you want an outlet for that, you've got the Green Party on the furtherest left of New Zealand. Or if you think that the Conservatives are too centrist, you've got a party that's on the furtherest uh right. And if they get over the threshold of 5%, then they'll be represented in parliament. So you've got an outlet. Everyone's got a voice. And for those smaller parties, uh, they may be relied upon to form government. So we have we tradition we tend to, since we've had this system since 1996, have coalitions. Uh, and the trick then is for the party that gets the majority of the vote is just to try and keep them those government outcomes representative, you know, is my is my five or six percent party not overreaching in terms of the influence on policy and so on. So, as a system, I feel like it's a pretty good representative democracy. So the things around it that I would change, there's some things about the culture. Yeah, we've got a Westminster-style parliament. So we've got this representative democracy, we've got this Westminster style parliament. So there's a lot of like it's just in the debating chambers. Like mudslinging. Yeah, there's a lot of that. You as a party can choose not to engage in that. You know, you can choose not to operate in that way, but it is still the culture of that place. You know, there's things like that that I'd want to change because when kids would come and watch us down in that bear pit, I'd think, oh my gosh, they'd think our classroom isn't this bad. And whilst there are certain rules around the decorum and so on, so it's just there's some elements that I think I'd culturally want to change. I would want a situation where people's private life that you know their families are kept out. It used to be that way in politics, probably actually here as well. But in New Zealand, it used to be the case that you didn't talk about politicians' kids or their relationships. So, you know, you stuck to, you know, you played, you played the ball, not the man, is what we used to call it. Um, but uh that's changed over time, and I I'd like to roll that back about the system. Uh I would love a situation where we had that time and that space where, you know, the media cycle is is not, you know, the six o'clock news and then the morning paper. Yeah. But when it was the six o'clock news and the morning paper, the media weren't trying to make news. Because now that they have such a rolling, they try and create the news. So that's when you get the the whole let's just pop quiz that politician and catch them out on a thing. Yeah. And that actually doesn't take us anywhere. So I'd love us to have more of the time and the space on issues without having to because when you make a fast decision, sometimes it's a bad decision.

SPEAKER_02: 22:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 22:19

So or these these are more nuanced cultural things that I think I would like to see change.

SPEAKER_04: 22:25

And you don't have mandatory voting in New Zealand, do you?

SPEAKER_05: 22:28

No, we have the requirement to be on the electoral roll, but not mandatory voting. Australia does, but we don't want to. What do you feel about that? I don't really feel we have the need for it in New Zealand, and so I've never advocated for that. Um we still have really relatively high voter turnout.

SPEAKER_04: 22:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:46

What about the measure for a success for the system? Right now, GDP is is seems very outdated, right? Uh as a as a measure of the yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 22:54

So there's a couple of measures of success. I would include actually whether people just show up to vote. Right. I do consider that that's a measure of voter engagement. It's a degree to whether people feel disenfranchised or not. You know, in our local elections, it can be pretty low, it can be something like 40%. Yeah. But that's not that far off for better elections in the United States. Um, so I take that as a measure. I take kind of the the satisfaction measures that you get in general polling sometimes as being really important. Measures of success for government themselves, you know, there are those that the commentators use. And because they're benchmark and they're internationally applicable, of course, um GDP uh is is is widely used. But our view was sure, you know, of course, let's use that. But it doesn't give us a sense of well-being in the round. And surely the success of a nation in this day and age uh should also be the well-being of its people. Um, you know, have you is your population healthy and well? Is their mental well-being strong? Environmentally, is your growth causing environmental damage? Are you doing your part on climate change? In our minds, these were all factors we should take into account. So that's why we created the well-being budget, a way to keep a measure of these things, and we put some specific measures, for instance, around child poverty. So our view was in a relatively wealthy society, if you've got significant inequality and children are experiencing it, then that's a sign that you, you know, that all is not well.

SPEAKER_04: 24:33

But also if your measurement doesn't even include unpaid workers who are raising kids, let's say, or you know, domestic. Oh, yeah, there's lots of problems with GDP. Um or most of the wealth is in the hands of the top one percent. Yeah. How can it be imaginable?

