John Key says Jacinda Ardern was an accidental PM who froze under pressure, especially during COVID. He criticises Labour's coalition with the Greens and Māori Party, and argues against race-based policy in favour of a unified New Zealand.
I quite like Jacinda, actually. And she came in in 08 when I first became Prime Minister. Her parents. I know her parents quite well. So her parents are national voters, not labor voters. They may have voted labor when Jacinda was Prime Minister, but they sure as hell didn't vote labor before that. Right. Her father was the number three cop in the police force in New Zealand. And I always used to send a police officer for three years to the islands and they'd go to, like, Samoa and they'd be the mentor for like, you know, the Samoan police force or the Tongan police force. So they'd be right across the region. And so Father Ross, I sent him there cause he wanted to go. And he rang up one day, it was near the end of his time, and he said, ah, Prime Minister, Prime Minister, I don't want to come home. And I said, okay. He said, can't you just find me a job, do something else? I said, okay, Ross, hold on. So I went downstairs, saw Murray McCullough's foreigner, said, do we need anyone anywhere? And he goes, yeah, niue. Well, there's 1,600 people in New A. More people live on my street than Niue. Right? So I went, ross, you're going to New A. And so cool. So off he goes, off to New A. And he did a really good job and he really liked it. And God, he was like, oh, Jesus, the Labor Party. Don't get me started on the Labour Party type of thing. But see, Jacinda was really the accidental Prime Minister. She didn't really. The media loved her for lots of really good reasons, actually, you know, I kind of get it. You know, she speaks really well, she's telegenic, she did lots of cool things. I mean, she DJ'd and she's kind of a nice person and things. And so I got it. I actually totally got it. She didn't really want the job. But I think good prime ministers ultimately, and good leaders thrive on decision making. If you're the sort of person that likes making decision, you'll be a good leader. If you're the sort of person that goes, oh, God, I just ultimately don't want to do that. And that was her problem. She just. Look how much weight she lost at the end of it. And it was because she herself, I heard her do an interview the other day. She said, I didn't go on Hosking because the stress of him beating me up every day just drove me. I just couldn't do it. I just couldn't sleep. So I actually get it. It doesn't make her a bad person. I just think that she wasn't a great decision maker. And that was why when Covid, the back end of COVID came along, she couldn't make the decision to get out because she thought, if I make the decision and people die, it's on me. But then by not making the decision, how many people didn't get a cancer diagnosis or business went broke or mental health issues went through the roof? So every. You don't live in a perfect. You don't have that luxury of living in a perfect world. I just think Luxton will make those decisions. And I think, as I said, you've got to think about what you want to vote for. And the only other thing I'd say in 2020, it was pretty obvious national was never going to win. And a lot of national voters voted Green, believe it or not, Sorry, voted Labor to stop the Greens getting there this time. Labor have got no chance of getting home unless they have a deal with the Greens in the Maori Party. And that Maori party's quite a different Maori party to the one I did deal with. The Marrow Party, I did deal with. They were actually quite. They were really good people like Taran and Peter are great, pretty straightforward, didn't agree on everything. But actually, you know, they did a lot of good things for their people. This married party. I just don't believe in a divided New Zealand. I think we're one New Zealand. I think we should get like at the moment they're running this big thing in Auckland this week. If you're Mori, you'll get an operation and if you're non Mori, you won't. I don't believe in it. I think that's bullshit. I think if you're sick, you should get it. If you have less money than me, you should get it over me because I can afford to go somewhere else. I believe in that. I just don't believe that we should divide the country on race because then we make ourselves racist. We should be proud of the fact that we're a multicultural country built on a bicultural foundation of mori and pkeh. And by the way, in 1840 we all agreed that that was the right model. And not much has changed in Article 3 of the treaty's pretty clear we're all going to be treated equally before the law. Not some people treated one way and some people another.
