Former New Zealand prime minister Dame Jacinda Ardern has said she expects New Zealand to move toward becoming a republic within her lifetime.
Ardern, 45, the progressive leader who in 2017 became New Zealand’s youngest prime minister in 150 years at the age of 37 — and revealed she was pregnant just weeks after winning office — said many New Zealanders view republicanism as part of the nation’s eventual path.
Now living in Australia with her husband, Clarke Gayford, and their daughter, Neve, amid what has been described as a broader movement of New Zealanders relocating across the Tasman, Ardern said any constitutional change would require patience. She noted the issue is complicated by the Crown’s relationship with Māori, New Zealand’s indigenous people, and added that the country also has many other pressing priorities.
Even so, she said: “It’s not top of the agenda for New Zealand but I believe it will become a republic in my lifetime. If you ask the question, many would say it’s something that should be in our future.”
Becoming a republic would mean the British sovereign would cease to serve as New Zealand’s head of state.
New Zealand is one of 15 Commonwealth realms, alongside countries such as Australia and Canada, where King Charles remains monarch despite each nation being fully independent and sovereign.
Unlike Australia, where republican campaigns have at times attracted significant momentum, New Zealand has not shown the same level of widespread public support for removing the monarchy’s constitutional role.
Among Māori, the Crown’s position is often seen as significant because of its obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi, the landmark agreement that safeguards indigenous rights.
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Dame Jacinda Ardern says she believes her country will become a republic in her lifetime
Ms Ardern became only the second elected world leader to give birth in office
Nevertheless Ms Ardern, who steered New Zealand through the Covid years, praised the late Queen for the advice she gave to her during her pregnancy on a state visit to the country.
She said the Queen gave her some ‘simple, practical advice’ that you just ‘have to get on with it’ which is ‘exactly what she needed’.
‘What she was saying was there’s no big secret to it, you just take every day as it comes,’ she told today’s Times.
The former leader, who won praise for her decisive style of leadership during the pandemic and following the Christchurch mosque shootings in 2019, said she ‘wouldn’t wish managing a pandemic on anyone’.
Looking back at the gun ban on semi-automatic weapons brought in after the massacre which killed 51 worshippers, she said it was up to other countries whether they believed guns like that should ‘be routinely available’.
And Ms Ardern, who became only the second elected world leader to give birth in office, was sanguine about her popularity and so-called ‘Jacindamania’ saying she still ‘refused to believe it existed’.
Instead she said she was experienced enough to know there were ‘ups and downs’ in office and called for better support for today’s politicians who were trying to steer a less extreme course than some.
She said people should do ‘a better job of supporting politicians who aren’t using blame, fear and isolation as a tool’, saying it was an ‘incredibly difficult time’ and it was easy to feel ‘demoralised’ by people voting for ‘authoritarianism or the far right’.
Ms Ardern, who detailed her story in the bestselling A Different Kind of Power including her early life growing up as a Mormon, said the first thought any parent would feel now if their child wanted to go into politics was ‘fear’ because it had become so divisive.
‘If you fear a career for your child, that tells us that something needs to change,’ she insisted.
She said it was wrong for politicians to be threatened or accept violence and things had ‘definitely got worse’.
Ms Ardern, who resigned from office in 2023 after a second election victory in 2020, saying she was ‘too tired to commit to another four years, also detailed her ‘fertility journey’ suggesting she needed to explain to New Zealanders why she won an election and then very soon had a baby.
She said she just ‘felt like I was part of this very large club of women trying to make it work’.