SPEAKER_05: 24:51

Oh yeah. It's it's it's very flawed. Robert F. Kennedy who said um GDP measures everything, uh it measures just about everything except that which makes life worthwhile. Um I think there used to be that that that saying that if you married your if you married your cleaner, then GDP went down. And you know, it's so it's you know, it's it's all of these uh issues with that as a singular form of of a measurement of success.

SPEAKER_00: 25:19

I think a great example in New Zealand as well is that it feels that money in politics is not a big factor. Uh right? Yeah, maybe you want to talk about the really big issue of special interests now dominating many of the processes.

SPEAKER_05: 25:35

We will get stories about that, but um but the fact that you know we have the ability to, you know, that there's transparency around, you know, when someone's given a donation and someone might perceive that's had some influence, you know, we have that level of transparency relative to other countries. It's at a much lower level. Um so yes, I think we've probably got the measures that add a layer of protection there. What we also have is I think a a pretty accessible democracy. So in order to run in a seat, um, your campaign limit on how much you can spend on posters or on radio ads or anything that's directly about campaigning. My memory is now that it sits at about, I think it's about 27,000, it might have gone up now, New Zealand dollars for the campaign period.

SPEAKER_04: 26:27

I mean that's just so civilized. Yeah, it's very the entry point then is anyone a different.

SPEAKER_05: 26:33

What I also really appreciate having lived in the States is you get a broadcasting allocation. So it doesn't matter if you want to spend screeds on broadcasting, you can't. You get an allotted amount of time. And you can use that time, but it means that you don't end up bombarding voters with negative electoral ads, which I just think about other people. Yeah, yeah. New Zealanders would just hate. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 26:56

Yeah. You touch upon something there. The accessibility of politics obviously leads to the the question, which is democracy, the representatives, should be reflective of the electorate. Yeah. Right? And and we have certain countries where this is not the case. Yeah. Do you think that a truly fair system requires that to be the case?

SPEAKER_05: 27:16

I think it I I believe it it should, yes. I mean, we always used to say that a parliament should look like the population it serves. And, you know, for we had a number of policies within our party to try and make sure that our party elected, even if the parliament was a little slower. But while we were there, we got we had a we reached a parliament that had 50% women. Um and we had representation from uh obviously uh Indigenous New Zealanders, Pacific our Pacifica community, our LGBTQI plus community. You know, in my mind, again, this is this is to make sure that you just have better decision making because the decision makers reflect New Zealanders.

SPEAKER_02: 27:57

Right.

SPEAKER_05: 27:58

And it can be as simple, um, it can be as simple as that. But we know that on some simple measures, like for instance, gender representation, that in uh parliamentary democracies women make up something like 27%. And and I have a feeling that's that's going to get worse.

SPEAKER_04: 28:15

Really? Because here it's much better. It's 40. Yeah, and in a school, yeah, an ethnicity. I won't be pretty equal to society now under Starmer's government. Yes. It feels like, okay, great, now we can focus on policy.

SPEAKER_05: 28:30

Yes, yes. But we know unfortunately that the experience women in public office are having is uh and not just women, um obviously other groups as well, is tinged with violence and abuse, particularly in the online environment. And so some are just making the decision to exclude. Yeah. In fact, it's uh in surveys in Australia, it's been named as the number one barrier for women's participation in public office. So and then of course comes um the financial limitations. So I do think we have to give consideration to the environment as well. And you and you know, you think you ask anyone whether they'd want their kids to go into politics. Most most parents would have some hesitation about that, and that's never great for the future career prospects of a of an occupation if no one wants to be there.

SPEAKER_02: 29:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 29:19

But there was something about your trajectory and the very kind of this sounds derogatory artisan approach, but I'm gonna use it anyway. I'm not meaning to be derogatory, quite the opposite. That it feels like you got your hands dirty at a grassroots level, knocking on people's doors from a young age, whether it was sort of missionary work or w or whether it was political, you got to learn how to interface with people with maybe some hostility, with yeah, resistance. Yeah. And you got to learn how to break through that. Yeah. So you got rid of maybe you didn't get rid of fear, but you you learnt how to break through that threshold.

