Jacinda Ardern says she will not be seeking re-election this year and her last day as prime minister is 7 February.<\/p>\n
Speaking this afternoon, Ardern said she reflected over the summer and tried to find a way to keep going for another year and another term but she could not.<\/p>\n
“After going on six years of some big challenges, I am human. Politicians are human. For me, it’s time…<\/p>\n
“So today I’m announcing that I will not be seeking re-election and my term as prime minister will conclude no later than the 7th of February.<\/p>\n
“I believe that leading a country is the most privileged job anyone could ever have but also one of the more challenging. You cannot and should not do it unless you have a full tank plus a bit in reserve for those unexpected challenges.”<\/p>\n
Ardern was visibly upset and tearful as she made the announcement.<\/p>\n
She will stay on as an electorate MP until the end of April to spare the country a by-election.<\/p>\n
Ardern said she had no plans, professionally, beyond then.<\/p>\n
Grant Robertson would not be putting himself forward to be Labour’s new leader and prime minister, she said.<\/p>\n
The 2023 general election will take place on 14 October<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
source rnz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jacinda Ardern says she will not be seeking re-election this year and her last day as prime minister is 7 February. Speaking this afternoon, Ardern said she reflected over the summer and tried to find a way to keep going for another year and another term but she could not. “After going on six years […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2331,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2329\/revisions\/2331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}