Daniel Tobin, NZ Correspondent
I recently spent 9 months traveling around Europe, two of those months in the conservative paradise of Poland where people are proud of their heritage, not afraid to speak up against the Islamic threat, and the country has strong immigration laws. Poland is one of the only countries in Europe that hasn’t experienced a terrorist attack.
I am now back in my home New Zealand where the Left rules almost unchallenged. While I was overseas the Labour Party got into government, led by 37 year old Jacinda Ardern.
The Left-wing media here in NZ were doing cartwheels of joy that a young woman is the new Prime Minister. As far as the media here is concerned Jacinda can do no wrong, and of course, if anyone criticises her they are sexist misogynists.
It gets worse. As you may have heard, Jacinda recently announced that she is pregnant with her partner. So you can imagine the elation from all the Left-controlled media outlets here – which is all of them. The two main nightly news shows on TVNZ and TV Three are like watching CNN but with Kiwi accents. I have never seen one slightly positive story on Trump, and almost all the newspapers are owned by Fairfax. As Aussies know, Fairfax is as Left-wing as you can get and openly feminist and hostile towards males. I can speak from personal experience, as I worked at Fairfax for 8 years.
So we have had a day of almost hysterical coverage along the lines of Jacinda breaking the glass ceiling, showing the world that a woman can lead a country and have a baby, and smashing the gender gap, (which I don’t quite understand as men can’t get pregnant.) One feminist Fairfax story ended with the line: “Women can do anything, after all.” I thought that unrealistic line had been dropped years ago.
Last year, cricket commentator Mark Richardson was shredded by the media for daring to ask Jacinda about her plans to have children. Jacinda defensively shot back with “for other women, it is totally unacceptable in 2017 to say that women should have to answer that question in the workplace. That is unacceptable in 2017. It is the woman’s decision about when they choose to have children.”
Mark, who is normally very vocal, has kept a classy silence since the news broke, even while being baited by his cricket commentating co-hosts. Of course, Fairfax media still wrote a story mocking him for not commenting, and made it seem like he is been cowed into silence rather than the more honest angle that he is not one to gloat, and asked a perfectly reasonable question at the time.
I think the saddest part of this whole episode is that no-one has dared to suggest that perhaps Jacinda may not want to come back to work after taking her 6 weeks of maternity leave, or she may not be able to carry on working in a high-pressure job as the pregnancy progresses. What about the health of herself and the baby? Feminist journalists are raving how Jacinda is basically a superwoman who will prove to the world that she can run a country while pregnant. They have put so much pressure on her to be the perfect woman that I almost feel sorry for her.
In a world not run by left-wing media, we could have had a serious discussion about the challenges of being pregnant as a 37 year old while remaining effective in a high-stress job, but I guess that’s far too sensible for our media organisations.