SPEAKER_05: 29:57

Like actually, for a lot of politicians. Not just in my country. That is that is often their pathway. I volunteered, I've volunteered in campaigns in different countries and and often they go out their outdoor knocking. You know, those town hall meetings.

SPEAKER_04: 30:16

But I think particularly now where so much happens online and even in friendship groups, the way that you communicate with people isn't face to face. I think it must become more and more intimidating to knock on someone's door.

SPEAKER_05: 30:28

And and that's when that cycle that we've talked about returns a bit because we know in some of the survey work that people will actually say, oh well, my local person who I may have met or I may have interacted with, they're they're okay, they're one of the good ones. So when people have that personal interaction, it does change their view of someone. But uh those personal interactions aren't always easy. You know, it's not getting easier to have them. You know, people are extremely busy, they're not they're perhaps less inclined over time to come to those old town halls uh or be available when you're out door knocking, or for safety reasons, people not might not be inclined to door knock as much as before. So all of these things I think play into the environment we're in.

SPEAKER_00: 31:10

I think you touched upon something interesting here, and again, it triggers a few things that you read in your book. It is obviously true that empathy loops are triggered as soon as we look into the wide of the eye of another person that are not available when we're on mobile phones. Yes. That said, I've I've heard a fair bit of people who have broken with family members who may be a little bit too, I know, Republican voters, Democrat voters, it's a US phenomenon. It's also a phenomenon here, or somebody who voted for leave or remain, and they're no longer friends. What I loved in your book is that uh, I mean, your grandma had a totally different political opinion. There was this uh part where somebody was saying it was a lady who said, Yeah, we'll pray for you, but we won't vote for you. Oh, yeah. And you had all these like very, I guess, diametrically opposed political relationships that still were very respectful. And I I fear we're losing some of that now. So it has something to do with the digital realm, but again, also something cultural as you were.

SPEAKER_05: 32:04

Yeah, and and and as I say, I um I don't have all of the answers to this, but you know, there's a reason though, there's that old saying, you know, don't talk about politics or religion, you know. We've always known these are deeply held topics that sometimes you can navigate them and sometimes they descend into arguments. So we've always had that in our in our collective mindset. Yeah. I'm not sure. I can't tell you. Is it that now, unless we're able to move someone to our way of thinking, we're unable to reconcile how we can maintain connection the more that we only gravitate towards those who hold the same view? Are we losing that muscle memory? I don't know. I certainly have people in my world who I, you know, who I don't agree with on everything. And, you know, we have the struggle of the fact that all my views are there for everyone to see. They're well advertised. So I, you know, we have to make the decision that we're just going to agree to disagree and love each other anyway, or we lose something. And uh that's that's what we're asking lots of people to try and navigate. And maybe it's that we've had a number of recent events that have forced others to put out their views on their political sleeves, and then that next step of reconciling that with their relationships has been hard and very difficult.

SPEAKER_04: 33:26

I think some of it's wrapped up with being unwilling to feel uncomfortable, and that's in many areas of life. We have this over-pathologizing of discomfort of someone's pain, whether it's in a classroom, to be honest, it starts so young. If this doesn't suit you, then you don't have to do it. You can be exempt from this, from this, from this, from this. Actually, does that build resilience? Does that build a sort of open mind that gets curious about the ways other people think? If it's not the way you think and it doesn't fit in with you, then you get to discount everyone else. Even though it's really tough, of course I want to surround myself with people who think the same as me. Um, but actually, when I get invaded, when I invite an invasion of a another point of view, it's never immediate, by the way. I'm as guilty as the next person. I immediately all the time. I'm super resistant to change. But afterwards it'll percolate, and the next day I'll wake up and it will absolutely inform the way I make the next set of decisions because I've got this other point of view that's sort of like a hologram, you know, ho hovering next to me, telling me to think, what about seeing it from this point of view? And it's interesting to me how little maybe it's also to do with being an actor and constantly trying to sort of inhabit someone else's worldview. But I'm amazed at how often someone will have a policy, let's just take abortion, something that really riles people up, that they may be anti-abortion and to the point that even if someone has been raped, they should still see the pregnancy through until that person's own daughter uh experiences something like that. And then it completely changes. And you can see that that person actually, before that awful moment, wasn't able to see it from someone else's point of view. Theory of mind, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it sounds as if it's not a political thing, but I think it's deeply political.

