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Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern hit out at the cynical use of the politics of fear in a speech overnight and made what appeared to be a veiled reference to NZ First leader Winston Peters and remarks he made in the 1990s.

Peters later served as Ardern’s Deputy Prime Minister, after he picked governing with Labour following coalition talks in 2017.

She spoke at the University of Bologna in Italy, where she was awarded the Sigillum Magnum, the university’s highest honour.

The speech touched on 1991′s Mother of All Budgets, and its social consequences, which was delivered when Ardern was a child.

“My recollection of this time is not of the political machinations, but the impact on people. I remember the people in my school without shoes as certain industries closed, I remember the spread of illnesses that are associated with poverty, I remember a neighbour’s son taking his own life,” she said.

She said the response from politicians to that budget was the deployment of a divisive politics of fear. Ardern said she became aware of attacks on what were called “dole bludgers” and hit out at “some political leaders horrifically using terms like ‘Asian invasion’”.

While there appears to be no record of Peters and other political leaders using that phrase, NZ First’s 1996 campaign was fought on a platform of lower migration from Asian countries. The “Asian Invasion” was a popular attack in the 1990s, and was later proved to be something of a myth, with politicians reacting so much to migration fears that immigration from Asian countries slowed to a trickle.

“Without being aware of it at the time, New Zealand was observing the deployment of one of the most effective tools available to a politician, should they choose to amplify and deploy it, and that tool is fear,” Ardern said.

“There may have been many times in our history when fear has been present,” Ardern said, citing the Great Depression, Wars, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

“But there is a difference between genuine fear and politically motivated and generated one,” she said.

Jacinda Ardern spoke at the University of Bologna in Italy, where she was awarded the Sigillum Magnum, the university’s highest honour. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Ardern said the politics of fear was often an attempt to blame groups of people for things they were not responsible for.

By blaming others you immediately remove the need to find solutions yourself,” she said.

She spoke of a politician’s temptation to set their sights low, never promising anything ambitious for fear you might fail to deliver it.

But she said this would be to lose a Government’s ambition, “and in doing so to reduce the public expectation and so begins the spiral downwards until the public expect nothing, let alone hope”.

“I grappled with this in office and I don’t believe I ever got the balance quite right.

“But I do know that I would rather be too ambitious … than not ambitious at all,” she said.

Thomas Coughlan is deputy political editor and covers politics from Parliament. He has worked for the Herald since 2021 and has worked in the press gallery since 2018.