Launched on the cusp of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into New Zealand’s Covid-19 response, this campaign is less a call for justice and more an exercise in targeted misinformation. It’s a stunt so utterly divorced from reason that it demands a meticulous dismantling, not merely for its audacity, but for its dangerous attempt to rewrite a legacy of effective leadership.
Far from a legitimate grievance, this petition reveals the lingering obsession of a vocal fringe, unable to reconcile Ardern’s global acclaim with their narrative of victimhood.
Yesterday, The Standard posted:
It is strange that Jacinda Ardern should continue to live rent free in so many right winger’s heads.
This thought came to me when I discovered a petition run by Reality Check Radio demanding that Jacinda Ardern, Chris Hipkins, Ashley Blomfield and a host of others be summonsed to appear at stage two of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Covid 19.
The advert is really cute and gives the impression that they can be charged and tried by the inquiry.
This is clear from the picture used depicting Ardern, Hipkins and Blomfield standing in a Court dock.
The right-wing’s unhinged obsession with Ardern fuels this petition’s lunacy, with commentators like Chris Lynch and Cameron Slater still frothing at the mouth, painting her as some sort of tyrannical overlord. Lynch, in his based rants, has called Ardern’s memoir tour a calculated rebranding, accusing her of “control, exclusion, and distrust,” as if she single-handedly plunged New Zealand into chaos. Slater, the idiot blogger who's slander caused his own demise, has long spewed vitriol, labelling her a “pretty communist” and peddling conspiracies that would make a flat-earther blush.
Their rhetoric, along with the well-funded Reality Check Radio propaganda, often echoed by the likes of misogynists like Mike Hosking, who once scoffed at Ardern’s leadership as “style over substance”, reveals a collective right-wing derangement syndrome that requires serious disinfecting. These right-wing pundits, clutching at straws to demonise a leader who steered New Zealand through crises with global acclaim, look like petulant children throwing tantrums over a game they’ve already lost. Why do they still view Ardern as a political threat? Perhaps it’s her enduring global stature, evidenced by a 2023 Harvard fellowship and ongoing UN engagements, that unnerves them, a reminder that her influence persists despite their relentless attempts to tear her down.
Reality Check Radio’s claims hinge on a narrative that New Zealand’s Covid response was a catastrophic overreach. They point to vaccine mandates as draconian, ignoring that the first inquiry found mandates were broadly effective, though applied too widely and for too long. The numbers don't lie: New Zealand’s vaccination rate reached 95% for first doses by December 2021, with 4 million fully vaccinated. This helped to keep the Covid death rate down to just 0.07 per 1,000 people by mid-2022, compared to 2.7 per 1,000 in places like the United States. The mandates, while contentious, saved an estimated 20,000 lives. To paint this as criminal is to spit in the face of those who survived because of it.
In 2023, the Guardian reported:
New Zealand’s globally praised Covid response saved about 20,000 lives, new research shows.
Government’s strategy, which included closing the border, meant death rate was 80% lower than in the US, according to the New Zealand Medical Journal
The report, published in the New Zealand Medical Journal, looks at the impact of the nation’s strategy, which included an almost complete international border closure for two years and strict lockdowns for days or weeks at a time.
The petition also vilifies lockdowns, claiming they were unnecessary. Yet, New Zealand’s initial elimination strategy kept cases to 1,166 by September 2020 (a per capita rate of just 0.23 cases per 1,000 people) while the UK saw over 400,000 cases, or 5.97 per 1,000. The second Auckland lockdown, critiqued for its duration, still reduced transmission rates by 80%, per Ministry of Health data. These measures bought time for vaccine rollouts and uptake, sparing hospitals from the collapse seen in other countries. To call this criminal negligence is to ignore the global context: countries without lockdowns, like Sweden, saw mortality rates of 1.45 deaths per 1,000 by mid-2022, five times higher than New Zealand’s 0.29 per 1,000. Far from reckless, these policies were a calculated shield against catastrophe.
Reality Check Radio’s inclusion of experts like Siouxsie Wiles and Michael Baker as “offenders” is particularly insidious. These scientists provided evidence-based guidance that led to New Zealand’s enviable outcomes, among the lowest excess mortality rates globally at 0.4% compared to 5-10% in many other Western nations. Their crime, it seems, was informing policy that worked too well for the conspiracy-minded morons to stomach.
This petition is not just a misguided cry for accountability; it’s a cynical ploy to erode trust in institutions and inflame division. By framing Ardern and her team as villains, Reality Check Radio taps into a vein of resentment, amplified by misinformation that saw violent threats against Ardern triple in her second term. It’s a shameful attempt to rewrite a history where New Zealand’s successful response was lauded globally, with a 2021 OECD report ranking it among the most effective.
The real offence lies in this petition’s reckless assault on reason, a desperate bid to keep Ardern in the crosshairs of a right-wing vendetta. Reality Check Radio must retract their nonsense before it further poisons public discourse.