SPEAKER_05: 35:21

But so much of our ability to shift mindsets or to be open or to at least empathize with someone's view or to seek to understand someone's alternate perspective. And it doesn't mean you change yours necessarily, but it might maybe mean the way that you react in a situation may be different. It's so much of it's based on that human connection, knowing someone who holds a different view, or interacting with someone who comes from a different background, or so much of it comes down to just basic human interaction and connectedness. And we are living in a world where that is, you know, we we there's less of that. There is. And so I do think that's a really big part of it. And I think the other is just the conditions in which we engage, the manner, the, you know, the the fact that the you know, the I think there are some things I I will just flat out say I totally disagree with that way of being. And that is anytime someone thinks that their engagement, uh, that their perspective uh justifies violence, I'm so right on this that I'm willing to engage in political violence. I don't I don't care what political uh uh perspective you're coming from or your motivation, I will disagree with that because that is those conditions are also making it more difficult to rebuild their human connection and engagement. So the conditions matter as well.

SPEAKER_00: 36:43

I I agree, and I think the backdrop here, unsurprisingly, is that the world that we live in is louder than it's ever been, right? So your cortex is continuously bombarded. Anything cognitive requires calories to burn, you're constantly burnt out. Yes, and then all of a sudden now you also have to deal with somebody's different opinion from you, even though your tendency as you know a primate that was in tribal society is to look for in-group.

SPEAKER_02: 37:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:09

And so if you don't have the energy to put up with actually having to listen to somebody else's argument, nuance, and like have the energy for the empathy to bring up to actually talk to someone, then you just uh will regress and you'll go to the in-group because that's more comfortable. You don't have the energy to deal with that.

SPEAKER_05: 37:24

I just think it's why I feel so much sympathy for this. I just, yeah, I just think everyone's just so overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_00: 37:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 37:31

Well also I think we worry about what others think, and we worry that our identity is going to be wrapped up with let's say I depart from what I'm normal or you know from expressing um what I would normally express and say, I just heard a point of view on this, and now I really understand why maybe I would vote for Trump in that set of circumstances. Something like that would be a departure from my usual narrative. The judgment on that is just not worth considering the other point of view.

SPEAKER_05: 38:05

And that is I uh you know, I guess because the circumstances in which we're expressing ourselves is often in the written form on public platforms where there's anonymity for others and the parlance can be extreme. And you think about some of the things that might be said flippantly in conversation as part of conversation and dialogue versus and which has you know some some you know contextualization versus the online environment. And so it's no wonder I guess we end up in an environment with cancel culture and people being afraid to speak their mind and and so on. And so all of these things, all of these things, and and here we are.

SPEAKER_00: 38:42

Yeah, yeah, it's it's a big topic to uh cover or to figure out. Now, um let me ask you in an ideal society, do you think that everybody would have the civic responsibility to care about politics? No. No. Okay. Tell tell me why.

SPEAKER_05: 39:00

I would I would trade caring about politics with people just caring. Yes, show up to vote. I I don't want a situation where people don't use their voice. But would I be upset if someone, you know, wasn't engaged in every political debate, wasn't jumping in or climbing in on everything. Actually, people elect us to do a job because they are picking you because they believe that you have the same set of values and that if because they do not have the time, capacity, or access to the same information, resource, data experts, uh, they are vesting in us their trust and faith that we will make the best possible decisions on their behalf. So that is our job to go and do that. So if they're not engaging in that on a daily basis, I'm not upset by that. I'd be more upset though if they just didn't care about the world around them in between times.

SPEAKER_02: 39:51

Right.

SPEAKER_05: 39:52

So care about whether you're doing your bit for the environment, care about whether your neighbour's okay, you know, whether or not you're looking out for your community. That I just empathy rather than specifically being completely um across politics.

SPEAKER_00: 40:06

I th I think that's uh that's a great response.

