One of the great lessons I take away from my time in office is that it's so interesting to me the amount of campaign time that you spend with voters on your carefully planned and calibrated manifesto,
your policy agenda, so neatly presented.
And that is the thing that you are questioned on the most.
It's the thing that you build your flyers out of.
And yet so much of your time will be taken up on the things you do not anticipate.
A biosecurity, inclusion, a pandemic, a volcanic eruption, natural disasters.
And so voters need to get to know their politicians.
Politicians need to put out their values, who they are, how they'll manage those moments in time.
You know,
they need to test the needle a little bit on those frames
because actually that is what they're going to spend a reasonable amount of time on.
Dame Jacinda Ardern was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 to 2023.
She reflects on that period in a new memoir, A Different Kind of Power.
Her premiership is also captured by a new documentary, Prime Minister.
Both book and film are refreshingly and or startlingly candid depictions of the human experience of actually holding and exercising power,
especially at moments of great and jarring crisis.
Arden didn't expect to become Prime Minister, at least not when she did.
She was 37 and had only recently become deputy leader of the Labour Party when party leader Andrew Little resigned a few months ahead of a general election,
discouraged by polls.
Under Arden,