Andrew Dickens: Should Jacinda Ardern come home and front the Covid inquiry?

Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

Question: should Jacinda Ardern come home and appear before the Royal Commission into our Covid response? I think she should.

I could understand though if she doesn't. Because just as she became the symbol of our successful response to the pandemic, which we rewarded with a supermajority in Labour's second term, she also then became the symbol of everything that we did wrong.

And there's a significant number of people who have been weaponised against the former Prime Minister because of the things they resent, and they want a holding to account. They want a Nuremberg trial, as you heard from my texts, you know, they want fines, they want jail.

But they won't get that, even if she did come back. This is an inquiry about Covid to understand everything they got wrong as well as everything they got right. Now, I'm sure Jacinda Ardern, even if her conscience is completely clear, she would be worried about the consequences of coming home and being at the front of this investigation for her family, for her personal safety, for her own mental health.

And the feeling is that she won't – you can read between the lines in the recent Women's Weekly interview that home is not on the radar.

But remember, she will not escape the inquiry. No one will. There are enough people being called to give us the full and frank dissection of everything that happened at the beginning of this decade, and that is important because there will be another pandemic one day.

So let's get into it with or without former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.