SPEAKER_05: 40:09

If everyone deeply was vested in politics, that might be quite an aggressive environment.

SPEAKER_00: 40:15

This is actually what I feel we're going through right now because it's so easy to express yourself about politics.

SPEAKER_03: 40:20

And maybe when you don't know it's not, it's not politics.

SPEAKER_05: 40:23

And maybe when you don't trust the people, people that you've elected to take out those duties on your behalf, then the engagement changes as well.

SPEAKER_04: 40:31

I do think though, and maybe this has always been the case, maybe it's naive to think that it's it's a new wave, that there's this willingness to criticize absolutely everything with no understanding of how hard the job is. And if you were a little more engaged in politics, you might see that all of these things are quite nuanced and you can't do this before you've done that, and if you've only got a four-year cycle, you I just I think we could get that without people even having to engage in the politics itself.

SPEAKER_05: 40:58

I think we could get that if we just More empathetic. If we just reminded of our you know, of just that everyone in leadership is human. Yeah. And and that was one of the decisions I made when I wrote the book. I thought I'm not gonna I'm not gonna write just a political memoir that's all about public policy. I I want to write what it's like to lead because we don't want robotic leaders. I do think we want people to s be able to change their mind when new circumstances present themselves. I I think we want people to be able to own up to error or mistake, and all of that will be encouraged if if we first and foremost remember that there are just humans in there.

SPEAKER_00: 41:38

Yeah, they're just cutting some slack, I think, is like essentially the worst possible interpretation of every statement or action is taken.

SPEAKER_02: 41:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 41:46

Rather than cutting anybody some slack and trying to actually think, okay, is there something else behind that? Yeah. I I love uh I don't know why this is popping to my head. During COVID, there was the Easter and then you were making this address and saying, hey, yes, the Easter bunny is also an essential worker. But then you're immediately in your hand, you're like, oh no, I have to correct this. And even in that moment, in such a light-hearted moment, to like have to consider, oh, this could be interpreted the wrong way because some people may not have the Easter bunny, and then have these kids, parents who have failed. Oh, the resources, yeah. So what I'm saying is there's like so much nuance to everything, and people don't really want to deal with our cognitive lot in general. Yeah, the much easier thing is to just take the worst possible interpretation of what's set in front of you because that doesn't require that much energy. It's true.

SPEAKER_04: 42:37

But I I think one of the things, and one of the reasons I think we asked you about your definition of leadership is what I found so revelatory about your book, and I didn't expect to, uh I guess, because as you say, most political autobiographies oh, we did this, then we did this, then we did this, and we won on this and this and this. But because yours is it's so emergent, your story of leadership, it's so sort of almost unexpected. I learned so much about what now I think leadership should be. It really taught me because that word is so loaded and so freighted, and instead I came with a sense of, oh, leadership is finding out what you don't know. Because I just felt that that's what you were constantly doing was asking why and filling in or getting other people or delegating to experts who might be able to come and give you the bullet points of what it was you needed at that moment.

SPEAKER_05: 43:33

It's such an interesting reflection because I mean the I guess the way that I framed a lot of that was you'll never know everything. And so so much of I think who you are as a leader is defined by how you deal with that question of not knowing everything. Do you come at it with a level of confidence and bravado that no one will ever know that you don't know everything? Because you certainly possess all of the traits of someone who does. And then when you're presented with a scenario where it's exposed that you kind of just ride roughshod over the top and make a bunch of things. The bombastic defenses or do you deal with your the gap in your knowledge by seeking, constantly seeking, and being open to the need to constantly seek, but also being aware that to build trust and confidence, it's not absolute knowledge that I think does that. It's being clear that you always have a plan in the absence of what you don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 44:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 44:31

And so, yeah, I think you're right. That is a really central part to how leadership could be defined.

SPEAKER_00: 44:36

100%. And the shame is that it's perceived as weakness to a certain extent nowadays. It is. It's absurdly. But is it? Absolutely. No, I think that's a good idea. I think so.

SPEAKER_05: 44:44

In politics, I think. Well, certainly, regardless of whether voters do, politicians do. Yeah. I mean uh uh how many politicians have you ever heard say I don't know?

