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ANALYSIS: Jacinda Ardern’s new cabinet is about three and a half years younger than the one she led to the election, and she is no longer its youngest member.
A Things Analysis shows that Ardern’s cabinet of 20 new-looking people has an average age of 48.6 years, with an average age of 47 years.
This compares with an average age of 52.9 years in the last cabinet, although when that cabinet was elected it was somewhat older and was 50 years old on average.
That new government was celebrated by many as one of “generational change,” but most of that age change came in the form of its leader Ardern, who was the youngest member at 37.
ROBERT KITCHEN / Things
Burning with her new cabinet, in which she is no longer the youngest.
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Now 40, she is the second youngest, with 36-year-old Conservation Minister Kiri Allan taking her place.
The oldest cabinet minister is Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor, 62. He was the third-oldest in the last cabinet, behind Winston Peters (75) and Ron Mark (66) of NZ First.
More than half (13) of the new cabinet can roughly be described as “Generation X,” born between 1965 and 1980, with 55-year-old Andrew Little at the top end and 41-year-old Ayesha Verrall at the bottom end.
Hagen Hopkins / Getty Images
Kiri Allan is now the youngest person in the cabinet.
Four are baby boomers, born between 1950 and 1965: the new Police Minister Poto Williams (58), the new Maori Development Minister Willie Jackson (59), the Environment Minister David Parker (60) and O’Connor (62 ).
Parker and O’Connor served in the Labor government led by Helen Clark as ministers, as did the new Foreign Minister, Nanaia Mahuta (50).
Only three are “millennials”, born between 1980 and 1995: Ardern, Allan and the new Minister of Labor Relations, Michael Wood, who is two months older than Ardern and 16 rungs below her in the cabinet.
The last representatives of the “Silent Generation” in Parliament and the Cabinet have also disappeared: Winston Peters, who is 75 years old and born in 1945.
Peters’ party consisted of many of the oldest deputies in the last cabinet, with Ron Mark (66) and Shane Jones (61).
The oldest MP in the House is now National’s Ian McKelvie, 68, while Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick (26) retains the youngest title, though Labor’s Naisi Chen, also 26, is not far behind. .
Ardern’s new cabinet also sees slightly more MPs from the South Island: four, rather than the two at the end of his last cabinet. (This number is a bit misleading as David Clark, who is from Dunedin, recently resigned from the last Cabinet, but has now re-entered.)
When asked about the age change in the cabinet, Ardern said it was not something she took into account when making her choices.
“That wasn’t something that really occurred to me. As I said when I stood on this podium and announced the cabinet lineup, for me it was the talent, skills and experience that would be brought to the table as a result of those members being elevated. I didn’t sit around looking at their ages, in fact, I couldn’t tell you some of them, ”Ardern said.
However, he said that it was good that he was no longer the youngest member.
“We have to constantly make sure we bring in new people,” he said.
Succession planning is important not just for political parties. “
