MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Jacinda Ardern led New Zealand through crisis after crisis in the five years she served as prime minister. There was the COVID pandemic, a volcanic eruption. But it was the mass shootings in Christchurch that cemented her global reputation as a capable and empathetic leader. Ardern writes about that moment in 2019 in her new memoir, "A Different Kind Of Power."
JACINDA ARDERN: It was meant to be a, you know, relatively uneventful day. I was on my way to visit a new build of a school out in a rural part of New Zealand when my press secretary handed me the phone and said, there's been a shooting.
KELLY: Actually, two shootings - a single gunman opened fire in two separate mosques during Friday prayers, live streaming one of the shootings on Facebook.
ARDERN: We know that the moment he arrived at the first mosque in order to undertake his attack, he was welcomed by a member of the community, who opened the door and said, welcome, brother. And he was shot dead.
KELLY: It was the worst mass shooting in the country's history.
And when did it become clear - as awful as one, two, three deaths would have been - this was going to be something of a much bigger scale?
ARDERN: It unfolded over the course of the day.
KELLY: Yeah.
ARDERN: Very quickly, we became aware of the scale. And by the time I exited the police station and went to a hotel in order to give a briefing, that was the first moment I saw images, and I could see the ambulances arriving.
KELLY: Many ambulances - fifty-one people were killed, 51. And Jacinda Ardern, the youngest woman ever elected to lead a country, decided it was time to change New Zealand's gun laws. When I sat down with Ardern this week in our New York bureau, I asked, how'd she do it?
ARDERN: I remember the day after the attack, the police commissioner confirming for us that the weapons, as far as they could tell at that stage, had been legally acquired. And it felt like being punched in the stomach because there was...
KELLY: We let this happen.
ARDERN: Yeah. There was an air of, you know, the moment your laws create a permission space, you feel complicit almost, in a way. You certainly - I mean, I already felt a responsibility to respond, but in that moment, there was - you know, it sat squarely with us. So I went to a press conference immediately after and said that our gun laws needed to change. And then it was a matter of working through how and what they would look like. And here I have to really credit John Howard, an Australian prime minister who predated me - a conservative prime minister who had his own experience and Australia's own experience with mass gun violence in what - something that was called the Port Arthur Massacre. And after that, they changed their gun laws by removing access to military-style and semiautomatic weapons, and they coupled it with a buyback. So we had a model, and...
KELLY: You thought, why reinvent the wheel?
ARDERN: Why reinvent the wheel?
KELLY: They did it. It worked. OK.
ARDERN: It enabled us to move quickly. And so we introduced law and took 10 days to debate it and pass it. In all, 27 days, roughly, after the attack, we had moved to ban semiautomatic and military-style weapons in New Zealand.
KELLY: So you and I are sitting talking in the United States of America, where there is a constitutional right...
ARDERN: Yeah.
KELLY: ...To keep and bear arms - the Second Amendment. Does any piece of the New Zealand experience apply here?
ARDERN: To the extent that anyone else within the United States believes it does. My, you know, experience simply is that empathetic leadership is not just about being there in the moment and experiencing and understanding - as much as anyone is able when you're not directly a victim yourself - what is happening for people. It's also about action. And I do think crisis calls for change, and it keeps calling for it until it happens.
KELLY: So understanding that you are reluctant to give advice to any other country on how they should do it 'cause it's a different situation and a different culture with different laws. However, I am going to ask, do you have any advice for your counterparts here? - for America's political leaders, who are horrified when they see gun violence here and yet have sworn an oath to uphold our Constitution.
ARDERN: Well, here I would say, my observation - and keeping in mind that I, you know, wouldn't say I'd be alone in politics in this view because every member of parliament at the time in New Zealand, bar one, voted for this law change. And I would say - not to speak on their behalf - that within the thinking of most legislators at that time, it would have been, yes, New Zealand has a relatively high number of guns and gun ownership because, of course, we have a real pragmatic issue. We're farmers, we're food producers, we have pests, we have goats, we have possums, we have deer. AR-15s are designed to kill people, and they're designed to kill people at a rate that is just beyond comprehension. And so in our minds, there was a differentiation to be made between the idea of simply gun ownership and the type of gun, and so we made that differentiation.
KELLY: Jacinda Ardern, you used the word kindness so many times I lost track in this book.
ARDERN: (Laughter).
KELLY: It's - you make it the centerpiece of your book because it was the centerpiece. It was your guiding principle...
ARDERN: Yes.
KELLY: ...In leadership.
ARDERN: Yes.
KELLY: And you have a great line - kindness has a power and strength that almost nothing else on this planet has. Why center that? Of all of the different values you could have been striding toward as prime minister, why that one?
ARDERN: I think it's been missing. And I think there's also an unfair assumption that doesn't really exist or belong in leadership, but particularly politics, because it's so often associated with the idea of weakness - that in order to be in politics, you have to have a level of strength and resilience, and that - in and of itself, that is incompatible with kindness and empathy. And I disagree. I disagree, particularly in these times where there's so much dehumanization. And dehumanization leads to aggression, to violence, and ultimately does nothing to solve the problems that so many of our communities are facing.
KELLY: I mean, you're describing a leadership style that is centered on kindness and empathy and compassion.
ARDERN: Yes.
KELLY: Apply that to America's political leaders today.
ARDERN: I don't know that - for the listener, that I would need to. I mean, obviously, for me, it's not just about any one country. There are two different styles of leadership that we're seeing globally, and I tend not to focus on individuals because I don't think they are a singular example. I think, actually, this is a broader issue.
We have, the world over, examples of those who utilize in politics the weapons of fear and blame, and it's a tool that's been used for a very long time. It's not new. Versus the more difficult task of what are really complex issues, and in this current time, I'd say, which are deeply rooted in ideas of financial insecurity, rapid change and generally a sense that the world is changing around us and we can't guarantee the kind of life that our kids will inherit.
KELLY: Jacinda Ardern was the 40th prime minister of New Zealand. Thank you.
ARDERN: Thank you.
KELLY: Her new memoir is "A Different Kind Of Power," and you can watch our full interview on youtube.com/NPR.
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