She is lucky in that she has control over the whole country and everything in it as far as processes go. Federal Government is only able to send an overarching message and then each state gets to do its own little power play. And then there is council. Merde. Its easy to send a clear message when you dont have to kowtow to all flavours of politics and especially personalities and egos.
To some degree...
What Ardern has is authenticity and leadership. She's not afraid to make hard decisions and she asks people to trust her on the journey, and support her even if she makes mistakes. Her authenticity allows it. She is leading from the front, owning the decisions and the consequences. I've just finished listening to her press conference from this morning - she answered questions as honestly and as directly as she can, even if the answers weren't flattering. I haven't seen ANY of the Australian Premiers, nor the Prime Minister do that.
I look at the hotel quarantine situation as a prime example of this. Andrews is copping flak, and not without reason, for the implementation of this in Victoria yet the elephant in the room remains why this is sitting with the states at all.
International border controls are, and always have been, the responsibility of the Federal Government (Home Affairs). International quarantine matters are, and always have been, the responsibility of the Federal Government (Health and Agriculture, Water and the Environment). National crisis management also sits with the Federal Government (Home Affairs). Yet when the need arose to implement quarantine on returning guests, a matter that straddles both international border controls and international quarantine and is quite clearly a national crisis, something that should, by all accounts, rest squarely with the responsibilities of the Federal Government, the leadership simply wasn't there to make it happen. So the states were left to implement themselves and we now have five systems of international quarantine, not one. As a nation, our success in managing the virus is now beholden to the weakest of those five systems.
If Ardern had been PM of Australia, you can bet that wouldn't have happened.
Similarly, the clarity in communication is created by strong leadership and authenticity. There are plenty of personalities and egos on the other side of the ditch, but that's cut through by a leader who believes in the message and wants the message to be heard with clarity. I can't imagine Jacinda spinning a line that everyone with a job is an essential worker. Nor could I imagine her saying that she can't respond to legitimate questions about a failure in the quarantine process because it's subject to a judicial inquiry. There's nothing authentic in any of that and it degrades the rest of the message.
"There are 4 levels. This is what each level means - it's clearly spelt out without ambiguity. Auckland is now at Level 3. The rest of the nation is now at Level 2."
Again, if Ardern had been PM of Australia, you can bet we'd have a national framework that would work with our federated model, even as it supported the differing needs of each state.
Leaders lead. NZ have got one. We don't. At either state or federal level.