SPEAKER_02: 44:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: 44:54

Well, I I would say that that's because the media doesn't allow them to. That's the problem is our interlocutor constantly says, Ha, got you. Yes, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05: 45:06

How how can one navigate to to make the news as well? Yeah, it is, it is. And I have a lot of sympathy for politicians, obviously. It's uh it's a tough environment. Some more than others, obviously. Um, but yeah, it is a it is a very tough environment.

SPEAKER_00: 45:22

The social media landscape played a big role during your time in office. Um how do you feel that has changed the whole dynamics? We talked about the media a lot, a little bit about social media, but I I'd love to hear your your own. Oh, significantly.

SPEAKER_05: 45:35

I mean, I came into I was one of the early politicians who came into politics with a Facebook page as a civilian. And so it wasn't new to me as a tool. And I remember it was sold to everyone, it's a great democratizer. And I remember being excited about the idea of communicating directly with voters and all the promise that that held. But the naivety of that was, of course, I was going to my intention was to communicate with voters openly, transparently, with facts. And of course, that's not the environment that we consistently have. So there I don't think that there were enough thought has been given to an environment where uh particularly if you're someone who's of a generation where what is written is true, and no judgment in that, you know, it's a significant mind shift to bring a cynical perspective or a curiosity to everything you read and experience. But that's what we're now asking of this current generation. They literally can't believe not only what they read, but what they see. Uh, and that's a big transition that we are currently making. Yeah. Uh and so social media has heightened that. And that role of disinformation, I think we've not yet grappled with the impact it has on a healthy democracy.

SPEAKER_00: 46:54

Yeah, it is true.

SPEAKER_05: 46:55

For an uplifting subject? What do we have?

SPEAKER_00: 47:00

Tell it, tell us since you've left uh office, what have you been up to? You've left New Zealand. Are you actually based in London now?

SPEAKER_04: 47:07

Just here for a few months. And also, we haven't even said the title of this video.

SPEAKER_02: 47:11

Oh, that's my fault.

SPEAKER_05: 47:13

A different kind of power. A different kind of power. Yeah. Um, I came up with many titles until we landed on that one. I just wanted to have run. Just run. Let's do it, would have been good, right? Oh yes, well let's do, let's do this. Um now I I work on uh I guess I I work on issues where I feel like I can be useful. So I'm still the patron for the Christchurch Call to Action, which is works on violent extremism and terror, terrorism online. And that was off the back of our terror attack in in New Zealand. So I still work on that.

SPEAKER_04: 47:46

And I I just want to because that was something that I found so incredibly moving in your book. How and I want to quote you correctly actually because it's it's the quote that I found incredibly and and now of course I won't be able to, maybe you can help us. Um you don't name the attacker because what you want to be remembered is the names of the victims and not create a celebrity.

SPEAKER_05: 48:12

Because we could deny him infamy. We could deny his his desire for notoriety uh and that if we wanted to keep the focus on the victims, then we should speak only about them, not not the person who who took their lives. And that and that felt to me like, you know, just such a obvious thing to do. And I also hated the way that amongst that group of white supremacists, they wouldn't name each other. They would they would scrawl each other's atrocities on their weapons. Um and I I've since learned from this incredible person called Dame Louise Richardson. She's she specialises she's Irish. She's an academic and she specialises in terrorism. And she says that people who engage in these acts, they seek three things. They seek, you know, revenge or vengeance somehow on the act itself, they seek notoriety and they seek a reaction. You can't, once they've done their their heinous crime, you can then deny them the second two. And and that's what New Zealand is.

SPEAKER_04: 49:16

It's so powerful. It's so powerful and and so simple. It is.

SPEAKER_05: 49:21

Yeah, yeah. And the denying the reaction, that's that's where I think you've seen a range of different responses over time to uh to these acts by radicalized individuals. I think we must always keep them in the frame that they are radicalized individuals.

SPEAKER_04: 49:40

Yeah. How did you stop the media? Because what happens after every one of these uh kinds of atrocities, large or small, is have we named the perpetrator? Yeah. We are about to name the perpetrator. It's just this demand for um I don't even know what it is.

