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“I am well aware that I am not going to be able to go out there and ‘beat Jacinda’ Jacinda Ardern,” says the leader of her rival’s New Zealand opposition. “But I can be Judith Collins.”
On Saturday, New Zealanders will be able to choose not just between parties, but also between two very different women vying for the post of prime minister.
Collins is a long-standing veteran politician and a household name, simply “Judith” to those who like her, and “Crusher,” a longtime nickname, to those who don’t, with sympathizers and naysayers paint her. as an almost cartoonish opposite of Ardern.
Ardern is globally praised for her policy of kindness. Collins, who took over the center-right National Party, its third leader in a year, spoke dismissively last week about the prime minister’s offer of what Collins called “love and a hug” to her constituents. Collins would provide, he said, “hope and a job.”
“I can be someone that people know has a very wicked and mischievous sense of humor and sometimes it gets me in trouble,” Collins told The Guardian in an interview in the capital Wellington in August. “It actually causes me a lot of trouble.”
From the farm to the hive
The daughter of farmers, she was born and raised in a Labor home in rural Waikato, a national stronghold south of Auckland. The youngest of six, she avoided an offer from her parents to send her to a private boarding school because she did not want to leave home.
She later received a master’s degree in law and taxation from the University of Auckland, where she met her husband, a fellow law student, and worked as a lawyer and a restaurant owner before entering parliament in 2002. The couple have a son. adult.
It was when his restaurant became embroiled in a union dispute that his policy changed from Labor to national, he wrote in his autobiography. Collins rose through the ranks of National and during his nine years in power at the Beehive, he was assigned ministerial functions such as police and justice. She proved divisive: She spent time in the wilderness in 2014 after being forced to give up her portfolios over claims that she had been involved in an attempt to undermine the director of the Serious Fraud Office. She was acquitted of any crime and returned to cabinet in 2015.
Collins’ political heroes are on the run from Hillary Clinton, whom he met and liked, and Margaret Thatcher, whom he toasted at a wake in his office after his death in 2013.
“What I liked about Ms. Thatcher, without ever having met her, is that she took delight in dealing with adversity and didn’t give up,” says Collins. He adds, raising one of his famous well-groomed eyebrows, that Thatcher had risen “at a time when her colleagues were desperate and everywhere.”
If Collins thinks something is the right thing to do, he says so; like Thatcher, he adds, it is a “politics of convictions.” Every once in a while, “I’ll get a backlash,” she says.
Collins reads political biographies – his nightstand currently has one of a former Labor lawmaker and one about a national politician – he listens to blues and soul, and for “really serious relaxation” he watches episodes of Miss Marple until he falls asleep.
‘Most days, someone is going to be offended’
On Tuesday, Collins scandalized Twitter when it was reported that he said that seismic scanning before drilling for oil and gas, a practice the Labor Party has vowed to end, was “like an ultrasound” for pregnant women.
Hours later, another furor erupted when he told an interviewer that obesity was a matter of “personal responsibility.”
“Almost most days, someone is going to be offended by something,” he told The Guardian. “It’s a great stress reliever to have a sense of humor.”
The opposition leader asked reporters if there was “something wrong” with her being white and last week denounced what she calls the “awakening brigade.” At the same time, she has often mentioned her husband’s Samoan and Chinese ethnicity in interviews.
When he opened his comments during a leaders debate against Ardern with: “My husband is Samoan, so talofa [hello], ”The comment went viral among New Zealanders on social media, and she was criticized for leveraging her ethnicity for votes.
That “mischievous” sense of humor made an appearance at an Auckland market over the weekend, when she bought a mug emblazoned with the phrase and posed for a photo with the artist. “That’s great, I love it,” Collins said.
It is not given to false modesty. When congratulated on his jacket, Collins says, “Yeah, it’s nice, isn’t it?”
Leadership at the last minute
The quality Collins brings to his bid for prime minister over Ardern, he says, is “competence.” But selling that to an electorate that has praised Ardern’s leadership during the Covid-19 crisis, and so close to the October 17 election, is not easy.
After taking office in July, when his predecessor abruptly resigned, Collins seemed at first quieter than before, but has since leaned toward the person for whom she is best known, the anti-Ardern of quick jokes, in a attempt to save votes for his party. and save the jobs of legislators.
Behind the bellicose Collins, 61, who constantly declares in the election campaign that she is having the best time of her life, is the story of a woman who aspired for years to leadership, only to be pushed into it at the last minute. . There are already murmurings among his MPs that he will not retain the post if his party loses the elections.
Analysts said Collins, who struggled to rise back up through the party ranks after a fall from grace as a cabinet minister in 2014, received a hospital pass. “It’s a terrible time for her and she didn’t want it right now,” says Ben Thomas, a public relations consultant and former national government staff member. Collins had published an autobiography earlier this year and “was clearly positioning himself for post-election leadership,” he said.
When Collins first met The Guardian, New Zealand was in strange limbo: There had been a Covid-19 resurgence in Auckland after the country had gone 100 days without the community spreading. An hour later, Ardern would announce that the elections would be delayed by almost a month.
That gave Collins more time to sell his vision, but it’s unclear if it has helped. The coronavirus appears to have been contained a second time and Collins’s attacks on Ardern have not always gained ground.
“I used to think the only thing that could help National was if there was another Covid-19 outbreak and another lockdown,” says Thomas. “And then it happened and nothing changed.”
Isn’t it a ‘shredder’?
During the campaign, supporters revealed that they too had accepted the idea of the fierce “Crusher” Collins, until they met her. Among them were Hayden McLaren and Paul Barnes, workers at a laboratory company in Mosgiel, on the South Island.
“It’s surprisingly nice,” McLaren said. Barnes, who planned to return her vote to National from ACT, a minor libertarian party, said: “She was not as overwhelming as I thought she would be.”
An assistant to the leader, who has worked with her for five and a half years, said her boss was “a lot of fun.”
But for some voters, she will always be a “Crusher,” after her 2009 law allowing runners’ cars to be smashed as a deterrent. It remains to be seen whether his polarizing style can win enough voters, and whether his leadership will hold up beyond Saturday’s election if it is not successful. Collins is, as always, optimistic about it.
“I just don’t believe in the polls,” he told an interviewer Wednesday, adding that he still believed he could win.
And he refuses to blame Ardern’s popularity for his struggles.
“I’ve never asked anyone for sympathy,” Collins told reporters last week. “I just go up and lead.”
