Former New Zealand PM advises politicians to ‘rebuild trust by building financial security’

Jacinda Ardern, who now calls Sydney home, has delivered a message to Australian politicians from the stage of the city’s Opera House.

She warned that politicians have been exacerbating the problem of polarisation within society and need to be better.

Her explanation is that in the past few decades, people across the world have been feeling an increasing sense of insecurity as globalization took hold, and hence they began attacking institutions such as the World Trade Organization. Politicians offered proposals such as Brexit in response to the insecurity – saying “here’s what you blame” – which then paved the way for the rise of totalitarian leaders like Donald Trump.

“It’s not just that you hold a different opinion, it’s that you hold it so deeply that you have this view you’ve got moral clarity that is not being held by the other person,” Ardern said when addressing the growing polarisation in public discourse. “Your opinions are recorded and held in time, and when so much of a healthy democracy is your ability to have debate and shift your views based on new evidence of information … that environment makes it more difficult.”

Ardern along with acclaimed Australian author and thinker Anna Funder were speaking a fortnight after the alleged attack on independent MP Helen Haines. The former New Zealand PM did not mention the incident explicitly, but stressed politicians and leaders needed to be aware of the tone they set.