SPEAKER_05: 49:59

Yeah, I think almost there's this who did this and why. Yeah people s immediately have that uh really instinctive human reaction. And uh you know, he was named, but I think there was a difference between almost people hearing the name and knowing that it was it was, you know, it was had no meaning to them to then make the decision that actually that that was there, that beyond that it w there was no need for it to be a name that was etched in people's memories. And I wonder now, I do wonder if you asked a New Zealander if they could even name him. Um that's success. But they could name but they could I'd say they could name the mosques. You know, they could name the people who were harmed, the number of lives, you know. Um so we can we can deny we can deny them that. Yeah. But we should also, I think, be on uh a mission to understand radicalization, how it happens to un to to really try and prevent it in the future.

SPEAKER_00: 51:03

And that that's the work you do.

SPEAKER_05: 51:05

Yeah, it is part of the work that we do. We look at the online environment and how people are radicalized, and uh because the person in our situation claims at least to have been radicalized on YouTube. Um so that is part of part of the work that we do. I also work on climate change because um uh obviously I enjoy working on all the existential threats to uh mankind. Uh uh yes, the shop prize, I'm also doing some work on COP this year on behalf of you going to Brazil.

SPEAKER_04: 51:32

I am yeah, and one of the many things that I found so incredibly inspiring and impressive, and I know it's too late in the States. What is it you said they have 400 guns? 400 million guns, yeah. Um so it's probably not gonna happen anytime soon. But how you managed to change gun policy in 10 days, was it?

SPEAKER_05: 51:51

Yeah, from the time we introduced that legislation, you know, and I put so much of that down to the you know, New Zealanders are such a such a pragmatic people. And I think this is also one of the points I always try and make about empathetic leadership. It's not performative. If you genuinely uh uh wish to prevent something from ever happening again, which is in my mind an empathetic response, then you act on that, you do what you can to to minimize that risk. And it was so obvious to us, obviously, this person was able to uh bring about that many casualties because he used military-style semi-automatic weapons. Uh, that's how he took 51 lives. Absurd. Uh and the fact that he was able to obtain those as easily as he was. Yes, he modified them illegally, but he still obtained them legally. Uh, you know, I think New Zealanders had any expectation that we would move on that. And we we have relatively high gun ownership in New Zealand because we have pests and we have you know rural and and farming communities. Um, but people accepted that you don't need, you know, and you don't need a uh military stole semi-automatic to go duck hunting.

SPEAKER_04: 53:01

And and what's so interesting is that it wasn't taken or seen as a personal infringement uh uh on that on their liberty, as an infringement upon their personal liberty, sorry. As it seems to be read in America, it's about you're trying to rob me of a right.

SPEAKER_05: 53:15

I do think there's a different perspective on gun ownership as well in New Zealand. Perhaps I can only say from I think New Zealanders see it as a responsibility, um, rather than perhaps that rights framework. But also we came at it with a zero blame mentality. If you own one of those guns, it was because it was legal to do so, and so yes, we're banning them, but we'll buy them back. We'll compensate you for the fact we're doing this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 53:38

And I like that you were actually asking hunters slash uh remember this is part of your book when you're talking with people.

SPEAKER_05: 53:45

Trying to figure out what to do with pump action shotguns.

SPEAKER_00: 53:48

Ten or five shots. Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_05: 53:51

That was that's really uh all policy has these niggly little bits you've got to figure out.

SPEAKER_00: 53:55

And you go to the people who know you. Yeah, it's like citizens' assemblies.

SPEAKER_04: 53:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 54:00

Uh just and I I really love reading your book and listening to you, actually. As a matter of fact, your leadership is uh one that is at least very dear to me and what it represents, and it is the type of leadership that I think everybody should aspire to. Thanks for being that example. Thank you. Appreciate that, and thanks for taking the time.

SPEAKER_04: 54:17

Thank you so much for making the time for us. Um, I I absolutely loved your book. It's everyone's Christmas present this year.

SPEAKER_05: 54:25

Oh, thank you so much. It's so kind. Happy to sign them if you want. Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_04: 54:30

Thanks.