Ardern tells Sydney audience politicians must rebuild trust

Former New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern has told an audience at the Sydney Opera House that politicians are making polarisation worse and need to do better. Speaking on Sunday 1 November in a forum with author Anna Funder, Ardern said politicians have a responsibility "not to engage in binary thinking, not to engage in the language of violence, [but] to rebuild trust by building financial security in a time of deep insecurity," according to The Guardian.

The talk was advertised as bringing together "two of the world's leading thinkers" to discuss "can we disagree without becoming divided?" The Opera House lists it as a 60-minute event with no interval, in the Drama Theatre. The University of Sydney, which partnered on the event, titled it "Jacinda Ardern & Anna Funder: The Art of Disagreement" and scheduled it for 2pm to 3pm Sydney time.

Ardern said people had felt a growing sense of insecurity over past decades, as globalisation took hold and began to attack institutions such as the World Trade Organization. She said politicians had responded to that insecurity with proposals such as Brexit, telling voters "Here's what you blame." She argued this approach paved the way for the rise of leaders such as Donald Trump.

The talk took place a fortnight after an alleged attack on independent MP Helen Haines. Ardern did not mention the incident explicitly, but she stressed that politicians needed to be aware of the tone they set.

She also said social media made it harder for people to change their views, because opinions are recorded and held in time.

Ardern said her view of the online world changed on 15 March 2019, the day of the Christchurch mosque shootings. She said the attacker had been radicalised on YouTube and had broadcast the attack on Facebook to incite violence among white supremacists.

Ardern entered New Zealand's parliament in 2008 as its youngest sitting MP, and the first to enter with an existing social media account, according to the Guardian report. She moved to Australia earlier this year, is 46, and now calls Sydney home. She bought a house on Sydney's northern beaches in September.

Ardern has also said she will lecture and mentor at the University of Sydney, a role the university announced in late October.