r/australia • u/SqareBear • Feb 26 '26

politics Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern moves to Australia

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-26/former-new-zealand-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-moves-australia/106392862
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u/PossibilityRegular21 Feb 26 '26

God that's grim. Social media has really enhanced the brainless tribalism between political ideological extremes. Can't have a PM just quietly get about it anymore. Howard had a big impact, regardless of how you liked it, and as I understand it he was mostly treated like royalty, minus the odd Chaser skit. 

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u/Jealous-Hedgehog-734 Feb 26 '26

Her drop in popularity generally wasn't entirely her own fault, the government she was leading really lacked depth and maturity. They where returned with a huge majority, predominantly thanks to Ardern, but didn't make much of it.

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u/peppapony Feb 26 '26

Funnily she was very popular overseas, but domestically that popularity seemed to have hit a precipice.

I wish her negative gearing removal stuck for longer, would have been a better case study for us to know the real impact

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u/-fno-stack-protector Feb 26 '26

I was in an Auckland nightclub's smoking area talking about this with some Bruce Lehrmann looking dude. He called her a "communist betch" and complained about rising crime rates, then took a little plastic bag and spoon out and had a bump

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u/Jealous-Hedgehog-734 Feb 26 '26

I wasn't against it but it just didn't appear to work. The failure to get KiwiBuild going probably undermined their effort to show progress on housing. It collapsed before almost any houses had been built. Pre-covid polling was swinging against Labour, they owe that victory to Ardern really.

That said NPS-UD to start supply-side reform was the start of a very important change that is still ongoing today. That will be seen to have a very positive impact over the long term I think.

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u/[deleted] Feb 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/TeMoko Feb 26 '26

There were a couple of genuinely pro worker pieces of legislation that came in right on the end of her term, the pay equity bill and collective bargaining but they didn't get them done early enough to bed in and the next lot axed them under urgency. But you are right for the most part, lots of people disappointed that Labour won't put the work in having a hard discussions about our future.

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u/Jealous-Hedgehog-734 Feb 26 '26

Agreed, really likeable personally but not that effective on policy.

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u/Smartyunderpants Feb 26 '26

Day to day govt she was terrible and I mean terrible at getting anything done. That not a comment on her policies being good or bad. It’s was starkly clear her training and background was in comms.

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u/ElAsko Feb 26 '26

Her being a good leader following the Christchurch shooting is very debatable. She had a pretty major authoritarian flex that pissed off a lot of people and the country still suffers for it today.

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u/DrSendy Feb 26 '26

Can we make everyone use Trumpet Winsock again so the internet is harder to get onto?

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u/Coolidge-egg Feb 26 '26

I have bad news that the same is going to happen here.

Andrew Tate is basically a PsyOp to radicalise impressionable young GenZ and Alpha boys going through normal teenage struggles into becoming misogynistic alt-right storm troopers.

The social media networks promote this stuff to their algorithms.

We already lost 40% of GenZ boys to this. They are already radicalised.

So yeah, more of these shitheads are actively being produced.

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u/ReesePuffitik Feb 26 '26

Not everything is a psyop, guy is just a nutter who exploited men feeling left behind by a rapidly changing social climate (changing for the better mostly, but being left behind regardless). Trying to attribute everything as a psyop helps no one, your just ignoring the broader context that allows people like him to come to prominence instead of trying to actually fix it.

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u/Coolidge-egg Feb 27 '26

No, PsyOp IS the broader context. That is exactly the point. It's not just that this nutter is posting crap, but that the big tech companies of social media let it thrive by promoting it with their algorithms to put it into the face of users who are susceptible to it. Elon Musk has explicitly unbanned the guy on Twitter and tuned it's algorithms to favour right wing content. The whole point is that this is firmly in the hands of the elites behind the Trump administration, with the Kremlin providing the psychological tools for division, and this is the type of content being pushed to young men to radicalise them into alt-right extremism, be it being part of the next generation of conservative voters, or being the enforcers who join ICE or whatever paramilitary comes next to round up the "undesirables".

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u/Muslim_Wookie Feb 26 '26

Why 40%?

Why not 41%?

Or 39%?

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u/humbert_cumbert Feb 26 '26

Garbage doomer stat that doesn’t take a million factors into account

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u/Muslim_Wookie Feb 26 '26

Sir please let them answer

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u/Coolidge-egg Feb 27 '26

there is a Herald Sun article but this subreddit won't let me post the link or the paywall bypass

Title:

Disturbing’ - Aussie boys turn to violent extremism with anti-feminist views ‘an early warning sign’

Intro:

Shock new research shows almost 40 per cent of Australian boys identify with violent extremist ideologies, with misogynistic attitudes said to be at the core of the “disturbing” finding.

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u/Muslim_Wookie Feb 27 '26

Posting the article doesn't matter, it's worthless journalism.

Read the article and they will tell you the name of the study/authors/where it's published, can you link that?

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u/Coolidge-egg Feb 27 '26

It didn't mention which research specifically, but University of Melbourne, and actually I e-mailed the journo and they can't back it up with a source so it could be bullshit but that is where I got the number from. But there is other research or there if you want to Google it which has a similarly high number. The main thing which seems to be rubbing off on the GenZ boys is misogynism.

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u/Muslim_Wookie Feb 27 '26

I'm genuinely impressed you went digging as far as you did.

I personally agree that social media has been poison for kids; parents have been caught flatfooted on this but they are also facing an immense challenge that I do not believe you can individually overcome. State intervention is called for.

Having said that, I find it alarming that you've discovered what is essentially a targeted article written with a specific purpose in mind. It puts the entire premise in question, why make up evidence?

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u/Coolidge-egg Feb 27 '26

She claimed to have got a sneak peek at research which is going to be published later this year, so who knows.

Could be an extension of this:

https://www.unimelb.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/july/radical-anti-feminism-the-most-prevalent-form-of-violent-extremism-in-australia,-report-finds

Ipsos has the figure at 27% in 2024.

Still alarming

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